Sierra Nevada Bighorn Sheep January 2022
Dale Matson
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The sheep were up high in spite of the snow. Although I used a tripod and my 200-600mm lens with a 1.4 TC and cropped, the sheep are still small in the photos. I also used my new Sony A1 camera and was pleased with the focusing under the circumstances. There is always the anticipatory excitement as we leave Fresno and go around Bakersfield to eventually head North toward Bishop. And…. then the inevitable long exhausting return the following day.
We began looking south of Whitney Portal Road with no sightings.
It is not a good sign when you need 12X binoculars to find the sheep. Yet, we were appreciative to eventually find them. We scouted three separate canyons including Silver Canyon East of Bishop where we saw no evidence of sheep. We were able to find sheep in two canyons South of Aberdeen but the canyon to the North, the sheep were way too far up canyon to get any decent photos. I would never have even seen them with binoculars but Sharon has very sharp eyes.
We were blessed to see both sheep and mule deer feeding alongside of each other. There were about 34 SNBS and about 25 deer together.
After the massive December snows, the Sierra Nevada was absolutely beautiful. We are hoping that the mountain lions are not forcing the sheep to stay high and to get a chance in the future to get some closer photographs.
