Bighorns in the Sandias?

Found this horn in Waterfall Canyon last weekend. It would have been a big animal!
Anyone ever see them before they went extinct?

"No available historic records document bighorn in the Sandia Mountains despite use of the foothills by Spaniards for grazing as early as the 1600's (Baisan and Swetnam 1995). However, it is possible that bighorn from the Manzano-Los Pinos population occupied the Sandias occasionally. Nine Rocky Mountain bighorn were transplanted to the Sandia Mountains in 1939-41 (Freeman 1959). ...The population was estimated to be greater than 100 in the early 1960's (Freeman 1961) and bighorn were trapped from this population between 1964 and 1966. However, the population began to decline in the mid-1970's (Donaldson 1978) and was considered extinct soon after the last recorded sighting in 1992. The causes of this extinction are unknown."
Full text here

What an awesome find!

Rocky Mountain bighorns aren't extinct, they just don't live in the Sandias anymore. Other climbers have found horns near the Needle; an area with some ideal terrain.

There is no reason an individual from the herd in the southern Manzanos couldn't wander up to the Sandias. Crossing I-40 would suck and the habitat in between the Sandias and their current range near Abo Canyon is not ideal, but it could happen.

Bighorns in the Sandias would be so cool.

Seems to me that RB has told me there used to be small herd here in the '60s.

I have found remains in the Ladrones, which are not all that far from the Manzanos. It does not seem unreasonable that they would wander through the Sandias occasionally.