Texas Bighorn Society - BULLETIN BOARD

Check out this page regularly. We will post information about upcoming events, and items of interest from our members.

Periodically throughout the year and around the state TBS will set up a booth at different venues in order to inform people about our mission and to sign up new members. If you would be willing to work in our booth during one of these events, or if you have an idea about a venue that you think might be effective for this please contact us at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it . The following events are on our schedule at this time:

GRAPEVINE — The story of the Texas Bighorn Society is no big deal, unless you're a desert bighorn sheep in Texas.

For those rare and beautiful animals, the TBS story is a very big deal. Through the society's efforts, the desert bighorn has prospered beyond what anyone could have hoped.

As director of the Bighorn Sheep Program for the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department, Brewer has tracked the state's desert bighorns through restoration efforts that have seen the herd grow tenfold in two decades.

Brewer brought the good news to the society's annual roundup and banquet here earlier this month. He outlined TP&W's involvement with the desert bighorn sheep and heaped heavy praise on TBS for its unrelenting work.

From any perspective, the restoration of the Texas desert bighorn is one of the major success stories on the national wildlife scene, but 20 years ago, the sheep's future was not so bright.

The desert bighorn sheep is a Texas native whose home range is the high, dry mountains of the Trans-Pecos. The native herd, however, was decimated early in the past century as civilization moved into West Texas, bringing with it meat hunters and sheep diseases spread by domestic livestock.

By 1950, there were no native sheep left. Late in that decade, TP&W's restoration work began with a small herd of desert bighorns imported from Arizona and other states. They were held at Black Gap Wildlife Management Area near Marathon.

The new herd managed some modest gains over the next two decades, but there were setbacks, too, including diseases that devastated the herd. As the 1970s closed, there were only 30 desert bighorns left at Black Gap WMA and the program was struggling.

"By 1982, we had gained some ground," Brewer said. "We had 50 sheep and we had developed a (restoration) plan, but we didn't have any money."

The Texas Bighorn Society came along the year before, under the guidance of Dr. Red Duke of Houston. The future of the Texas bighorn was brighter, but in no way secure.

Brewster County rancher C.G. Johnson donated his 23,000-acre Elephant Mountain Ranch to TP&W, with the specification that the facility be used only for desert bighorn sheep restoration.

Elephant Mountain WMA was born. It now is home to the state's bighorn brood herd.

From those 50 sheep in 1982, Brewer estimates the herd will number more than 500 animals when the annual census is taken this year.

A lot of small factors are involved in the program's success, Brewer said, but "the big difference between (1982) and now has been the Texas Bighorn Society."

The Texas Bighorn Society, with about 470 members statewide, might be compared with the story of "The Little Engine That Could."

"We're small. The challenge was large. We saw the need and went after it," said Fort Worth businessman Jerrell Coburn, immediate past president of the society. "In 20 years, TBS has raised well over $1 million for the sheep. That's a lot of money for a small group."

But the money is just part of the story. "We have contributed many thousands of hours of labor to the welfare of the bighorn," Coburn said.

While the annual roundup raises about $70,000, it's the all-volunteer membership's sweat equity that is credited for making a day-to-day difference for sheep.

Panhandle resident Kathy Boone, the new TBS president, cites the group's annual work project as an example of how members put their wallets and muscles where their hearts are.

The work project involves dozens of people and tons of supplies that are transported by helicopter into the sheep's high-country habitat where water-catchments, called guzzlers, are built and maintained. The guzzlers capture infrequent rains and store the water in fiberglass tanks, where it is released on demand at small water troughs.

Each guzzler costs more than $15,000 in materials alone, but there is no cost to TP&W.

For its work, the society in April was presented TP&W's Lone Star Legends Partnership Award. In making the award, TP&W Executive Director Robert Cook noted that every penny raised by TBS goes directly to help sheep, with no administrative cost.

Boone is justly proud of what TBS has accomplished and is already working on what could be her biggest challenges — increasing membership and elevating the society's public profile.

"We're a one-animal group," she said, "and that does limit our appeal, but there are ways to get our message out."

One of those ways has already paid big dividends. TBS placed a camera at its water hole at Elephant Mountain WMA. The camera sends real-time photos through a satellite connection directly to the TBS Web site at www.texasbighornsociety.org.

Around the world and around the clock, Coburn said, people can watch the Elephant Mountain water site as bighorn sheep, mule deer, javelinas and an occasional mountain lion come to drink.

The camera link has been TBS's single biggest factor in membership recruitment.

To raise the group's public profile, Boone hopes to secure one of the state's few annual permits that allow the hunting of mature desert bighorn rams.

The permits, often put up for auction, can garner more than $100,000 each. Any money raised through a TBS auction would go back into the bighorn restoration effort, Boone said.

Boone understands the difficulties entailed in acquiring one of the rare hunting permits, but she feels TBS deserves a chance, and she knows the payoff will be worth it for the sheep.

As Robert Cook noted in presenting the Legends Partnership Award to TBS: "In 1981, this dedicated group breathed life back into a program that was virtually dead and broke."

Now, Boone said, "We've worked hard and we'd like to take TBS to the next level."

In the land where the rainbow waits for the rain
Others have come and tried in vain
To restore the Desert Bighorn to their native range.

Finally came a group determined to succeed,
They call themselves the Texas Bighorn Society.
A finer group of people you could never meet,
They toil through the day in the West Texas heat.

To provide water on the mountains, where none can be found,
So the sheep won't have to come down to the lower ground.
Their efforts have paid off, the sheep numbers are rising.
If you knew these people, you would not find it surprising.

They're determined, dedicated, and some mighty fine people too,
When you get to know them you'll find, there's nothing they can't do.
From the moment I met them they made me feel like family,
And I'll proudly wear the emblem of the Texas Bighorn Society.

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For information on membership, contact:
Robert Joseph at:
Phone: 806-762-0555
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