Sometimes bighorn sheep is called Oviscanadensis or a bighorn. Both males and females have horns. The length of the body is 5-6 feet; the weight is 60-308 pounds. She-bighorns are noticeably smaller than bucks, theirs weight is not more than 121 pounds. The color varies: more often it is dark yellow-brown, there is a dark stripe on its back. Hair is faded during the winter and become almost white. Bighorns eat various plants: sedge, cereals and leguminous plants. In winter they eat lichen. They dig up it under snow. Sometimes bighorns migrate because of changes with feeding conditions. It is interesting that bighorn is a very economical in its food. The list of plants which bighorn sheep eats consist of no more than 40 names of plants.
Bighorn is polygamous. It means that during the rut buck can have several she-bighorns. Rut goes by in November – December. Pregnancy lasts about 6 months. Lambing lasts from the end of May to the middle of June. She-bighorn has one lamb. In Kamchatka overall population is estimated in 5-6 thousands head, but this figure is not accurate. They dwell in mountain areas of the peninsula and sometimes in rocky areas of the east sea coast.
Once there were very many bighorns in Kamchatka. Even in 70th of XXth century it was not rarity to meet flock of bighorns where were about 60 bighorns. Now they are protected in some territories.
Bighorns are dwellers of the skies. When they search for food they can climb very high, where no mountaineer can climb. In Kamchatka you can meet them both on ledges of sea coast up-to-date of the sea and on slopes of volcanoes on the height of 1.5 miles and also on gorges in the river valley. The calderas of very old volcanoes, volcanic plateaus in rugas of fathomless ravines with rocky jags (all this is in many-colored rags of high-mountain tundra and alpine meadows) - are the native home for bighorns of Kamchatka.
Kamchatka bighorn is precinctive subspecies (this is a subspecies which you can find only in one place – in Kamchatka, though bighorns are also found in other regions of our planet, for example, in North America, in north-east Asia). This subspecies are of the largest size. The weight of the buck reaches 308 pounds; the length of the horn in bend is 44 inches. There are a lot of marks of fight on the horns of adult bucks. You can define an age of the animal by yearly segment. Bighorn lives about 14-16 years in nature, rarely 18 years.
Bighorn is very careful animal with an excellent ear, vision and sense of smell. In case of danger bighorn disappears in a flash and goes away in inaccessible steep slopes, moving without any efforts along cliffs.
Growth of anthropogenic load on population of bighorn sheep led to disappearance of this species in places often visited by a man (such as the Ganalsky range, the Hangar, separate areas of the Middle range, massifs to the south from route Petropavlovsk – Nachiki – Bolshereck. There remained only paths in these places. Bighorns are very sensitive to the trouble factor. They leave their native home and begin search for areas suitable for life. But the main cause of decreasing of population is poaching especially on helicopters. Hunters kill both she-bighorn and lambs.
Bighorn sheep even got defense reaction on helicopter: having heard the sound of helicopter, animals run away in bushes of mountain pine, hide and stand still in clefts between stones.
Bighorn is protected on the territory of the Kronotsky reserve and some wildlife preserves, a number of which is a part of Bistrinsky, Nalichevsky, Yuzhno-Kamchatsky nature parks.