Ryan: I had never heard of mouflons until I encountered some in the woods not far from my home while collecting mushrooms with my girlfriend and one of our colleagues. We had stopped in a shallow valley, which happened to have quite a lot of the edible mushrooms we were looking for. My girlfriend is very adept at mushrooming and was spotting them every few minutes in the kaleidoscopic mat of moss, fungi and rotting leaves below us. I was having less luck, only uncovering twigs that had probably been buried since last year.
It was at this point that we heard it. At first I assumed it was other hikers, though the sound seemed to be coming from over the hill which was not the designated hiking path. In the time that it took for me to stand up the sound had become faster, louder and all together not human. My companions had heard it too because like me they were frozen to the spot waiting for whatever it was to emerge.
When the three animals appeared on the hill, I flipped through my mental index of European fauna to work out what they were. Deer? No antlers. Wolves? These things coming toward us had horns. What do you do when something charges you? I had heard that you’re meant to throw things at bears if they approach. Just as collision seemed inevitable the three animals made a swift turn a disappeared up another mountain. My colleague muttered in a low voice they were mouflons. It didn&rsquo:t help that the word is principally the same in German, Czech and English.
After a little investigation I found that mouflons are the putative ancestors of domestic sheep. They are indigenous to various Mediterranean islands, where they are endangered but were introduced to the European mainland as part of a preservation campaign, or at least as far as I can ascertain. The small group we saw is fairly atypical because they tend to live in much larger groups of up to 30 animals. Given the proximity to towns it is understandable that the populations would be smaller. They mainly differ to domestic sheep in the absence of wool and possession of much larger curled horns.
For my friend who is a seasoned hiker the experience wasn&rsquo:t so special as there are many more in the High Tatra Mountains in Slovakia. But to many of my other friends this was a rare sighting, especially in this region of the country.