Big Horn Sheep

17Sep

Hunting Colorado’s Public Lands

Colorado Parks and Wildlife’s video production crew (Dennis and I) have traveled the state for the last two years capturing footage from the peaks to the prairies. We have organized this footage in a way that is hopefully helpful to those looking to learn more about hunting Colorado’s public lands. We broke down the state into ‘life zones’ and have identified the game animals that live in each zone. It is an interesting way to look at finding your next hunting spot. To be able to decipher each life zone’s habitat and where the animals will be during which times of the year can give hunters insight as to where to hunt. We have also provided information on the different land management agencies such as Colorado’s National Forests, BLM lands, State Wildlife Areas and State Trust Lands For more information on hunting in Colorado visit HERE.


19Feb

Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep

This fall we spent many days driving up and down I-70 looking for big horn sheep near Georgetown and Empire. If you ever want to go watch them yourself they are pretty easy to find. You can usually find them on the north side of I-70 across the highway from Georgetown. There is a viewing station right next to Georgetown lake on the south side of the highway or after exiting at Georgetown while heading west, you can take a hard right onto a dirt road if you’d like to get closer. Other spots we found good concentrations of sheep were on the north side of the road near Empire, behind the small town of Downieville, and in Clear Creek Canyon.
2sheep1
Two nice rams (males) taking a break from chasing ewes (females) all morning, this shot was actually worthy of the cover for the Sheep and Goat Regulations Brochure

You can catch them in the rut (mating season) starting in November and sometimes extending into January… and if you’re really lucky you may find a couple big rams head-butting to display their dominance. We got lucky and saw a couple… what a sight that is. It reminds me of Oklahoma drills during football practice.

After countless days searching and capturing these interesting mammals we put together the latest episode of a.m. Colorado:

Due to I-70’s obnoxiousness, I had to replace every piece of audio you hear in this video.