Easy Pictures of the Bighorn Ram Really Easy Pictures of the Big Hole Rims to Draw
When Tom Butts saw a Jan. 14 story about a bighorn ram with a large hole in its horn, it must have seemed like déjà vu.
In the summer of 2010 a bighorn sheep was photographed on Wild Horse Island with a sizable cavity in its right horn. This was right after eight other rams had been struck and killed by lightning.
"We always assumed it was part of our little group that got sizzled," said Jim Williams, Region 1 supervisor for Fish, Wildlife & Parks in Kalispell.
The animal eventually died, likely of old age as it was estimated to be about 10 years old. The average lifespan for male bighorns is 9 to 12 years. Because a large part of Wild Horse Island is a state park, where hunting is not allowed, the horns and skull were picked up and given to FWP. Three years later they were sold at a FWP auction in Bozeman.
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Ten years later the ram's horns arrived at a Billings taxidermy shop. Laurel hunter Scott Chester had purchased the horns and is having a full-sized bighorn sheep mount created.
Taxidermist Jim Howe holds the horns of a trophy-class bighorn sheep that will be used for a full-size bighorn mount.
Follow-up
In writing a story about Chester's plans for the unique ram, a 2010 Missoulian story was referenced regarding the lightning-struck rams. However, in a follow-up 2010 story, Butts and Don MacCarter disputed that the ram had its horn struck by lightning.
When Butts saw the recent story about the ram horns getting a new life, the scenario was playing out again 10 years later.
"That sheep was definitely not hit by lightning," he said.
He has photographs of a ram on Wild Horse Island with similar-looking damage to its horn dated prior to the deadly lightning strike in August 2010. His photos were taken in 2009 and July of 2010.
Bob Garrott, a Montana State University professor of Ecology who has studied bighorn sheep, agreed.
"I don't think this could be caused by lightning as it is too common and is always seen in the same area of the horn," he wrote in an email.
Butts, who wrote his master's thesis on bighorn sheep and worked as a wildlife biologist for FWP in the 1970s, agreed that the ram may have been injured in a fight and the injury decayed the horn.
"I went up and looked at the eight that died, and boy, they were zapped, no question," Butts said in the 2010 article. "But people probably saw the story, knew this one was in the vicinity, had that big hole in the horn that looked blackened, he's limping around, and they said, 'Man alive, he survived the lightning strike.' It'd be easy to make that assumption."
Eight bighorn sheep were struck by lightning and killed on Wild Horse Island in August 2010. Some people thought this ram, shown here in July 2010, had also been struck and survived based on the large hole in its right horn.
Horn holes
So what happened? Garrott, who has handled a lot of bighorns during sheep studies, provided some insight.
"I have personally seen holes in the back of mature bighorn ram horns multiple times in my field work and have also seen photographs of rams others have taken with holes in the same area of the horns as the photograph you sent, although not as large," he said.
"While no one can be sure, the general consensus is this horn damage is, in all likelihood, the result of the tremendous shock the horns receive when head butting during the rut," he added. "The guess is there are rare times when horns impact at a specific orientation that causes the damage to the back of the horn.
Garrott said without witnessing such a fracture it is hard to say for certain, but added, "It is likely that the butting causes breaks in the horn that might not be obvious at first but over time as the horn continues to grow and age, and with continued head butting, the cracks/holes open up to become more noticeable."
Helena wildlife biologist Tom Butts photographed this ram on Wild Horse Island in 2009. The ram has a large hole in the back of its right horn, likely from a fighting-induced injury that steadily got worse as the sheep aged.
Physiology
Adult rams can weigh between 170 and 300 pounds. Their horns alone can weigh 40 pounds. When they are seeking mates in November, males will fight and strike horns at speeds up to 20 mph. Their skulls have two layers of bone to help absorb the tremendous shock.
The outer sheath of their horns are made of keratin, the same protein found in hair, hooves and feathers. Keratin is considered "one of the strongest and toughest biological materials in nature," according to a study by UC San Diego scientists published in 2018. The research goes on to point out, however, that "Keratin is dead tissue … which means it cannot be remolded or regrow once damaged."
To study the structure of the sheep's horns, the scientists cut into them and found that where impact was most common the horns were up to 1.5-inches thick, but hollow on the inside. They also studied the make-up of the sheep's horns at a microscopic level, revealing how well-built they are to absorb and dissipate energy.
Lightning-struck bighorn ram horns adorn new mount
Holey
So the ram horns Chester purchased for his mount may not have been struck by lightning, although they certainly make for an interesting story.
"I have photos of another, younger ram that had a chunk out of its left horn," Butts said in a recent phone call.
Other than the hole in its horn, he said the younger sheep appeared to be healthy. The older sheep, on the other hand, was in bad shape, unable to shed its winter coat when it was photographed in 2010.
Wild Horse Island, in Flathead Lake, remains one of the premier places to see and photograph bighorn sheep, Williams said. It's also where the world record sheep lived, based on a scoring system used by hunters to measure the size of the horns. That world-record ram died in 2018. Its horns weighed 48 pounds.
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Source: https://billingsgazette.com/outdoors/bighorn-rams-holey-horn-not-caused-by-lightning/article_4bc7391e-ec87-5713-95bd-c0c9ec48b57a.html
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