Texas Bighorn Photo Safari

     At the annual TBS Roundup held in June of this year, my wife and I were the winning bidder on a photo safari to be held on Elephant Mountain Wildlife Management Area, home to what are probably some of the most visible and well studied desert bighorns in the world. I have had the opportunity to do this once before, about six years ago, but this was my wife's first photo safari here. I have never had the opportunity to hunt bighorns, but they have fascinated me since reading Jack O'Connor's tales in Outdoor Life as a child, and my fascination with these animals, and this place in particular was cemented in mind when during my first TBS work project, Pat Lathem and I watched a ram and two ewes on this same mountain feeding through the area where the TBS web camera is today. After seeing my pictures and hearing the stories from my first trip, I had no problem convincing my wife Theresa that we should take dead aim at purchasing this trip again during the Roundup!
     The hardest part as always was waiting from June when we bought the trip, until late August when the bighorns would be in the rut, to go on our safari. There are very few places in the country where you can view desert bighorns up close, and even more importantly our hosts for the outing were Mike Pittman and Scott Lerich of Texas Parks and Wildlife, two people intimately familiar with all aspects of the bighorn program in Texas, so we could pester them for all details of what was going on, while getting up close and personal with these magnificent creatures.

     I can't pretend to do justice describing the beauty of this little corner of the Chihuahuan desert, and the truth of the matter is, this trip was all about taking pictures anyway, so we are going to give you a taste of what we saw. As with my writing, my photography skills cannot begin to convey the full effect of this place, but we are going to try and include our first website video clip, and a sampling of the still photos we took to give you a taste of our journey. If you like what you see, maybe you can come bid against us the next time this trip is offered in our auction! I hope you enjoy these pictures as much as we enjoyed taking them!!! You can click on any of the beveled-edge thumbnails to see an enlarged version of the photograph, and hit your "Back" button to return to this page.

Click below to load a brief (about 1 minute) video clip. This will require a high-speed internet connection, or a awful lot of patience!
Elephant Mountain Photo Safari.wmv