Aoudad

The aoudad is the Barbary sheep of the North African mountains, and it has been a Texas animal since the 1950s, when it was turned loose in the Palo Duro Canyon and the Trans-Pecos and made itself at home. It is a sandy, tawny sheep with no saddle patch, but with a long fringe of hair hanging from the throat, chest and front legs that hunters call chaps. Both sexes carry horns. A ram's are heavy, thick at the base and sweep out, back and in over the neck.

Aoudad have a reputation, and they earned it. They are wary, they see everything, and they will hold to cover and watch rather than run, which means the animal you have not seen has usually seen you. A mature ram is a big, heavy-bodied animal and the chaps get longer and fuller with age, so they are one of the better clues to an old ram at a distance.

In this brush country an aoudad hunt is usually a blind or a slow cruise off the truck, rather than the canyon climbing they are famous for out west, and it is no less of a test for that. Bring a rifle with enough weight for a big sheep and take the shot that is offered when it is clean. There is no season, no bag limit and no draw for exotics in Texas: just a Texas hunting license.