Game and Fish cuts tags, keeps ewe, lamb season for Gros Ventre bighorns

JACKSON — This fall, Game and Fish will issue a third as many tags for hunting female and juvenile bighorn sheep in the Gros Ventre Range after winter weather and mountain lion predation in 2023 culled the herd.

Following helicopter surveys in 2023 and 2024, biologists believe there are about 400 sheep dwelling in the mountains east of Jackson Hole, which is the Wyoming Game and Fish Department’s objective for the herd.

That’s a far cry from 2021 and 2022, when the number of far-sighted sheep counted in aerial surveys climbed toward 500 animals, the threatening threshold after which the Jackson Herd typically sees widespread pneumonia die-offs. In the early 2000s, the respiratory disease caused the population to fall from about 500 animals to about 130. A similar, but less drastic, drop occurred in the 2010s.

For the past two years, Game and Fish has tried a novel strategy: hunting ewes, which are the reproductive muscle of the sheep population, and lambs, which are necessary for the population to grow, in an effort to keep population numbers down. While that hasn’t been incredibly successful — hunters have struggled to take down enough sheep in the Gros Ventre — cougars and weather helped last winter.

Rather than eliminating the “type six” license in the Gros Ventre, which allows hunters to harvest ewes and lambs, Game and Fish wants to maintain the license as a check against population growth.

“Now that the herd is right at objective, we would like to continue that type six season — not have so many licenses that we’re reducing numbers but just enough licenses to hold the population stable and prevent it from increasing again,” said Aly Courtemanch, the state’s Jackson-based wildlife biologist.

This year, Game and Fish wants to authorize 10 tags for bighorn ewes and lambs from the Jackson Herd, down from 16 in 2022 and 30 in 2023. Hunters, however, have struggled to harvest sheep both years the hunt was authorized. In 2022, they bagged only six ewes. In 2023, they got only nine.

That’s part of why the department is also proposing giving hunters a second opportunity to fill those 10 tags.

Last year, ewe and lamb hunts were authorized only from Sept. 10 to Oct. 15. But this year, Game and Fish would also like to give hunters the opportunity to chase female and young sheep from Nov. 1 to 15.

Courtemanch said the additional window is intended to give hunters another shot when the sheep come down from high elevations and are easier to find. The department also thinks there’s over-harvest occurring in certain segments of the Jackson Herd.

Officials believe allowing hunting when the sheep are at lower elevations could spread harvest out among the 400-or-so animals. Lambs are also bigger in late fall, so “if ewes get harvested, lambs are much more likely to survive through the winter,” Courtemanch said.

Bighorn sheep are struggling across the West, and hunting ewes is not a typical strategy. In the past, it’s been lambasted by hunters and outfitters concerned about unnecessarily impacting a dwindling species.

But Game and Fish is pursuing the hunt as part of an experiment.

When bighorn numbers reach about 500 animals in the Gros Ventre, biologists believe there are too many animals on the landscape. They compete with one another for food, get less nosh and lose fat, which is the universal currency of nutrition in the animal kingdom. When that happens, the theory goes, sheep become less healthy and more susceptible to disease, which sets in and causes the population to crater.

Hunting is one way the department would like to mitigate the theorized negative nutritional cycle.

Game and Fish proposed the changes as part of its annual season-setting process, which sets hunting quotas for some of the most sought-after and charismatic megafauna in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem: bighorns, but also mule deer, elk, moose and bison.

This year, there are a number of changes proposed to hunts around Jackson. They include season reductions and antler point restrictions for Sublette and Wyoming Range mule deer, a continued closure of the pronghorn season in the Gros Ventre, and a broadening of the season for elk that migrate in and out of Idaho on the west side of the Tetons.

Draft regulations can be found at WGFD.Wyo.gov/regulations.

The Wyoming Game and Fish Commission, which has final say on hunt seasons, will also take in-person and virtual public comment at its April meeting in Riverton.

This story was published on March 29, 2024.