bighorn

bighorn or Rocky Mountain sheep, wild sheep of W North America, formerly plentiful in mountains from Canada to Mexico. Indiscriminate hunting, disease, and scarcity of food have reduced its numbers, and in some areas it has been exterminated. It is a heavy, grayish brown animal, with a conspicuous whitish patch on its hindquarters; the male has heavy, curling horns, while the female has short, straight spikes. One type of bighorn lives at high altitudes in the W United States and another in desert regions. Alaskan types are the Dall's, or white, sheep and the Stone's, or black, sheep. Bighorn sheep are classified in the phylum Chordata, subphylum Vertebrata, class Mammalia, order Artiodactyla, family Bovidae.

or mountain sheep

Stocky, climbing hoofed mammal (Ovis canadensis) of western North America. Both sexes have horns that in the male may curve in a spiral more than 39 in. (1 m) long. Their fur is usually brown with a whitish rump patch. The related thinhorn, or Dall's sheep (O. dalli), of Alaska and Canada is similar to the bighorn. Both species are about 39 in. (1 m) tall at the shoulder, but the bighorn is heavier, weighing up to 300 lb (136 kg). They live in small groups among remote crags and cliffs of mountainous areas and feed mainly on grasses. Bighorn rams compete for females by launching themselves at each other from a few yards' distance and clashing horns.

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Mountain range, southern Montana and northern Wyoming, U.S. It is a range of the northern Rocky Mountains extending 120 mi (193 km), rising abruptly 4,000–5,000 ft (1,200–1,500 m) above the Great Plains and Bighorn Basin. The highest summit is Wyoming's Cloud Peak, at 13,165 ft (4,013 m). Bighorn National Forest covers part of the range. On Medicine Mountain is the Medicine Wheel, a prehistoric stone-spoked circle 70 ft (20 m) in diameter.

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Bighorn is an unincorporated settlement and locality in the Thompson Canyon in British Columbia, Canada. It is a few miles south of Spences Bridge, British Columbia. The name originated as the name of a whistlestop on the Canadian Pacific Railway and is a reference to the heyday of big game hunting in the area, where Bighorn Sheep were once abundant and the region around Spences Bridge was one of the foci of the hunting industry in British Columbia.