Where Xutos tries to figure out what's going on with wild sheep

Sheep Meat and The Hells Canyon

By Nathaniel Hoffman, 10-04-07

	The Ram (In Cascade, Idaho)

I mentioned in a recent posting that the last time I spoke to Sen. Larry Craig, we talked about sheep.

I was not being facetious. I interviewed the Senator a few months back for this article in High Country News.

I had heard about a conflict between sheep ranchers and wild sheep advocates in Hells Canyon back in April. At that point I knew very little about bighorn sheep. I did, however, know a bit about mutton.

For most of my adult life, when the notion hits me, I have been going out into the boonies to buy a sheep. I learned how to reckon a good sheep in the early months of the new millennium (2000) when I was camping in a town in Northern Namibia, near the Angola border. I learned to look for a nice fat tail. Some dudes I had met there taught me how to cut up the sheep, hang it, and share the meat, cooking it over an open fire or boiling it in a pot.

So, since Idaho is the U.S. state that reminds me most of Africa, I occasionally go back to the farm.

I usually buy a sheep from a small time rancher in Nampa or Caldwell. I had seen sheep on public lands before, but did not really understand that a third of the lambs sold in the U.S. spend some of their time each year on public lands. Not on pastures in Nampa.

In one sense this seems very natural and sustainable. The lambs get high quality organic feed, fresh mountain air and are not confined to a barn.

It could be a way to raise more sheep locally and organically so that they can be eaten locally.

But that is not exactly how it works. The sheep raised on Idaho’s public land are rarely eaten in Idaho. They are butchered in California, Denver or Iowa and sold in shrink wrapped packages across the country.

And then there is the issue of bighorns. It is nearly universally accepted now that domestic sheep that come into contact with wild sheep on the range make the wild sheep very sick. My HCN story Sheep vs. Sheep is all about this conflict…

So maybe we all just need to go back to the farm once in a while. If more local farmers raised 100 sheep a year on their back 20, we’d all have tastier, fresher meat. And know what to do with it. Just like in Africa.

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