'They're Idaho horns': The cowboys, hunters and conservationists behind Lewiston's bighorn collection

LEWISTON - The dozens of bighorn sheep skulls displayed in the Jack O'Connor Hunting Heritage and Education Center tell a story of hunting, smuggling, recovery and research that spans 147 years from the rugged remoteness of the Salmon River country to the trophy room of a New Hampshire mansion.

The collection's owner, Doug Boggan, just wants to keep the skulls together - in Idaho.

"We could sell one or two horns for a lot of money, but that isn't the reason they're here," Boggan said.

High rollers in the bighorn sheep market would drop $20,000 on just one skull from this collection, retired Idaho Fish and Game biologist Jim White said. While Idaho's roughly 100 annual bighorn tags are typically distributed through a lottery system, hunters have spent more than $300,000 for tags in special auctions.

Boggan, 75, has been running cattle from Riggins, Idaho, most of his life. In a cowboy hat and jeans fastened with a Western belt buckle, Boggan recounted the time he first learned of the collection.

It was 1988, about the same time he met curator John "Johnny" Carrey, who Boggan considered his "idol." Born in 1914 on the South Fork of the Salmon River, Carrey ran sheep and cattle and was known for storytelling and wisdom. Once, on Carrey's advice, Boggan ran cattle four extra days after Carrey shared concerns about crossing a "nasty" spot up a mountain.

"His memory of every rock and every tree on the Salmon River was amazing," Boggan said. "Man alive, you know. My wife would accuse me of going down there - I was managing many of the ranches - and I go down there and visit with Johnny for a couple hours once or twice a week. She said, 'How can you stand there and just talk for two hours?' I said, 'Well, Johnny don't shut up.' But there'll be a five -minute thing there that's more than you'll ever learn from anybody else."

Carrey shot only one bighorn sheep, but had accrued somewhere between 75 and 110 skulls by the time he was in his 70s. He found many on hunts that he guided, and others were gifted to him.

Carrey would carve some horns into belt buckles or spurs for friends and family. Boggan's late wife, Sharon, received the last buckle he fashioned before his 2002 death. Boggan keeps the small, horseshoe-decorated treasure safe wrapped in a handkerchief, now.

On the horns he kept whole, Carrey wrote the date, location and name of the person who brought it to him.

In the O'Connor center, one skull bears the name of Buckskin Bill, who was often called "one of the last mountain men" of the American West. He was born Sylvan Ambrose Hart and moved to the Five Mile Bar of the Salmon River in 1932 where he lived in central Idaho isolation until his death in 1980.

Keeping collection information tied to specimens has unique implications for research today, allowing scientists to take a glimpse into a past population's genetics and distribution. Though it is unclear if Carrey recorded such details for science, personal recollection or another reason, Boggan touts the action as evidence for Carrey being "ahead of his time."

After Boggan's initial meeting with Carrey in 1988, Boggan's boss, New Hampshire businessman Robert "Bob" Senter approached Carrey about buying his ranch. Senter would later want the horns too, which Carrey had kept in his attic.

The two struck a deal. Carrey agreed to sell him about 40 of the bighorn skulls from the collection for $10,000. There had been thieves breaking into Carrey's ranch and making off with some of the skulls, Boggan said. A plaque in the O'Connor center also attributes the sale to Carrey lacking the space to keep them.

Senter, who owned and operated a ranch in Riggins, promptly had the horns hauled, illegally, to Las Vegas, where they were boxed and shipped, also illegally, to his home in Plaistow, New Hampshire. Senter was an avid, worldwide hunter and had a trophy room on the East Coast, but the collection stayed sealed in those shipping boxes over the decades.

"I used to be a guide," Boggan said. "So I'd have long horseback rides, and they'd never left my mind - getting them back.

"Horns do not belong on the East Coast. They're Idaho horns."

In 2014, Boggan approached an aging Senter about the collection that had weighed heavy on his heart for decades. He knew that once Senter died, the heads would never return to Idaho.

"They'd get split up, you know," he said. "Nobody else would ever take care of these things."

Senter had already given away a couple from the collection he had, but after a bit of haggling, he agreed to sell Boggan the remaining 38 for around $2,000. Senter died in 2017.

"So I get on the phone - and my wife at this time is not real impressed with me, because we're trying to pay for a ranch and that's tough enough," Boggan said. "But anyway, we got them. Now we got to get them shipped."

Boggan called his longtime friend down in California - Randy Orzalli - and asked to borrow a few thousand dollars. A former science teacher, Orzalli said he immediately saw the research potential of the collection - something that could "never be replicated."

"Hell, I would have given him the money I thought it was that important" Orzalli said. "Doug's vision to keep the collection together and available for science was exactly the right vision."

And so the skulls were shipped back to Idaho after their two and a half decades away. It was when they arrived at Boggan's house that his son-in-law mentioned that it can be a felony under the Lacey Act to ship a bighorn skull across state lines.

"And so I take them and put them in a storage shed," Boggan said. "And the next phone call is to Scott."

Scott Olds is a now-retired Idaho lawyer. His first thought during the call with Boggan was that he had "violated all kinds of laws."

"I was like, 'Oh my God, you're too old to go to prison,'" Olds recalled. "So I called George Fischer. He's the local Fish and Game guy."

The specifics of what Fischer did to smooth things over are a part of the bighorn skull story that remains unclear. But fellow wildlife biologist Jim White remembers talking with Fischer about how there was no need to nail Boggan for bringing the skulls to "right where they were picked up." As Olds understood it, Fischer was able to secure a Fish and Game commissioner permit to allow the skulls to get retroactive permission to be shipped.

Fischer, who retired after 40 years with Fish and Game last month, said it has been so long he can't recall the specifics. He also doesn't recall getting the shipping issue smoothed over as being particularly difficult.

"That bighorn collection is truly one of Idaho's gems. A real historical marker of what we had before there was some big sheep die off," he said. "Equally as impressive are the Idaho gems Doug Boggan and his late wife Sharon."

What did have to happen as part of the collection's legalization was a mass pinning. Bighorn skulls are required in Idaho to display a silver or gold pin, drilled into the back of the horn.

Boggan and his family all came for the event, along with multiple Fish and Game biologists. White said that unboxing the heads was one of the top five days he ever had in his 34 years with the state department.

From there, Boggan and Orzalli began the hunt for a permanent storage location for the skulls. Currently, the Jack O'Connor center has agreed to display them for five years.

Luke Blewett, executive director of the center, said the collection fits well in the center: O'Connor's legacy hinges largely on conservation - especially bighorn - of which he was an avid hunter .

But Orzalli said he and Boggan worry for the future of the collection since Boggan doesn't want to pass the what-to-do-with problem to his kids.

For now the collection remains available for the public and science.

The horn fragments displaced in the pinning process were saved by Fish and Game. In April 2026, the department along with the University of Idaho published a study using the DNA from the fragments, finding evidence that populations of wild sheep today have different genetic compositions from those in the Carrey collection.

The study had been ongoing for nearly a decade, Idaho Fish and Game biologist Frances Cassirer said. It was the historical data "that hardly anybody has" on native sheep that really commanded the research be seen through, Cassirer said.

Boggan and Orzalli hope that the skulls can support finding a way to combat the livestock-borne diseases continuing to affect bighorn sheep populations across the country.

Carrey died in a nursing home without much fanfare, Boggan said, adding that such a "tremendous, tremendous man" deserves not just remembrance, but recognition.

"Part of this deal is the horns that need to be here," he said, "and Johnny Carrey needs to be memorialized. That's the big deal."

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