Alaska now makes Dall sheep hunters pass a perfect-score test

Starting this season, every hunter after a full-curl Dall ram in Alaska's general harvest-ticket hunts must pass a 20-question online quiz — with a perfect score — before hunting. Miss one, and you can't legally go. The bar is that high for a reason the announcement barely mentions: Alaska's sheep are in trouble.

State wildlife managers say Dall numbers have fallen 40 to 70 percent across much of Alaska since their highs around 2010, hammered by a run of brutal winters that killed off lambs. Harvests followed them down; the 2021 statewide take of 474 rams was the lowest on record. The decline shows up on national-park land as much as on hunted ground — which tells biologists the weather, not hunting, is driving it.

That's what makes the preventable losses matter. ADF&G data show about 5 to 6 percent of harvested rams in recent years were sublegal — young rams killed by hunters who misjudged the curl. On a healthy herd that's a rounding error; on a depleted one, it's rams that should have been left to breed. So rather than cut seasons further, the state is making hunters prove they can tell a legal ram from an illegal one before they shoot.

And the line is exact: a full-curl horn is one whose tip has grown a full 360 degrees, or both horns are broomed off, or the ram is at least eight years old. The test is a one-time, lifetime requirement — resident and nonresident, guided and unguided, youth and adult, all held to the same standard.