HIGH-DOLLAR HUNTING : State Hopes There’ll Be Some Big-Bucks Bidding for California’s First Bighorn Sheep Permit in 114 Years

Since 1873, it has been illegal to hunt bighorn sheep in California. All that will change next November and December, however, when nine hunters with bighorn tags hunt two Mojave Desert ranges, Old Dad Peak and the Marble Mountains, for bighorns.

But first there will be the business of issuing tag No. 1, the first California bighorn tag in 114 years. For some hunter with deep pockets, it could cost as much as $130,000.

Wildlife management biologists in western states learned about 10 years ago that to grow lots of bighorn sheep, a valuable player to have on your team is a crackerjack auctioneer.

So, on the evening of July 11, at the Park Place restaurant in Irvine, about a dozen bighorn hunters will assemble, checkbooks in hand, to bid for that historic bighorn tag.

The hunt was made possible by a bill signed into law last August by Gov. George Deukmejian. That law took management of the majestic mountain animals away from the legislature and turned it over to the Fish and Game Commission, which in turn approved of a hunt tightly managed by the Department of Fish and Game next November.

The auction, managed by a consortium of bighorn sheep groups put together by the Society for the Conservation of Bighorn Sheep, is patterned after similar auctions in other western states. Wildlife agencies in such states as Nevada, Arizona and Montana have found that wealthy hunters will pay extremely well for a trophy desert bighorn ram tag.

Arthur Dubs of Medford, Ore., for example, paid $109,000 for a Montana tag auctioned last January in Kansas City at the convention of the Foundation for North American Wild Sheep. He will be a bidder at Irvine.

And the bids have been rising dramatically. Five years ago, when Nevada auctioned off one bighorn tag for $21,000, it was a headline item in wildlife management journals. Then Wyoming got $43,000 for one of its tags. In 1984, a Dallas hunter pushed the record up to $67,500.

What’s all the excitement about?

“This California tag won’t be for just any bighorn, it’s for a desert bighorn,” said Bob Housholder, head of the Phoenix-based Grand Slam Club. A hunter is said to have achieved a grand slam when he has bagged a specimen of all four types of North American bighorn sheep--Dall, Stone, Rocky Mountain and desert.

“The desert bighorn is by far the toughest one to get,” Housholder said. “The other three, most guys don’t have a lot of trouble getting, it’s just a question of putting in the time. But the desert bighorn--Utah issues maybe one non-resident tag, New Mexico had a sheep disease problem and shut down its bighorn hunt program entirely, Arizona and Nevada issue something like 7 to 12 a year between them--it’s a tough one.

“Mexico still has desert bighorn hunts, but the cost is up to $14,000, and it has to be paid all up front.”

Housholder said he expects the winning bid at the Irvine auction to be between $90,000 and $130,000.

“If there are two guys there who want it real bad, it’ll go through the roof,” he said. “But $90,000 wouldn’t surprise me, either.”

He who pays the most gets to shoot first, of course. And longest. For the winning bidder, the season will run from Nov. 21-Dec. 20. For the eight other hunters who draw $200-tags in a computer drawing in August, the season will run from Dec. 5-20.

The holder of the auction tag will almost surely bag a world-class trophy animal.

“There are trophy book bighorns in those two ranges,” said Dr. Loren Lutz, president of the Society for the Conservation of Bighorn Sheep. “I know, because I’ve photographed them.”

The money from the auction, as well as the money raised from the sale of the eight other tags will be used solely in DFG bighorn sheep-management programs throughout the state.

“We’ve come a long way since 1968, when we started on the first survey work for California bighorns,” said Dick Weaver, longtime DFG sheep specialist. “From 1968 to 1972, we identified all bighorn habitats and water deficient areas in the state and estimated a statewide population of 3,737.

“Today, we think we’re up around 4,787, thanks to a lot of volunteers who’ve improved bighorn habitat with a lot of hard work on water guzzlers.”

Added funds from the bighorn hunts, Weaver said, will pay for more hands-on sheep management.

“This will enable us to do things like pay for wildlife management graduate students to do some studies on bighorn population dynamics, to do some radio telemetry work and to study possible problems where we have bighorns in close proximity to cattle.”

For the Society for Conservation of Bighorn Sheep, funds from the hunting program may mean that the group can achieve the goal represented by its slogan: “10,000 by 2000,” meaning a doubling of the estimated present California bighorn population in the next 13 years.

“We know how to grow sheep,” Weaver said. “They’re amazingly tough animals. If you can provide bighorns with water, you can grow a lot of them.”

Also at at Park Place on the afternoon of the auction, a memorial service will be held in honor of two bighorn volunteer workers who died in a helicopter crash last October during a Mojave bighorn survey project.

Killed were pilot Don Landells and Jim Bicket, Bureau of Land Management biologist.

Seriously injured in the crash was Weaver, who plans to attend.