Don’t Miss! Montana’s Monster: the Bighorn Brute!

Coming soon to a multiplex or streaming service near you.

When this story came up about a Vaughn MT rancher breeding larger bighorn sheep for hunting preserves, the humorous comparison to classic monster films just naturally followed.  Radio host Aaron Flint and I had a good laugh over it.

These animals have already been nicknamed Frankensheep and Sheepzilla, but maybe it needs its own unique moniker.

Last summer, the campy popcorn flick Cocaine Bear actually did better than expected in the box office.  With a budget of $35 million, the comedy horror made $90 million worldwide.  And the film was inspired by a true event of a bear that consumed a large dose of...well you know.

So if Cocaine Bear can make it on screen, why not...

The Montana Bighorn Brute

Like Frankenstein, this story has a mad scientist...well...alternative livestock rancher and amateur geneticist.  Like Dr. F, he obtains body parts for his work, and artificially inseminates an ewe to birth a ram.  His motivation in this case is for the money from large animal hunts.

And like Dr. F, his creation gets out of hand.

This horned beast eats all greenery, from windswept meadows to stripping evergreen trees and devouring huckleberry bushes.  In the wake of the devastation and defecation, this ungulate grows to enormous size.  It rustles through the evergreen countryside, moving and knocking over trees with ease.

The Brute discovers a state highway, where a semi blares towards it.  Thinking it a rival male, it rears up and slams its bony head into the truck cab, crushing it like a pop can.  First kill.  The trailer swings about and tips over, blocking the road.  An RV from Washington state, with a Biden 2024 bumper sticker, approaches from the other direction.  The three tourists inside gap in horror at the gigantic ram, before it repeats the charge, mangling the front half of the RV into the rear half.

The Brute has successfully defended its territory against two rivals.  It moves on.

Kill Count: 4

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Videos appear online of the creature haunting the countryside.  Hunters on social media swear they have just the gun to take it down.  A police helicopter tracks and locates the monster.

But before any efforts are taken to kill the Brute, environmental and animal rights activists protest that the Brute is a living thing that should be allowed to roam freely.  The activists obtain a Cease and Desist order from a federal judge.  They even set up road blocks on logging roads to prevent law enforcement and hunters from pursuing the creature.

The environmentalists are very pleased with themselves, when the Bighorn Brute rampages through and squashes one like a bug under a massive hoof.

Kill Count: 5

Yet surprisingly, this doesn't dissuade the activists at all.  They continue running interference.  "It's just doing its thing naturally," one insists.

Hunters are forced to hike and ride horses to access the wilderness.  The Brute learns that those wanting to harm it wear bright orange and pink, easy to see in all the green and brown.  Their puny guns only sting the creature.  The hunted becomes the hunter, and a fight for survival ensues.

Kill Count: 38

The last hope for all Montanans is to surround the monster with intentionally set wildfires and burn it to death.  The Brute charges through the flames, the air thick with the smell of charred wood and hair.  Desperate, it jumps into the southern end of Flathead Lake and is consumed by the waters.  The plunge sends waves hurdling into shore in all directions, tossing boats into buildings.

Kill Count: 55 with hundreds injured; estimated cost of the damage well over a billion.

The lake quiets with a muddy mess all around shore.  The Brute is seen no more...

...until the sequel.

One More Thing:

This is a copyrighted idea, heehee.  Like the song says, it's my story and I'm sticking to it.