A world record ram was found by a Missoula man on Flathead Lake's Wild Horse Island. According to Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks Public Information Officer Dillon Tabish, the skull and horns weigh a whopping 48 pounds.

"It's a pretty amazing sight to see," Tabish said. "It's not everyday you have a world record land here in Northwest Montana. We were alerted, actually, by an individual who was out there: his name was Bill Gamrad from Missoula. He had seen this ram and it was injured, so he notified us, and game wardens found the animal, but unfortunately it perished. It was about nine years old."

The ram died of natural causes and was found in 2016, but Tabish says the skull was in storage until just recently.

"We routinely patrol that island and make sure that those bighorn sheep skull and horns aren't just left around, because it's illegal to possess, but we don't want to leave any temptation out there for folks, so we routinely collect those," Tabis said. "This one sat in storage for about a year before we got it out and realized we had a world record on our hands... it shattered the previous world record by about 7 inches."

This new world record butts a Canadian ram from the top spot. That ram was found killed by a vehicle back in 2010. According to Tabish a herd of around 110 rams live on Wild Horse Island.

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