The European mouflon has a smooth hairy coat, the rams are fox red-brown in the summer, usually with a whitish saddle patch, the ewes are brownish.

As an animal whose ancestors used to live in open terrain above the tree line, the eyesight of the mouflon is well developed.

If mouflon are disturbed by a movement in their lateral field of vision, they turn their head toward the object, thereby locating it within the depth of the landscape.

Only then do they try to gain additional information by testing the wind and their sense of hearing, in order to assess the level of danger posed by the disturbance.

If the sound is made by another animal in the herd, the rest begin to take defensive action, but continue to wait for the reaction of the leader.

[6] Originally, European mouflon lived in open, mountainous terrain on stony, dry soils.

In unfavourable, humid soil conditions, it is easy for bowel diseases and foot rot to occur, which can be fatal.

The reintroduction of Eurasian lynx into the Harz Mountains of Germany, in combination with hard winters, has also led to a decline in the mouflon population there.

[8] Within the hunting community it was noted that the mouflon which were introduced in 1903 into the Göhrde State Forest was decimated by the return of the wolf and might eventually be extirpated.

The escape behaviour of European mouflon is adapted to their actual high mountain habitat: in case of danger, they flee to inaccessible rock faces.

It is unclear whether the European mouflon became largely extinct in Europe as a result of its habitats being cut off and through over-hunting between 3,000 and 4,000 years ago and survived only in Corsica and Sardinia, or whether it was only introduced into the Mediterranean basin in prehistoric times.

In fact, genetic evidence suggests that European mouflon came to Corsica and Sardinia only some 7,000 years ago along with Neolithic peoples, since no traces can be found from earlier times.

From the beginning of the 20th century, mouflon were introduced directly from Sardinia and Corsica as park and game animals in Germany.

In all cases, the mouflon favoured level or low-lying plains with forest cover and not, as expected, rocky, mountainous areas.

By early 2008, it fell again due to tourism, hunting and the newly released lynx leaving just over 30 mouflon in the area of the Geisskopf.

Today the largest numbers live in the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary and Austria and there are still large populations in Spain, Poland, France, Slovenia, Slovakia, Croatia, Bosnia Herzegovina, Serbia and Bulgaria.

The IUCN considers the European mouflon as feral populations of ancient domestic livestock, and therefore doesn't provide an assessment for the subspecies' conservation status.

[22] Mouflon have a well-developed vision and can recognize a human at a range of over 1,000 metres, unlike deer which rely mainly on smell.

In the 2015/16 hunting season the bag in Germany amounted to 8,000 mouflon (in 2010/11 there were 7,270), of which 3,000 were shot in Rhineland-Palatinate and Thuringia alone, 38% of the total cull.