From: http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/15509126.htm

Below is highly edited down to desert bighorn info only...

Posted on Wed, Sep. 13, 2006

Bob Hood's weekly outdoors report

By BOB HOOD
Star-Telegram Staff Writer

More Big Game Awards

Javelina and desert bighorn sheep have been added to the species accepted for categories in the Texas Big Game Awards program.

The program is designed to recognize the quality of big game animals in Texas, the hunters who harvest them, land managers who produce the animals through their management efforts, the importance of the hunting heritage and the achievements of young and new hunters.

Desert bighorn sheep also is a “recognition only” category. The big game awards program give certificates to hunters, landowners and wildlife managers where sheep are harvested in recognition of a successful re-introduction program for the sheep.

Although there were an estimated 1,500 desert bighorn sheep in West Texas in the late 1800s, their populations dwindled to about 500 by the early 1900s because of unregulated hunting. By the early 1960s, the sheep had become extinct in that area.

Re-introduction efforts by federal and state wildlife agencies and the Texas Bighorn Sheep Society have resulted in a population estimated recently at 822 sheep. A record 12 sheep hunting permits are expected to be issued this year.

For more information about the Texas big game awards program, call 800-839-9453, ext. 114, or visit the its Web site at www.texasbiggameawards.com.

For information about the desert bighorn sheep program or to view bighorns in action via a satellite web camera and weather monitoring system near a water supply unit atop Elephant Mountain, go to www.texasbighornsociety.org.

Bob Hood, 817-390-7760
blhood@star-telegram.com