Kansas Man Places Winning Bid for Nebraska Bighorn Permit

Kansas Man Places Winning Bid for Nebraska Bighorn Permit

LINCOLN, Neb. – -(AmmoLand.com)-The Nebraska bighorn sheep management program got a big boost Saturday when a Kansas man placed the winning $80,000 bid for a permit to hunt bighorn sheep in Nebraska’s Pine Ridge.

John Marsh of Topeka, Kan., was the winning bidder at the Wild Sheep Foundation Convention in Salt Lake City. He will receive four days of guide service, horse usage, lodging and meals at Fort Robinson State Park during the 2009 bighorn sheep hunting season this December.

Each year, the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission conducts a lottery for one hunting permit and sporadically offers one permit for auction. The lottery permit allows a Nebraska resident to hunt during the season. The auctioned permits may be purchased by anyone. Each lottery winner and auction permit holder to date has harvested a full-curl ram from Nebraska’s Pine Ridge.

Applications for the 2009 bighorn lottery permit are $25 and will be accepted through 5 p.m. Aug. 12 at the Commission’s Lincoln headquarters. Applications also may be made online at OutdoorNebraska.org. Online registrations will be accepted until midnight, Aug. 12.

Ninety percent of the proceeds from the bighorn permit auction go directly toward the state’s reintroduction and management of bighorn sheep. The program is credited with returning bighorn to the state after they were extirpated in the late 1800s. The most recent milestone reached by the program was the purchase and release of 51 sheep from Montana to the Wildcats Hills in 2007. Forty-nine sheep were relocated to the Pine Ridge in 2005.

Nebraska has four bighorn herds: Fort Robinson and Barrel Butte in the Pine Ridge, and Cedar Canyon and Hubbard’s Gap in the Wildcats Hills. The estimated bighorn population in the state is 280.