00:00.00 archpodnet Go to. 00:01.64 alan Welcome everybody to the archeology podcast network the rock art podcast episode 97 who getting close to the millennium. The hundred dollar Mark so today. We have. Ah we're graced. We're blessed to have Carlos Gallinger who's been on our program a couple times before and he's going to talk to us about big horn sheep rock art and about habits and habitats. Of those sheep you don't want to miss this gang should I get started now. Chris. 00:48.34 archpodnet I didn't yeah I didn't know you were doing the intro. We used to do that last? So just keep going. 00:52.40 alan Okay, just keep going so Carlos you're here with us aren't you. You're back again. Third times a charm third times a charm. 01:01.94 carlos gallinger I'm back again I'm back in. Oh yeah, yeah, and just going to take off and take a journey through rock art and have a good time. 01:11.27 alan Fantastic, well Carlos Gallinger we we met a few years back and I was very impressed with you because you're a unique individual I call you a a freelance wildlife biologist that studies the desert bighorn sheep but you're. You're also ah, more importantly, a ah, a guide a hunting guide and you're a researcher as well. So let's do a snapshot of how you got involved with all of those various entanglements go ahead. Carlos. 01:46.37 carlos gallinger Well, it's been many years I started in the newberry mountains in the 1979 when I discovered there were bighorn sheep there and it was just amazed that they could survive and 1 thing led to another. I got involved in conservation of course being a hunting guide. Um I've worked with other people other scholastics working on all sorts of different stuff including Dna and distribution and. So forth and it's just been 1 thing after another. But I've tried to keep a perspective on a traditional hunting hunting gatherer point of view on both the environment and human bighorn sheep interaction and I think that's what. Got me. Um, so excited about your knowledge because it was also in that same vein. 02:49.42 alan So I think what you're telling me Carlos is you've you've tried to look or view bighorned sheep and bighorn sheep habits and habitats through the eyes of a a native american in in pre-contact society ah living. Hundreds and even thousands of years ago in how they interacted with the sheep what they believed about the sheep and how they hunted and procured the animals am I correct. 03:14.94 carlos gallinger Yeah, and the the newberries was a good training ground because there once was a lot of sheep and the time I started walking the newberries. There was only like 2025 and had been for a century or more and so some of the game trails were. Kind of melting away but you could still learn from them. You could find hunting camps with with chips and mattotdies and blinds and petroglyphs and all this stuff that hadn't been used um for a long time but there was native hunters. Um. Used it right up into the 1920 s um, but then of course with technology and all those things that happened that was quickly washed away and it was a remnant and then you started going I started going into other mountain ranges and in. Cross comparing what was there and what was not there and it just started building a narrative of of how these people interacted and lived with bighorn sheep and it was a really fascinating and and in-depth ah process. It was not something. Simple they they had a very complex very intimate understanding of the desert bighorn sheep. 04:34.10 alan So The desert bighorn sheep is an animal that's rather to some people unusual rather impressive What what hooked you about bighorn sheep. Specifically what is it about those animals that sort of. You know so gave you this obsession or this connection this is conscious focus on understanding them. What what drove that curiosity. 05:02.93 carlos gallinger Well initially I wanted to learn how to hunt deer but living in Barstow. There's not much for deer hunting and discovering the population of sheep in the newberries gave me kind of an avenue to kind of learn and there was really this was course. Free internet so there was no um information like we have today and as I walked and learned and found bedding sites and what springs they used and didn't use it for a long time was still a mystery as to how. They could possibly survive but slowly I began to see the patterns and the patterns kind of laid in in in campsites and glyph sites and stuff like that and even stuff that was in the glyphs while you can't read it like hieroglyphics you can still tell a sheep or an ade attle. And things like that and you started to just a picture began to emerge where these people really understood the sheep I mean you would find ah hunting blinds on a crucial place in ah on a game trail. And once you understood the sheep and you understood that there was game trails going into the water and other ones a propensity to use leaving the water and why and all this other stuff which had to do with their biomechanics had to use. Ah, how much they use water and when. 06:31.90 carlos gallinger And then of course I started getting into the understanding of minerals which was a huge um boon of of information that laid hidden from me really for decades and it took a long time for me to realize just how ah intense. The mineral situation was not only for the sheep. But even the human beings. Um, for instance. 06:55.20 alan So yeah, so get play paint us a picture about what what is a bighorn sheep What the desert bighorn sheep are by way of where they live what they eat how they live how big are they how small are they. What's what's give us. You know, kind of paint us a picture about what we know about these animals Animals. K. 07:15.12 carlos gallinger Well, there're that one time they were more numerous but they're they're not there only maybe like 7000 in California but there's room for much more. They run about. 07:26.38 alan Okay. 07:32.40 carlos gallinger Ah, big Ram runs about £200 and they are um, a lineage of animals that came from Eurasia maybe it's disputed 20 maybe twenty five thousand years ago and of course they were for some. 07:41.10 alan Um, okay. 07:45.82 alan Okay. 07:50.96 carlos gallinger Native Americans they were ah a major resource like the buffalo or the salmon for different cultures. The bighorn sheep was was the ah major resource and in cultural Generator. Ah for. Many Native American Tribes and regions. 08:15.12 alan So where did they live? What did they eat how often do they have to water. Um, how big, go ahead. Okay. 08:20.71 carlos gallinger Well, they eat almost any plant though there are plants that are poisonous and they they seem to know and stay away from them. They'll eat barrel cactus when when as a water source. Ah, they can eat cat claw and somehow get those leaves off without ripping themselves to pieces. There are plants. They don't eat choya there is they they got a wide range they can during the summer hunter in in the hotter. 08:39.26 alan Ah. 08:58.46 carlos gallinger Months they'll often drink every day but through the winter they can go three four months without drinking liquid water getting all the water they need from the plants they eat and so they they are very. very desert adapted species they're very desert adapt they're they're probably on par with the the kit Fox and the in the Jack rabbibbt as far as their adaptation to the desert. 09:28.90 alan How big a group they they live in in special groups or bands and where do they move and um, how can you find them and and how many what's What's the reproduction rate and how do they sustain themselves. 09:45.36 carlos gallinger They um, typically you won't see more than maybe 10 at a time although I've seen a group once that was as much as eighty and here about an I don't know 6 eight months ago I seen a group that was about thirty thirty five 09:49.80 alan Okay, Wow. Wow. 10:00.92 carlos gallinger Ah, but 3 and 4 is common. They they'll tend to break up into groups like that for most of the year the males and females are separate and then they come together for the rut and it all depends. On a lot of things as to where they are in their environment the weather the wind past weather events ah temperature all manner of things it it gets to be a complex more of an art than a science to know where they're at. 10:32.91 alan Where do they bed down where do they sleep. 10:38.19 carlos gallinger They'll so bed down and sleep almost anywhere but there is certain places that they prefer um, typical ah typical betting site is maybe just. 10 n or fifteen feet below a ridge in what's was got called a a bowl oftentimes where where maybe the head of a canyon The headwater is a canyon that has a certain topography and then it depends from there. 10:53.48 alan Are. 11:10.54 carlos gallinger Whether they're trying to get sun or whether they're trying to get out of the sun whether they're trying to get into the wind or out of the wind but a lot of times a person who understands sheep can just look at a ridge line and say well they're not going to be anywhere there and then turn right around say I'm going to look at these these places. These bowls over here because of the temperature the wind. Um the current you know greenery or or the condition of the plants and topography and and and understand the rain. 11:40.41 alan The topography right? The the land forms themselves. 11:48.30 carlos gallinger Like yesterday a week ago three weeks ago and even sometimes two years ago will influence where these sheep are at it's it's just something begin. It's an art and after you spend some time and of course the native americans. Weren't like me in the sense that they were learning it on their own. They had generational knowledge. So a grandfather would tell you know a grandson I hunted this ridge like this under these conditions and this and that and then his father would tell me you know this and this and your uncle did said this and so they would have. Ah, knowledge and this knowledge allowed them to be in the right place at the right time in many cases. Um, there are places in the newberries and the kadies and places like that. There were campsites that you could tell once you understand the herd even today where it was like a conveyor belt with water feed minerals and you could camp there for maybe 2 three months and expect every week or so a new group of sheep to come in. 12:57.98 alan Wow. 13:00.13 carlos gallinger Because they were coming for the different resources and if you understood where and why and what and understood the sheep you could pin it down to the what game trail they were going to come in on but that's the kind of knowledge that they had whereas modern people today. Um use optics they got. You know firearms with greater range. They got stuff like jeeps and stuff like that. So if you don't see them in one area. You just get in the jeep and go somewhere else whereas the ancient people didn't have a jeep they had to walk and not only did they have to walk. But. Killing a sheep ten miles away from your family really wasn't of any value you you had to do it in the right place at the right time and the clock was always ticking. You always had hunger and starvation was was was looking you in the face. So. These guys had to get it right? and when you start looking at the glyphs and their placement and some of these hunting blinds that still exist. You realize these guys they knew what they were doing they they had an intimate knowledge of the terrain. And the psychology of of the sheep. 14:16.88 alan So what is the ah predator- Prey relationship which animals might go after a bighorn sheep if there are any. 14:22.86 carlos gallinger Well the the mountain line is is the only one that's that's relevant today. Bobcats will take 1 once in a while but but I've I've seen interactions of of bobcats where the sheep either ignores them or runs them off. 14:28.50 alan Okay. 14:41.41 carlos gallinger And the same way with Coyotes again I've seen the fact that a coyote once you know it's a long story but he was is a young coyote and he got messing with a group of sheep and they stomped him to death you know and so they didn't take much to that. But in the past. 14:51.87 alan Wow. 14:59.18 carlos gallinger You would had wolves all through this country. This was wolf country and so for both the people because back then when the people didn't have firearms the mountain light itself knew that that humans were on the menu and that wolves certainly. 15:01.83 alan Um, okay, okay. 15:12.12 alan Um, right. 15:17.73 carlos gallinger People were on the menu and in that time people shared that with the sheep. The sheep was on the menu and even to this day. That's one of the things that we have changed dramatically. The sheep is the same they walk the same game trails. They go to the same water sources. They eat the same minerals and they're ah hunted twenty four seven of their entire life There's no vacation. There's no going to vegas there's no getting into some protected cage or nothing like that they have to worry. About predation their entire life. There's no ever ever. Not even a minute ah of relaxing if they relax they're liable to be a dead sheep and it it did. 16:05.21 alan Okay, we're gonna we're gonna stop that we'll stop there and pick up the the trail on the next segment. Thanks ah, thank you Carlos see on the flip flop gang. 16:10.85 carlos gallinger All right. 16:17.20 carlos gallinger Good.