Desert Big-horned Sheep
19 January 2017 | Salinas Bay, Isla Carmen, Sea of Cortez, Mexico
Also on Carmen Island are Desert Big-horned Sheep and, considering they are only sheep, they are pretty impressive looking animals and you can see why they were so named (having said this though they could equally have been called Desert White-bummed Sheep, but perhaps not as romantic a name for a trophy hunter. And then he would have to mount the rear end of the beast on his wall... no, can't see that happening). Anyway I digress... Hunting these animals is a lucrative business in Mexico as well as in the US. In order to shoot one of them you need to purchase a "tag" from the government, I don't know how much they cost in Mexico but I saw that an anonymous person in the US bought a tag to shoot one in the state of Montana and the cost of the tag was over $470,000. That's right - four hundred and seventy thousand dollars to shoot a sheep..... There is a hunting lodge at Salinas Bay but there were no hunters at this time so we took a walk into the surrounding hills and were lucky enough to see a couple of herds totally around 20 animals, as you can imagine they were a touch skittish.