The Corsican Sheep is the poor man's Bighorn Sheep. For those of us who don't have thousands of bucks to spend sheep hunting the Corsican is the answer. This sheep is probably the most hunted of all the exotics in the United States.

The Corsican is a hybrid sheep that began its history in Texas about 40 years ago. This popular addition to the exotics scene will usually be brown with a black or white belly. Males will often have long black hair on the neck that many call a ruff. The horn configuration on a ram can vary from a tight curl similar to a Mouflon sheep or wide and flaring. A mature Male will weigh in the vicinity of 140 pounds and the females will weigh around 75 pounds. Horn lengths on a trophy sized animal start at about thirty inches and exceptional specimens can grow horns that will scare the 38 to 40 inch mark on a tape.

With the increased knowledge of management techniques and food supplements, the average horn size has increased the chances of a superior trophy with the cost being way below the costs of even an extremely low priced Bighorn, Dall, Stone, or Desert Sheep.

To make things even sweeter there have been a number of types of color variations on the Corsican to come along to make it even more interesting to hunt these sheep.

First is the one called the White Texas Dall. This is Corsican dressed up in all white hide and honey colored horns. This variation or color phase was isolated and spread in numbers by selective breeding, according to rumor on the famous Y.O. ranch.

Second on the list is the Black Hawaiian ram. This one is all black with black colored horns. The only white allowed on it is a little splash of white on the muzzle.

The most recent addition to the scene is the Painted Desert sheep. This ram is mostly black, white and brown. It has mostly black undersides with a wide variation of the other colors. The ones I have seen remind me of a paint horse's color and markings.

Thus you have a wide variation of sheep to hunt right here in Texas at greatly reduced process by comparison with other sheep species.

Written by Steve Mahurin on July 24, 2000.