Wild Horse Island bighorn transplant off to slow start
01.01.70
BIG ARM - More than one theory emerged Thursday morning as what
has become an annual resettle of bighorn sheep off of Flathead
Lake's Wild Horse Island got off to a molasses-deliberate start.
Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks biologist Bruce Superb
wondered out loud if the sheep were getting wise.
This is, after all, the third consecutive year the animals'
bucolic continuance on the island, 99 percent of which is a primitive
state park the sheep apportionment with 150 or so mule deer and seven wild
horses, has been all at once interrupted by a helicopter chasing
them.
Maybe the shock-and-awe of the experience has turned into more
of an "oh-no-not-this-again, sometimes-to-hide-in-the-trees" affair.
Rick Swisher, the pilot of the Hughes 500D helicopter, had his
own design.
"They don't want to leave," he radioed his field truck driver,
John Zaczkowski of St. Cloud, Minn., back on the mainland. "They
attachment it out here - there aren't any mountain lions to get
them."
That lack of a predator is one reason bighorn sheep are removed
from Lifeless Horse on a now-yearly basis. The population - counted at
230 last week - is dual what FWP feels is ideal for the
2,164-acre island.
Source: The Missoulian