Ram Revival

In 2018, South Dakota delivered a giant of its own when Clayton D. Miller arrowed a 209 1/8 Badlands ram that was the largest hunter-harvested Rocky Mountain bighorn ever recorded. This surpassed Guinn Crousen's 208+ ram and was the largest archery and largest hunter-harvested bighorn sheep. The wave crested again in 2019.

In Idaho’s Hells Canyon, Doug Sayer harvested the ram known as “The Duke,” an old monarch officially scoring 200 1/8 B&C, a benchmark for the state and still the official Idaho state record. Pennsylvania hunter Gary Guerrieri took the new Washington state-record Rocky Mountain bighorn in Asotin County in 2021. The ram scored 202 4/8. The massive animal, with measured horn lengths of approximately 44 and 44 2/8 inches and bases exceeding 17 inches, came from rugged terrain near the Grand Ronde River in the Columbia Plateau region.

Even states with smaller or once-struggling herds began joining the trend.

In 2021, Nebraska added one of the most surprising record rams in modern memory with a Banner County brute officially recorded at 201 5/8 B&C. The hunter, Grant Smith, had been scouting with longtime biologist Todd Nordeen, whose decades of work in the Panhandle helped rebuild a herd many once believed would never produce a ram of that caliber.

“It’s always impressive to see a big ram, but for a state like ours on the fringe of bighorn territory to produce a ram like this was special for us,” Nordeen said.

Capture project in Nebraska to test, collar, and release bighorn sheep.

Meanwhile, Colorado’s story surged past expectations. According to B&C officials, the state had gone more than two decades without a new record ram and then saw two number-one rams within weeks, pushing Colorado into the 200-point class for Rocky Mountain bighorns for the first time. In 2022, Kevin Neil spent 21 days in the backcountry and killed a 200-inch ram that held the state record for roughly two weeks before a Fremont County pickup ram surpassed it a few weeks later by four inches.

Mike Kinney’s California bighorn sheep, taken in 2022 in Oregon’s lower John Day River region, was confirmed by Safari Club International as the new world-record California bighorn with an official score of 191 5/8 inches. Boone and Crockett does not differentiate between Rocky Mountain and California bighorn sheep, but SCI does.

Just as Oregon proved what restored habitat could produce for California bighorns, Texas demonstrated the same for desert sheep.

In 2022, after more than forty years of desert bighorn restoration, Texas’s Elephant Mountain Wildlife Management Area produced a ram that rewrote the state record books. Hunter Robert A. Theis harvested a 187 2/8 desert bighorn.

“That giant ram represented many years of effort,” said Texas Parks & Wildlife biologist Cody McEntire.

In 2024, Jon Pynch set the Oregon state archery record for Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep with a Pope and Young score of 201 1/8 inches. He harvested the ram in Wallowa County, and the hunt was later documented in the Leupold short film RED. At the time it was entered, the ram’s score ranked second in the world for archery-taken Rocky Mountain bighorns.

The Southwest carried that energy into New Mexico. In 2024, the Jimmy John Liautaud ram, a Rocky Mountain bighorn scoring 208 1/8 B&C, became the new state record. It was the kind of sheep that instantly signaled the trajectory of the herd: deep-based, broomed, and carrying the kind of mass that only comes from age, habitat, and genetics converging all at once. What made the year especially extraordinary was that the Liautaud ram wasn’t a one-off. Another ram from the same mountain range soon followed at 201 B&C, proving the unit was producing true top-end age class.

Taken together, these rams weren’t random anomalies. They were a clear signal that multiple states were producing old sheep with exceptional horn growth.

The View From the Record Book

To understand what this surge truly means, you have to step back into the long-view world of the B&C record book. And no one knows that landscape better than Michael Opitz, Chairman of the B&C’s Records Committee. To Opitz, rams like the pending North Dakota record aren’t simply big. They’re meaningful.“A big part of our record book, what we believe our record book indicates or reflects is not only the health of the herd, but the health of the habitat in which they reside,” he said

When multiple states begin producing old, heavy-based rams in the same few years, Opitz doesn’t chalk it up to chance. He points to two key variables working together: habitat quality and herd condition. When both are strong, sheep live long, and when sheep live long, luck tag holders encounter big rams, and the record book inflates.

This philosophy is why B&C has always accepted legally obtained animals of every method, including rifle, bow, muzzleloader, and even pickup heads. “We don’t care about the weapon as long as it’s legal, including pickups,” Opitz said.

The world-record Rocky Mountain bighorn found dead on Wild Horse Island is proof that the book tracks biological peaks, not just hunting feats. And because bighorn sheep are among the few animals whose age can be determined with remarkable accuracy from their horns, every mature ram included in the book strengthens the conservation dataset. And it allows hunters to go the extra mile in their conservation efforts. By taking only the oldest rams, even when big, legal-sized rams present an opportunity, they enable younger rams to keep breeding and grow to epic proportions.

Opitz has a deep connection to sheep conservation rooted in this growing ethic.

Last August, he spent twelve punishing days in the Yukon’s Ruby Range on a Dall’s sheep hunt, glassing forty-seven rams, riding one hundred miles on horseback, and walking another seventy on foot. Several large, younger, legal rams were within range. He passed them all. His outfitter insisted they pursue only a fully mature ram, at least 9 years old.

After days tracking an ancient Dall’s through steep basins, the old ram winded them and vanished. Opitz never fired a shot. “I didn’t get a ram, but it was one of the greatest hunts of my life,” he said.

That hunt reminded him why old sheep matter and why letting younger rams walk is one of the quiet but powerful conservation decisions hunters make every season.

Opitz spent 12 grueling days in the Yukon... they saw sheep and rams, just not the mature rams they were looking for.

Habitat Equals Opportunity

If the record book shows what’s happening, people like Glen Landrus, former Wild Sheep Foundation  Chair, can explain why. A lifelong hunter and agricultural educator, Landrus has spent decades watching sheep along the Snake River corridor. When asked why so many giants have appeared lately, he starts with one word: habitat.

“There are a few things at play, and the first is habitat. On the Snake River Corridor, we’ve had kind of a series of summer burns over the last decade or so, and those burns have created lots of high-quality forage out there,” he said. Fire opened escape terrain, reset old brush, and launched new growth. Rams responded almost immediately.

Disease management also played a major role.

In the Washington unit that produced its state-record ram, test-and-remove strategies were implemented early, thereby reducing the number of chronic carriers of Mycoplasma ovipneumoniae. With disease pressure eased, habitat gains finally translated into horn growth. But Landrus is quick to point out it’s easy to focus on the triumphant, inspiring, and important moments of translocations.

“Everybody loves to see that gate swing open, but we can’t transplant our way to a more sustainable population. It also requires habitat work, disease monitoring, and an overall conservation ethic,” Landrus said.

The WSF Grant-in-Aid Program has helped fund the Tri-State Partnership between Idaho, Oregon, and Washington since 2020. Courtesy Silverline Films.