Have you ever heard of Bighorn Sheep being found anywhere in the Tehachapi Mountains or nearby? No? Of course you haven’t, no one has. Except hold on, there is actually an extremely reliable account of 300 or more of these beautiful animals living in the mountains of Kern County.

And a man was nearly killed by a ram after shooting one of them.

This all happened long ago, but it wasn’t far away.

First, here’s a little background about Bighorn Sheep (Ovis canadensis). These are the wild sheep of North America, and are found throughout the American West. Their common name derives from the large, curling horns which the males possess, and which grow throughout their lifetime. The horns alone from an aged mature ram can weigh 30 pounds.

At one time there were thought to be as many as seven subspecies of Bighorn Sheep, but mitochondrial DNA studies in recent years have suggested that there are three subspecies: Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep (Ovis canadensis canadensis), Sierra Nevada Bighorn Sheep (Ovis canadensis sierrae) and Desert Bighorn Sheep (Ovis canadensis nelsoni).

Rocky Mountain bighorns are by far the most common and widespread subspecies, and also the largest — adult rams in their prime can occasionally exceed 500 pounds. There are about 35,000 of these bighorns in existence.

The Desert Bighorn Sheep are slightly smaller, and are the next most numerous and widespread, with about 26,000 animals living primarily in desert areas of Nevada, California and Arizona.

The remaining subspecies, Sierra Nevada Bighorn Sheep, are the smallest and by far the rarest. As of last year there were only about 500 animals in existence, found in a narrow band of the Sierra Nevada mountains prior to the extremely snowy winter of 2022-23, but many of them perished as a result of the snow, so there are even fewer today.

So when were Bighorn Sheep found in our area? Well, let us turn to letters written in 1857 and 1858 by John Xantus, a Hungarian immigrant who was stationed at Fort Tejon, located in Grapevine Canyon, a 60-mile drive from Tehachapi.

I introduced Xantus in a column earlier this year. He was a medical officer at the fort, but his main passion, and his personal reason for being assigned to the fort, was to gather animal specimens for the Smithsonian Institution.

For this task, Xantus wandered around in the immediate vicinity of the fort, essentially shooting several examples of every animal he encountered, and then sending skins and skulls back to Washington D.C. He kept up a constant correspondence with Spencer Baird, who was the first curator named to the Smithsonian, and the second Secretary of the Smithsonian.

In a letter to Baird dated Oct. 15, 1857, Xantus writes “Lately I undertook a trip to Tejon peak, the highest mountain we have around here. I scaled this after considerable difficulties. . . [he may have been referring to Grapevine Peak, since there is no mountain currently called Tejon Peak]. I observed from the peak large herds of Antelopes, Mountain Sheep and some grizzlies.”

So Xantus says that he saw “large herds” of what he called Mountain Sheep, which were bighorns.

But then listen to this from a letter Xantus wrote on Feb. 2, 1858: “I had quite an adventure last month, which I certainly never anticipated. At San Domidio [actually San Emigdio, a former sprawling land grant and ranch, which is now the Wind Wolves Preserve], distant from here 30 miles north, a man was shot in the legs and I was ordered to see him. The man being dangerously wounded, I stopped there a couple of days, & went out hunting in the mountains. There was from 2-5 feet of snow that time everywhere in the Sierras [Xantus wasn’t actually in the Sierras].

“After reaching the top of a rocky hill, I descended down a ridge (swept clear from snow by wind) into a deep gulch, & when near the bottom, beheld a herd of Bighorn then numbering at least 300.”

The tireless collector that he was, Xantus promptly fired into the crowd of sheep, and succeeded in injuring “one of their chieftains, a huge horned fellow.” When Xantus approached the animal, “To my great astonishment he posted himself in front of me, then made a desperate charge, and struck me in the abdomen with his forehead, that I tumbled several feet and capsized a couple of times. As I had in front my filled hunting bag, his blow was not so violent as it had been no doubt, without this preservative.”

Xantus regained his feet, and dispatched the wounded ram with a pistol, then proceeded to kill four more sheep from this large herd in the snow. He added “We had a very severe winter here, the severest on record. The road to Los Angeles was blocked up on some places by 15 feet of snow.”

Proof of Xantus’s experience can be found in letters dated March 18 and April 2, 1858, in each of which he noted that among other specimens, he had shipped two Mountain Sheep skins and skulls in crates to the Smithsonian by Wells Fargo & Co. A later letter also requests that two of his sheep specimens be sent to the Hungarian National Museum in Budapest.

Xantus left Fort Tejon in January of 1859, and didn’t mention Bighorn Sheep in any of his other letters.

I was astounded to hear of Bighorn Sheep in the mountains of Kern County. I was well aware of some of our other now-absent species, like California Grizzly Bears and Gray Wolves, but I had never encountered any prior mention of Bighorn Sheep. I’m assuming the ones that Xantus found would have been from the Sierra Nevada subspecies.

So based on these accounts from 160 years ago, it appears that numerous Bighorn Sheep once lived in our area. John Xantus was not always the most reliable narrator, particularly when describing his own somewhat humble origins in inflated terms, but he was typically very accurate when discussing wildlife. And he also sent physical evidence of Bighorn Sheep to the nation’s premier natural history museum.

Some of our wildlife communities are still here and intact, but clearly others have completely vanished. I for one would love to see Bighorn Sheep restored to Kern County.

Have a good week.

Jon Hammond has written for Tehachapi News for more than 40 years. Send email to [email protected].