California Expands Desert Bighorn Hunt Zones

By Chester Moore

Expanding opportunities for desert bighorn sheep hunting does not happen by chance.

Across the dry, rugged Southwest, it takes years of monitoring, planning, and work on the ground to get there. That effort is paying off in the Golden State, with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) opening three new hunt zones in the Mojave Desert.

Expanding Opportunity

CDFW has opened three new zones—Granite and North Bristol Mountains (Zone 11); Providence, Woods, and Hackberry (Zone 12); and Castle Mountains and Piute Range (Zone 13)—located near or within the Mojave National Preserve, between Interstates 15 and 40.

“We’ve been monitoring these populations for the last five to seven years and have been able to document that the new zones have stable populations that can sustain a harvest,” said Paige Prentice, Statewide Bighorn Sheep Coordinator for CDFW. Across California, desert bighorn sheep occupy more than 60 mountain ranges, making monitoring both critical and complex.

“We rely heavily on monitoring on water sources with trail cameras to survey most of our desert bighorn populations, and that works really well for us,” Prentice said. “We also fly helicopter surveys in ranges where water monitoring is not as ideal,” she added.

That kind of on-the-ground monitoring helps paint a clear picture, and in this case, it’s leading to more opportunity.
“The three new zones add a total of five general tags. If you look at just our general opportunity between 2024–2025 and this year, we’ve increased from 21 to 30. Plus, we have three fundraising tags,” Prentice said.

And those fundraising tags play a critical role, helping generate the funding that supports the entire program.

Record Auctions and Real Impact

The expansion in opportunity is directly tied to increased conservation funding, and this year, that funding reached historic levels. At recent auctions connected to partners like the Wild Sheep Foundation (WSF) and the California WSF, demand for bighorn tags surged.

“We broke our fundraising record at the Sheep Show this year for our open zone tag with $300,000,” Prentice said. “Then at the California WSF banquet, we auctioned off a single zone fundraising tag for one of our new hunt zones for $310,000,” she said.

Another single-zone tag brought in $120,000, pushing total fundraising to approximately $730,000 for the year, about a quarter million more than previous records.

“That money will go back into our big game program, and our desert bighorn sheep programs will benefit directly from that,” Prentice said.

Corey Mason, Wild Sheep Foundation, WSF Chief Operating Officer and Executive Vice President of Conservation, said the organization commends CDFW for their commitment to wild sheep conservation. “Their persistent habitat work and population monitoring has yielded populations that are capable of regulated harvest. Additionally, CDFW’s use of conservation permits to generate the needed revenue to manage and sustain these populations speaks directly to the benefits of this model for wild sheep conservation.”

Occupied Ranges of Bighorns in California

Ranges of wild sheep in California

Bighorn hunting zones in California

A Unique Landscape

California’s desert bighorn sheep occupy one of the most diverse and expansive ranges in North America, stretching across the state’s deserts and into isolated mountain systems.

“Our northernmost desert bighorn population is just outside of Bishop in the White Mountains. And then our populations continue all the way south to the Mexico border,” Prentice said. They also extend farther west than many people realize. “Our furthest west desert bighorn population is actually just outside of Ventura in the Santa Barbara area, but that’s a completely isolated population,” she said.

Bighorn ram in California And there’s an aspect to California’s bighorn program that makes it unique. They are managing huntable populations of desert bighorn sheep alongside two federally endangered populations. Those distinct populations are the Sierra Nevada bighorn sheep, isolated to the Sierra Nevada mountains, and the peninsular bighorn sheep that inhabit the desert ranges east of San Diego and west of the Salton Sea near the U.S.–Mexico border.

“It’s a unique landscape in that way, because we manage endangered species on one hand and hunted populations on the other,” Prentice said.

Managing those populations requires a careful balance across the program. Current estimates place the state’s desert bighorn population at approximately 4,250 animals statewide, a number that reflects years of monitoring and management across the state. Prentice said partnerships remain essential to sustaining that population and the work behind it. “We rely heavily on our partners for help with funding and for being boots on the ground. A lot of our water management, for example, is done through our partners. We can accomplish more together than we can on our own,” she said.

Looking Ahead

The opening of three new desert bighorn hunt zones is a meaningful step forward for California. It’s the result of years of monitoring, steady funding, and coordination between agencies and partners.
For hunters, it means a few more chances in a system where tags are hard to come by. And for the sheep, it’s a sign that the work being done on the ground is making a difference. There’s still plenty to manage, from water systems to disease concerns, and maintaining populations across so many diverse mountain ranges isn’t getting any easier. But for now, the trend is moving in the right direction, and that’s something worth celebrating.

Contributing Author: Chester Moore is an award-winning wildlife journalist, wildlife photographer, and lifelong hunter from Texas. He operates the Higher Calling Wildlife® blog and podcast and contributes to many outdoors publications.