October 30, 2022

Close Enough
Bighorn Canyon, Montana
2022

I don’t think we’ve ever camped at Bighorn Canyon without seeing the namesake sheep, often walking right through the campground grazing next to vehicles etc. They seem very comfortable around humans, so it wasn’t surprising that they did not scatter immediately when I saw them this day even though I was a couple miles away from camp hiking on a trail at the time.

After coming across the sheep and realizing they did not seem bothered by my presence, I decided to see how close I could get to them for a photograph before they did react. This was as close as I got before, as it turned out, I was the one who blinked so to speak and turned around and walked off. The closer I got the more my mind began to focus on those horns and the thought of what they might do with them if they felt threatened and chose fight vs. flight. If there had been a ram with them, I probably would not have approached this close before chickening out.