Killer Dogs on Loose : Vulnerable Big Animals, Such as Bighorn Rams, Easy Prey During Winter

It wasn’t a pretty sight. A bloodied Nelson bighorn ram, driven down from higher elevation by deep snow, struggled to rise on the banks of a creek near Mount Baldy Village.

As several horrified residents watched, three large dogs slowly killed the sheep. Two repeatedly brought the ram down by biting at its hindquarters. Another, a German shepherd, bit savagely at its snout.

A man who had seen the incident from a distance waded across the creek and chased the dogs away. By then, the bighorn lay partially in the creek, too weak from loss of blood to rise. The man pulled the bighorn from the freezing water, then left for help.

Bill Wirtz, a biology professor at Cal Poly Pomona, was called at his nearby home.

“By the time I got there, the ram was dead,” Wirtz said recently, describing the Dec. 21 incident.

“It had snowed hard the night before and that morning. The ram had been driven down to lower elevation and was near the creek when the dogs found him in the morning. There was fur and blood all along the creek bank. It had been quite a battle.

“Dogs often kill old, weak bighorns or deer, or their young. But this was a 5- or 6-year-old ram, in prime health. It just shows how vulnerable big animals can be in the winter.”

Dogs and wildlife.

Section 3960 of the state Fish and Game Code authorizes employees of the Department of Fish and Game to dispatch (shoot to kill) any dog inflicting injury or threatening to injure any big-game animal during a closed hunting season, or any fully protected animal.

Section 3961 authorizes any landowner to dispatch any dog similarly harassing deer, antelope or elk on his property during a closed-hunting season.

Game warden Ken Walton was notified by Wirtz of the incident with the dogs and the bighorn. Walton obtained descriptions of the dogs from witnesses--one German shepherd, two slightly blond mongrels--then interviewed area residents.

He patrolled the Forest Service roads around the area for a few days, looking for the dogs. He interviewed more residents, including a woman thought by some to be the the owner of one of the dogs.

“I explained to her that I was authorized by law to shoot any dog I saw harassing animals,” Walton said. “She sort of shrugged her shoulders and said, ‘Well, if you have to shoot him, go ahead and shoot him.’ ”

For Walton, who patrols the San Gabriel Mountains for the DFG, winter complaints of free-running dogs harassing wild animals are familiar ones.

“People who live in mountain communities tend to own large dogs, and some tend to let them outside to run around, and have no idea where they are,” he said.

Said Paul Wertz, a DFG public information officer in Redding: “Our game wardens up here have a saying: ‘Chances are, if Rover sleeps on the front porch all day, it’s because he’s been chasing deer all night.’

“Dogs pursuing wildlife--and domestic animals as well--is a common problem in Northern California, not only in winter, but also in the spring, when pregnant does, for example, are heavy and slow, or slowed down by fawns.

“There’s a rural subdivision right on deer winter range near Susanville where residents own a lot of dogs. One of our biologists, in two hours there one day, counted 15 separate dogs chasing eight different deer.

“Not long ago, our employees at the Trinity River fish hatchery looked out a window during their coffee break and saw some dogs drag down a deer right at the hatchery.”

Wild sheep aren’t nearly as vulnerable as their smaller, wooly cousins, according to DFG biologist Dick Weaver.

“Most of us feel depredation done by dogs on domestic sheep in California exceeds that done by mountain lions, coyotes and bobcats combined,” he said.

At Mount Baldy Village, a second gruesome discovery.

About 100 yards from the spot where dogs had killed the first bighorn ram, another ram’s carcass was found in the snow two days later.

There was no evidence dogs were to blame. There wasn’t much evidence of anything, in fact.

“There wasn’t much left of the second carcass,” Wirtz said. “It’d been almost completely eaten. There wasn’t even enough left to tell how it had died.”

There are about 3,000 Nelson bighorns in California, with the largest concentration, about 750, in the San Gabriels, according to Dr. Loren Lutz, president of the Society for the Conservation of Bighorn Sheep.

The other two bighorn species in the state, California and peninsula bighorns, number about 1,000. Bighorns have been protected in California since 1873.

Bighorns are most vulnerable to dogs and mountain lions when driven to canyon bottoms by deep snow. But in more vertical environs, on sides of cliffs and their ledges, they’re more at home.

Wirtz said: “Twice this winter, I’ve seen bighorns perched at the very end of a ledge, a vertical drop under them, facing dogs who’d chased them there. The dogs in both cases were afraid to go out too far. They stood there, barked a couple of hours, then lost interest and left. It happens every winter.”