Wild-'life expectancy'

By G. George Ostrom

A huge bighorn ram is featured for the month of December in the 2008 calendar I did for KOFI. While discussing that picture with friends last week, one of the guys asked me how old rams can get. I said, "I can't remember." My friend said, "Well! Several years back you wrote about wildlife ages. You should remember that." I felt a little embarrassed but not much. It did eat on me enough that I spent last weekend searching, while trying to watch what seemed like a hundred football games. Finally I found it:

A local troublemaker once asked my son, "How long has your dad been out of work?" That boy replied, "Nobody knows. We can't find his birth certificate." That old joke fits in with a true thing that happened the other day. Had an advertising agency lady looking at colored slides in my very neat and organized den. She noticed files on everything from "AARP to zymosis," and asked, "How long do you keep the average file?" My answer was straight, "Don't know… not dead yet."

There is no understanding why some of us keep files on everything. Perhaps a kind of phobia. First wife Iris thinks it might be genetic.

I was wandering through old files recently and found an article by famed outdoor writer Byron Dalrymple discussing how long wild animals can survive. He says moose live 10 to 15 years and once in awhile one gets into the 20's. Of all the predators, bears seem to live the longest with blacks getting up to 15 and quite a few grizzlies reaching into their 20's. He also notes it is common for polar bears to hit 30. We know of a female griz tagged in the Cabinet Mountains a few years back that went beyond 31.

Eight years is old for a pronghorn antelope and researchers believe their short lifespan is due to increased rates of metabolism. Very few dear reach 10, and Byron said in some Eastern areas, 70 percent of the bucks shot by hunters were a year-and-a-half, with only 2 percent older than 5. Even without human hunters, "Life is chancy for a deer," with a 10-year-old being rare.

Elk commonly reach 15 and occasionally get into their 20's. He notes in bighorn sheep populations, "The best rams are 12 or more." Of the big dominant-type rams I have personally had a chance to study, their ages ranged from 8 to 10 years. Don't think I've seen any 16-year-old horns. Seventeen is about tops for bighorn males. My guess is, a very few get to be 20; however, one figure tells of female sheep hitting 24.

Dalrymple recalled bagging a cock pheasant estimated by its spurs to be possibly 12 years old… so tough "you couldn't shoot a hole in the gravy." Average life for a Chinese pheasant is three to five years, which is longer than native upland birds where 3 is an old timer. Wild turkeys can reach 12. A 7-year-old mallard is "exceptional." He mentioned a banded canvasback duck that was crowding 20. A Canadian goose with luck can have an old age of 15.

Because everything from owls to weasels eat rabbits, those prolific critters hardly ever top 3, and 90 percent die within a year of their birth. Coyotes, bobcats, foxes and raccoons can hit 10 years.

Byron doesn't mention mountain goats but I would guess they are similar to their comrades of high places, the bighorns. We photographed a huge old billy while climbing Bear Hat Mountain in the summer of 1992. He had nothing left of his horns except two large nubbins. Had to be very old. I'm guessing in his late teens. Even without the horns, I believe he lived into the next summer. (See his picture in our book, "Wondrous Wildlife.")

A thought for the week comes from American journalist Sydney J. Harris, "A cynic is not merely one who reads bitter lessons from the past; he is one who is prematurely disappointed in the future."