PIKES PEAK — By the time the sun started to ease above the horizon, Colorado Parks and Wildlife biologist Ty Woodward was already at the 14,115-foot summit of Pikes Peak peering into his spotting scope, looking for bighorn sheep.
The summit, marked with patches of new snow, was quiet as he scanned the grassy slopes and rocky ridgelines for Colorado’s once-threatened state mammal. Below, about 60 more biologists, wildlife officers and trained volunteers with binoculars were dispersed across the mountain, traversing boulders and steep trails on the same mission.
“There’s definitely some sleuthing that goes on,” said Woodward, who organizes CPW’s annual bighorn sheep count atop America’s Mountain.
An accurate count of the Pikes Peak herd and a ratio of rams to ewes, or males to females, is crucial to determine trends in the population size, assess herd health and help make hunting license recommendations.
Now an iconic animal in Colorado, bighorn sheep were near extinction at the turn of the 20th century after diseases introduced through European livestock and unregulated hunting decimated populations throughout the West, according to CPW. Through conservation efforts, the state’s bighorn sheep population bounced back and now sits at about 7,000, the agency estimates.
Even so, close monitoring is key for the state’s herd management plan, especially as a highly contagious pneumonia spreads among lambs, Woodward said.
Early results from Wednesday’s count showed average lamb-to-ewe ratios, but the total number of sheep is still being tallied. Last year’s count recorded 82 bighorns.
“We’ve been seeing fewer and fewer lambs in the last few years and sheep in general and that’s because that segment of the population has been hit the hardest with pneumonia it seems,” Woodward said.
“We might count 20 to 30 lambs today and everything seems really, really good and like it’s going well. And then you come back at the end of winter and you’re down to just a handful of what you started with.”
To get a close population estimate, Woodward will parse through all of the collected data to identify any duplicate sightings and critique the recorded observations. He will average Wednesday’s count with a second count in two weeks and then will multiply that number by a “correction factor.”
In the first recorded survey of bighorn sheep on Pikes Peak in 1949, 205 were counted. Colorado Parks and Wildlife has conducted annual counts since 1988.
At a distance, bighorn sheep look a lot like the tan boulders scattered across Pikes Peak.
“Look for their white butts and that will give them away,” Woodward said, while spotting a herd he estimated was about 3 miles from where he stood along Pikes Peak Highway.
From that distance, it’s hard to tell a young male lamb from a young female lamb, but the long, curved horns of males can usually be seen to distinguish a ram from a ewe.
Several bighorn sheep were grazing along Pikes Peak Highway on Wednesday, giving surveyors the chance to take a closer look at the sheep’s sex and other indicators, like the horn’s curl, which also helps estimate a sheep’s age.
Others hiked along 11 different routes on the mountain to count sheep, including a group who backpacked in from Woodland Park the night before and camped on the mountain before hiking up to their route Wednesday morning.
Biologists can estimate a male bighorn sheep’s age by its massive horns that curve backward from their forehead. Unlike antlers on deer, their horns are not shed yearly and keep growing.
“If you’re lucky enough to get close enough, with those annual rings of the horns you can actually count and age the rams that way,” Woodward said. “So kind of like the rings of a tree in the wintertime, their growth reduces significantly and it’s much darker in color, so you can use those dark rings to count how many winters they survived.”
Holding binoculars to his face, Woodward sat in the passenger seat of a truck as another wildlife officer drove along the sharp twists and bends of Pikes Peak Highway, which was still free of tourists.
“There’s a bunch of sheep. Pull over!” Woodward said before reaching a large group of sheep, including a nursing lamb, on a grassy knoll.
Unlike many other herds around the state, the bighorn sheep on Pikes Peak are native to the area, tracing back to the 1800s, Julie Stiver, a senior wildlife biologist said from the trail Wednesday. To manage the state’s population, CPW has relocated native herds to different parts of the state with suitable habitats to establish new herds, Stiver said.
The herd atop Pikes Peak has been used for several research projects dating back to the ’70s, including placing GPS collars on them to better understand what habitats they like, Stiver said.
“This herd is a great watchable wildlife opportunity because we’ve got the highway and people can see sheep — it gives us an opportunity to let people see the state mammal and to kind of experience something that you don’t see in other spots,” said Stiver, who has 30-plus years of experience in bighorn sheep management.
Bighorn sheep are accustomed to the highway traffic on Pikes Peak, but some tourists have tried to chase the sheep or feed them and that’s causing problems, Stiver said. There’s also concern of hikers getting too close to areas with newborn lambs, which puts stress on the mom and lamb.
But the population’s biggest threat is pneumonia, which is often fatal, she said. CPW can remove sick sheep, typically identifying them by a loud cough, from the herd to prevent further spread.
On Wednesday, a wildlife officer called Woodward up a hill across the highway to see a coughing lamb. By fall, the entire sheep’s body will convulse with a violent cough, Woodward said.
“It’s highly likely that they are all sick or have pathogens on board,” he said.
This year, the Pikes Peak herd is part of a pilot study joining CPW and researchers at Colorado State University to track and analyze the disease’s spread, Woodward said. CPW is also testing different sampling methods, including using hunters to access sheep around the state.
“That allows us to now put Q-tips in the pockets of all the hunters across Colorado and start getting to some of these remote locations,” Woodward said. “We can get to these sheep, but whenever you start getting in the remote wilderness areas, it’s a lot harder to do and sometimes the hunters are the only ones that are getting in there.”
Collecting data atop a fourteener, where conditions can change fast, poses challenges.
Woodward, who has been counting sheep on Pikes Peak since 2006, briefed the group of surveyors outside the Colorado Parks and Wildlife office at 4 a.m., before driving up the 152 tight curves of Pikes Peak Highway, next to steep drop-offs, in the dark to get to their survey spots early when bighorn sheep are most active.
The highway doesn’t open to the public until 7:30 a.m., giving surveyors in cars more freedom to pull over quickly. By 8:30, there was a steady stream of cars and motorcycles near the summit, many pulling over and getting out to watch the sheep.
Woodward kept an eye on the clouds, wary of unpredictable storms that could make conditions unsafe for those collecting data by foot at high elevation. He told those surveying by foot to finish by 11 a.m., one hour before a storm was forecast.
Waking up so early isn’t the tough part, he said, “getting 60 people up the mountain and 60 people down safely with no events at the end of the day” is.
Seasoned volunteer Nathan Kettner was ready for a post-lunch nap by 2 p.m., after he finished hiking four miles up and down the steep Barr Trail collecting data. Kettner, an avid hunter, has helped with the count for about 15 years and sees it as a unique way to connect with the state’s wildlife biologists.
“When there’s a chance to do more, most of us want to help any way we can,” Kettner said. “Even if it means taking a day off work and getting up at 3 in the morning.”
