He’s been gone for more than a decade, but many Wyomingites still fondly remember Bam-Bam, the peanut butter-loving, flower-devouring, car-ramming Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep ram that ruled Sinks Canyon in the late 2000s.
He was unusually friendly toward people, and he loved getting treats.
“He was a sucker for peanut butter,” said wildlife researcher Jack States, who lives in the Sinks Canyon area with his wife Diantha, a botanist.
Bam-Bam would frequently visit their house.
“He would walk right up our front sidewalk and stare through our screen door at us,” States said.
But as friendly as Bam-Bam was with people, the ram had it out for vehicles. He got the name Bam-Bam for his habit of ramming into cars and trucks.
“If he could see his own reflection in the vehicle’s paint, he’d respond to that,” Kent Schmidlin, who was the Wyoming Game and Fish Department’s regional wildlife supervisor at the time, told Cowboy State Daily.
“He would do what a bighorn ram does and ram into those vehicles, apparently going after his own reflection,” Schmidlin said.
“We’d go up and try to intervene at Sinks Canyon State Park, try to intervene in some of those antics,” he added.
Bam-Bam’s “peak years” in Sinks Canyon were from about 2007-2009, Schmidlin said.
‘One Day, There Was This Ram’
Sinks Canyon used to have a large bighorn herd, but it was all but wiped out by disease, States said.
Bighorn sheep are particularly susceptible to pneumonia, which remains a concern for herds in the Lander area.
In the years after the big die-off, a few bighorns started to trickle back into Sinks Canyon, States said.
“And one day there was this ram. His horns were almost a full curl and he was a very dominant ram,” States said. “And he became used to people.
“Unfortunately, the people would try to get too close to take photos and pet him. Some would even try to put their kids on his back, which of course is incredibly dangerous.”
Bighorns can be tolerant of humans, but Bam-Bam took it to a new level, Schmidlin said.
“He had a real attraction to people. He would walk right up to people, let them touch him and give him treats,” he said.
“It’s the only instance of that particular behavior I saw in a bighorn sheep during my career,” added Schmidlin, who retired in 2010.
Bam-Bam behaved typically toward others of his kind, however, States said.
“He protected his ewes,” he said. “He was kind of a dominant force in the area, and carried out his herd duties. But I think people were his recreation.”
Bam-Bam the bighorn sheep ram (in foreground) liked to butt heads with another ram, until that ram was killed by a mountain lion. Then Bam-Bam took to ramming cars in Sinks Canyon State Park near Lander. (Courtesy Jack and Diantha States) 
Bam-Bam, a bighorn sheep ram that lived in Sinks Canyon State Park near Lander, liked to visit the home of Jack and Diantha States and eat their flowers. (Courtesy Jack and Diantha States) 
Bam-Bam, a bighorn sheep ram that lived in Sinks Canyon State Park near Lander, is pictured here eating dirt. That’s a common practice among bighorns, to get mineral nutrients from the dirt. (Courtesy Jack and Diantha States)
Getting Into Trouble
Bam-Bam was mostly welcome, but he had his bad habits.
For a while, Bam-Bam kept company with another large bighorn ram, and the two were “sparring partners,” States said.
The two rams seemed to greatly enjoy their head-butting bouts.
“But then his sparring partner got killed by a mountain lion and Bam-Bam seemed lonely,” States said.
That didn’t last long, because Bam-Bam figured out that his own reflection in the paint of vehicles made for a good sparring partner.
And he also started overstepping his bounds during visits to the States’ house.
“His biggest mistake was he ate my wife’s flowers. And she really wanted to consult with the Game and Fish about this,” States said.
After he’d devoured one too many flowerbeds and head-butted one too many vehicles, wildlife agents tried moving Bam-Bam out of Sinks Canyon.
Catching Bam-Bam was easy.
“He just walked right up to us, and I grabbed him by the horns. Three or four of us just picked him up and set him in the horse trailer,” Schmidlin said.
They drove Bam-Bam to a remote parcel of private land and dropped him off, figuring that they’d seen the last of him.
But getting Bam-Bam to stay away on his own was impossible.
“He came back,” Schmidlin said. “The attraction of Sinks Canyon was too much for him.”
And Bam-Bam went right back to devouring people’s flowers and ramming their cars.
“If he wouldn’t have started damaging things, he might have been able to stay there (Sinks Canyon) for a good long while,” Schmidlin said.
Bam-Bam Gets Sent Away
As it was, Bam-Bam was moved again.
In 2009, he was taken all the way to the Game and Fish’s Tom Thorne/ Beth Williams Wildlife Research Center. That’s just off Wyoming Highway 34 in Sybille Canyon between Laramie and Wheatland.
The research center has high, stout fences that effectively contain bison, elk and moose.
But they couldn’t contain Bam-Bam. He escaped one day and started wandering right down the middle of Highway 34, perhaps trying to catch his bearings back to Sinks Canyon.
That was the end of Bam-Bam’s shenanigans, Schmidlin said.
The research center’s staff easily tempted him back inside with some treats. He quietly lived out the rest of his time there, dying of natural causes in 2013.
He was immortalized with a full-body taxidermy mount, which is on display in the Sinks Canyon State Park visitors center.
That means Wyomingites and tourists can still have some connection to Bam-Bam and his story, without having to take a trip to the auto body shop afterward.
“He was quite a character,” Schmidlin said.
