I haven't had much time to look at the discussions on the forum - too much work! I now have a little more time and am quite interested by the sheep discussions I have found. I hunted, or rather stumbled around the mountains, two days last fall for sheep. No shots fired, no legal sheep seen. That is the extent of my sheep hunting, so I'm certainly not an expert. But, I enjoyed the heck out of it and may take it up more seriously in the future. I mention this simply to say I am not an expert on sheep, but thought I would toss out a few ideas.
From what I can tell, the debate is about having more mature rams for hunters and the health of sheep herd in general. There are a lot of ideas but one reoccuring theme seems to be about outfitters taking too high a percentage of the total harvest. If that is the case, maybe outfitters and their clients should be restricted to take only full curl rams and residents be left at 4/5 curl. This would reduce their harvest numbers, at least initially, but still give residents opportunities for a trophy. Then, perhaps, residents should be restricted in their harvest by allowing 4/5 curl for their first sheep, and larger from that point on. Sounds like a lot of sheep hunters do this already, get one under their belt and then search for a really big mature sheep after that. For the outfitters, my guess is most clients of these outfitters are out for a once in a lifetime trophy and experience, and holding out for a true monster would be OK with many of them (if the opportunity at finding one was legitimate). Would these ideas put more mature rams on the mountain?
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