Shot of the Month – May 2017

This month we visit with a ram that fully embraces his name – the Bighorn Sheep (BHS).  We found this big fella in Yellowstone National Park and our guide mentioned that this was one the largest set of horns he had seen in 30 years of visiting the park.

As I discussed in a previous post, “Bighorn Sheep” is a rather chauvinistic name for the species as the females also have horns, though they are not nearly as big, nor curved.  The lads get all the attention, a-gain.

These rams definitely know that they are impressive — this one walked by me with his shoulders back, chest out and his head raised, as if saying, “Yes, soak it in, I am magnificent.”

Those horns can weigh 30 pounds, equal to the weight of all the other bones in the ram’s body.  A ram can weigh 174 to 319 pounds so those horns can make up about 10% of their total body weight.

Mature males spend most of the year as part of a bachelor flock.  Ahhh, those were the days…

The rams join the female groups in November when the mating season begins. The BHS rams are most famous for their epic head-clashing battles to win the right to mate with the females.

These fellows will smash their heads together as they hurl themselves at each other at 20 mph — generating about 800 pounds of force – sixty times more force than needed to kill a human.  The rams can survive these violent collisions because their skulls have two layers of bones above the brain that act as shock absorbers.  The sound of these collisions can be heard from a mile away.

These battles can last for 24 hours until one sheep decides that he has had enough and simply walks away. Wait, that’s it??!!  I expected a denouement with a bit more operatic panache given the fury and scale of the spectacle.

Oh well.  The clash of the Mountain Titans ends with a quiet, “I’m out.”  I suppose that there is a certain civility in that.

You can catch the mind-numbing show here.  (I wasn’t able to embed the video)

The prelude to the fight can be seen below (very nice footage).

In case you were wondering, the title of this post is a nod to Bam Bam Rubble…an adorable character from my youth who seems to capture the simple essence of a bighorn ram’s approach to life…

Until next month…m

Nikon D4S, Nikon 600mm f/4, 1/800 sec, ISO 800, +0.5 EV