Rating:

0.0 (0 votes)

WILD HORSE ISLAND- What has four hooves, two horns and flies gracefully through the air? A bighorn sheep of course.

Crews with Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks (FWP) were hard at work Thursday pulling sheep off of Wild Horse Island on Flathead Lake to transfer them to the Dillon area. Some 35 bighorn sheep were supposed to be moved via helicopter to the mainland where they were going to be transported to Dillon.

Bruce Sterling with Montana FWP out of Thompson Falls says it's good for the island, it's good for the sheep and it's good for Montana.

"We've got approximately 230 sheep that were on the island, from a survey that was done about a week ago. What we're going to do is we're going to remove 50 sheep off the island, try to get the population down to a little bit more manageable number."

Dillon FWP employee Craig Fager says they look forward to increasing their numbers.

"These sheep will go in on top of an existing 30 to 50 that we have right now, and hopefully help us get up to that population we're looking for."

The transport process took a while on Thursday as onlookers figured the sheep had become wise to the game, once brought over on the helicopter, the sheep were vaccinated, checked for disease and then placed in trailers for transport. But don't worry Wild Horse Island fans, there's plenty to go around.

Even though 50 bighorn sheep are being removed this week, Wildlife Biologist Bruce Sterling says they hope to get numbers down to 120 sheep on the island. With this move, they will still have 180 sheep.

As of 4:45 p.m., 17 ewes and two yearling rams were transported. This first group of 19 sheep will be transported Thursday night by horse trailer to the Tendoy Mountains near Dillon and released.

The capture effort will continue Friday.