Waterton Canyon - Close Encounters with Bighorn Sheep
In early November, I took a trip with the Colorado Mountain Club to observe and photograph bighorn sheep in Waterton Canyon. It was a fantastic outing, and I’ve included some of my favorite images here.
We started the morning with an early sighting of sheep high on the cliff walls above us. This shot shows a large group of sheep posing perfectly for us, including two large rams.
Later on we had a close up encounter with a large herd of sheep. We were on a dirt road with cliffs on one side and a steep drop to the river on the other, so I and some other hikers got as far off trail as we could to give the sheep space. The first image from this sequence shows the herd running towards us down the road.
This close up is from the same sequence, and features the large ram that was watching over the herd. I love the lingering fall colors in the background of this image as well!
The final shot from this encounter, a side profile featuring the ram. This really captures the beating that a bighorn sheep’s horns take; you can see lots of scars and where the horn is chipped at the end.
As we hiked back down the canyon, we ran into another herd of sheep that had a group of six rams. When I first saw them they were up on the cliffs, but pretty quickly the rams started to come down to the road where a large number of hikers had gathered. This image is one of my favorites from the day and shows two of the rams descending towards us.
As the group of rams fought on the road, the ewes stayed high up on the cliffs to watch the action.
Collision. The rams were butting heads and competing as part of the annual rut. A note on this image, I removed all signs of onlookers to create a more natural feel, but there were originally four people in the background of this shot.
Isolated from the herd, this smaller ram ended up getting ganged up on by the rest of the group.