Texas’ Aoudad Dilemma

LISTEN: (2 minutes, 48 seconds)

 

AOUDAD ARE BIG, strong and impressive animals. Originally stocked in the Palo Duro Canyon in the Texas Panhandle in the 1950s, they seemed like a perfect new game animal for that region of the state.

They have become that and much more.

Aoudad, also known as Barbary sheep are natives of northern Africa where an estimated 10,000 survive in countries like Chad and Morocco. In Texas alone, the lowball estimate for their free-ranging population is more than 20,000 and there is likely that many behind high fences.

They have become extremely popular with hunters who can’t afford an outfitted bighorn hunt or have had no luck drawing tags.

And they are causing problems for native Texas bighorn sheep, mule deer and other desert wildlife.

They outcompete all of the above for food and water and have recently been proven to be carriers of a deadly pathogen that can wreak havoc among bighorn populations.

“We know we can’t eliminate aoudad and we’re not going to try, so we are going to focus on dealing with them on public land where we have leeway and communicating to landowners the value of bighorns and other native wildlife,” said Froylan Hernandez, the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department’s (TPWD) Desert Bighorn program leader.

Hernandez said the sheer amount of aoudad in some areas is amazing.

“We have seen herds of more than 200 on mountain flying helicopter surveys,” he said.

Aoudad are a highly challenging game animal.

In this writer’s opinion, they are superior to a whitetail in intelligence and have an incredible sense of vision, hearing and smell.

Taking an aoudad is an accomplishment for any hunter and I believe taking a free-ranging aoudad by bow is the hardest hunting challenge in Texas.

Most hunters pursue rams for the big horns but ewes have horns too and some are fairly large.

If hunters would like to contribute to conservation by helping reduce aoudad numbers, ewe shooting is a must. And despite popular reports, the meat is good. A big, old ram will have tough meat, but I have eaten ewes and it tasted like whitetail to me.

There is no bag limit on aoudad, so if you have landowner permission and see one on your lease, by all means take it. And don’t just wait around on a big ram.

Harvesting a ewe can be good for our wildlife and its habitat and put some meat on your table. That’s a win for everyone, perhaps except for the aoudad.

And as much as they’re winning in the realm of population expansion, they need a few losses.

—story by CHESTER MOORE

< PREV Return to CONTENTS Page NEXT >