Dall sheep

The sheep inhabit the subarctic mountain ranges of Alaska, the Yukon Territory, the Mackenzie Mountains in the western Northwest Territories, and central and northern British Columbia. Dall sheep are found in relatively dry country and try to stay in a special combination of open alpine ridges, meadows, and steep slopes with extremely rugged ground in the immediate vicinity, to allow escape from predators that cannot travel quickly through such terrain.

Male Dall sheep have thick, curling horns. The females have shorter, more slender, slightly curved horns. Males live in bands which seldom associate with female groups except during the mating season in late November and early December. Lambs are born in May.

During the summer when food is abundant, the sheep eat a wide variety of plants. The winter diet is much more limited, and consists primarily of dry, frozen grass and sedge stems available when snow is blown off, lichen, and moss. Many Dall sheep populations visit mineral licks during the spring, and often travel many miles to eat the soil around the licks.[7]

Primary predators of this sheep are wolf packs, coyotes, black bears, and grizzly bears; golden eagles are predators of the young. The Dall sheep has been known to butt gray wolves off the face of cliffs.

Dall sheep can often be observed along the Alaska Highway at Muncho Lake in British Columbia, along the Seward Highway South of Anchorage, AK, within Denali National Park and Preserve (which was created in 1917 to preserve Dall sheep from overhunting), at Sheep Mountain in Kluane National Park and Reserve and near Faro, Yukon (Fannin's sheep).