s/v Cilantro: Hunting Borrego, Steinbeck-style, on Isla Carmen, Baja California Sur

In 1940, novelist John Steinbeck and biologist Ed Ricketts were invited on a bighorn sheep hunt at Puerto Escondido, south of Loreto on the Gulf coast of Baja California Sur. They were partway through their 4000-mile biological expedition along Baja and in the Sea of Cortez, and they agreed to join the hunt. Their hosts were three local men—a rancher, a schoolteacher, and a customs official. Two Indians led the group up a canyon in the nearby Sierra La Giganta, easily outpacing (on foot) the five men riding mules and a horse. While the Americans and Mexicans relaxed in camp, the Indians went out with a rifle to find bighorns (borrego cimarrón). They returned some hours later with a handful of droppings, which they carefully divvied up among the several parties. The gun had not been used, but it hardly seemed to bother anyone.

The glow of sunrise and a full moon setting on the Sierra La Giganta, BCS.
You can see the shadows of Steinbeck Canyon between the moon and the
left edge of the photo.

Steinbeck writes, “Our hosts…had taught us the best of all ways to go hunting, and we shall never use any other. We have, however, made one slight improvement on their method. We shall not take a gun, thereby obviating the last remote possibility of having the hunt cluttered up with game. We have never understood why men mount the heads of animals and hang them up to look down on their conquerors….For ourselves, we have mounted in a small hardwood plaque one perfect borrego dropping. And where another man can say, ‘There was an animal, but because I am greater than he, he is dead and I am alive, and there is his head to prove it,’ we can say, ‘There was an animal, and for all we know there still is and here is the proof of it. He was very healthy when we last heard of him’” (The Log from the Sea of Cortez, pp. 137–8).

We did not get to the now-famous Steinbeck Canyon outside Puerto Escondido on either of our Baja Sur trips. We did, however, visit Isla Carmen just offshore, and in March 2016, we conducted our own bighorn search, Steinbeck-style, on the island. At 37,000 acres, Isla Carmen is the largest island in the Parque Nacional Bahía de Loreto, but it is privately owned, with a healthy (imported?) herd of borrego cimarrón that are managed for hunting. Two rams and a ewe had been sighted on a ridgetop from the anchorage before we arrived, so we knew we had a chance.

Map showing Isla Carmen (center) off the Gulf
coast of Baja California Sur.

Anchorage at Puerto Ballandra, Isla Carmen, BCS.

We took a scrambling hike over ridgetops and following diffuse dirt trails. We hiked the dry, gravelly, desert interior of the island. We found flowering brittlebush, ocotillo, agave, cholla cactus, and palo blanco trees. We found intriguing rocky canyons and high points with views of the sea.