The following is Part 1 of a two-part sheep hunt story from a trip in the Alaska range, fall of 2023. With two coveted draw permits in hand, my hunting partner and I went on an expedition style sheep hunt into a non-motorized unit in the Alaska interior. Here is that story:
Luck of the draw
My hunting partner Terry and I apply for a handful of permits as a ‘party’ each year in the Alaska big game draw. This means, if one of us is drawn in the lottery-style hunt drawing, then our applications are linked together and we both receive a permit. We have hunted together a lot over the years, but due to Terry’s commercial fishing schedule in the past, we had not been on a sheep hunt together. This year, however, with Terry no longer working in that industry, a sheep hunt was at the top of our list.
The draw results are available the third Friday of February each year. When I checked the results last year, I could hardly believe there was a ‘Yes’ next to DS203 – telling us we had drawn the permit. This is a non-motorized season in some of the best Dall Sheep country Alaska has to offer. With less than a 1% chance of being drawn, the odds were stacked against us, but somehow we got lucky. In Alaska, residents do not need a guide to hunt Dall sheep, so for us this was going to be a true DIY adventure.
Terry is also an Alaska resident, but was working a short gig as a kayak guide in the Florida Keys that winter. When he saw my missed call on that third Friday of February, he knew I had some good news to report. When he finally texted me back, I informed him we had drawn the sheep permit we applied for together – the non-motorized season in the Delta Controlled Use Area (DCUA). He was in disbelief, and every bit as excited as I expected him to be. This was a dream come true for us.
Into familiar territory
This was actually the second time I had drawn this particular tag. In 2020, my fiancé at the time (and my wife now), drew this permit on a party application. We hiked deep into the hunt area, and it turned out to be a lot more challenging than we had anticipated. After one week, we had hit our limit as a soon-to-be husband and wife team, and we decided it was best to pack out and head home.
Although we never had an opportunity at a ram on that first trip, it turned out to be a tremendous scouting trip. We did find what I believed to be a couple legal rams far off in the distance on our last day in sheep country. The image of those massive rams was etched into my mind, and on the 10 hour drive back to Homer I already knew that I had to go back. After getting back to Homer, we unloaded some gear and did a quick load of laundry. By early the next morning, I was headed back to Delta Junction by myself with a plan to spend the remainder of the season getting back to those rams.
To make a very long story short, I ended up taking a beautiful 11 year old double-broomed ram on that trip. To this day, it is still probably my proudest moment as an outdoorsman and hunter. It was truly special, and I knew the likelihood of ever drawing another permit for the DCUA would be very slim. Somehow, against the odds, I drew the same permit again and was planning another trip into the same area just three years later.
Fire Danger
Ever since Terry and I went on our first hunting trip together back in 2013, we have always applied for a handful of permits together as a party. Although it felt unlikely, we always dreamt about drawing a sheep tag like this together. Now as this dream had become a reality, we realized had a lot of planning and training to do – our dream sheep hunt was only 6 months away.
After a summer of shooting, hiking, and studying the Dall sheep legality pamphlet repeatedly, we were ready to get into the field and planned to start packing in on August 8th, two days before opening day on August 10th. Terry had some extra time and decided to head to the trailhead a week early, and do a short scouting trip prior to starting our trip. On his scouting trip, he managed to stash a bit of gear at about the 12-mile mark, just before to our first river crossing. He placed his stash, which included a PR-49 pack raft, a paddle, and some other miscellaneous camp gear in a tree about 100 yards from the edge of the river.
The Alaska interior was especially dry that summer and a lightning strike had started a wildfire about a mile from the trail system we planned to use to access our hunt area. When Terry initially stashed his raft, the fire was limited to a small area on a distant hillside. The total area burned was under 250 acres. Within a few days, that fire had grown to nearly 6000 acres, and according to the wildfire layer on OnX maps, was getting very close to Terry’s stash location. Although I also was planning to carry an identical packraft with me, two rafts would be necessary to get all our gear across the big river into the known hunt area that we had our minds set on accessing. We would also need both rafts if we were lucky and found two rams to pack out.
As our pack-in date neared, Terry’s reports from the trailhead in Delta Junction were not exactly promising. The smoke was much worse than it was just a couple days prior, and visibility was limited to less than a mile at the highway. The thick smoke made it difficult to breath, and the actively burning wildfire near his stash site was especially unnerving.
I left my home in Anchorage about 9:00 AM on the morning of August 8th and started the long drive North. I called Terry while I was on my way and his report was that there was still poor visibility in our valley and that it hadn’t rained a drop in the time he had been there. About an hour into our conversation, a steady soaking rain started falling but quickly stopped. A few more brief showers followed. We were optimistic that the conditions would improve, but both knew the visibility would likely be very challenging. We were going to stick to our plan regardless, but were hoping for some rain and some wind from a favorable direction to move the smoke out of our hunt area. As I got closer to the Alaska range, smoke from several other fires to the north became thick enough to limit visibility to under ½ mile. As I got closer to the parking area the visibility got even worse, and a strong campfire smell permeated the air.
Day 1: Packing in
When I made it to the trailhead, we didn’t want to waste any time and immediately started loading up our packs to head out. It was midafternoon when we finally had our gear packed and ready to head in. We got on our mountain bikes with our 85+ lb packs and started pedaling
Our plan was to ride bicycles for the majority of the first 10 miles. The first three miles were on a well-paved and level gravel road. As we pedaled down the road, we passed a few guys from the firefighting crew who were staging equipment to fight the quickly advancing fire. When they saw us coming on our bicycles with our giant packs and rifles, they just smiled, waved and gave a thumbs up as we slowly cruised by.
At the end of this nice gravel road, a confusing network of ATV trails winds its way through the swamp and spruce for about another 12 miles before ending at a large glacial river. We planned to stash the bicycles near where Terry had stored his raft along the river. The rapidly growing fire made us unsure if we would be able to make it that far on bikes – actually we were concerned we would make it at all. We remained optimistic, but at around mile 7 we ran straight into the actively burning wildfire.
As it turned out, the fire had already swept through most of the trail system, leaving a thick blanket of ash on the ground and the trees looking like burnt broom handles sticking out of the ground. We watched several trees fall over as we weaved through deadfalls trying to keep our feet on the hard-packed trail below the ash. After 3-4 miles of carrying bikes over deadfalls, we got the feeling that our bicycles would not be as useful as we had hoped, and we discussed options for stashing them somewhere. In some trail sections, there were 100+ downed trees in the span of 30 yards. It made for some very slow travel, and we fell well behind of our initial plan of making it to the river by dark.
As darkness set in around 11:00 pm that first night, we started looking for a suitable campsite. The farther we went into the trail system the less suitable anything looked for a campsite. Now walking in the dark, we continued to push and carry our bicycles over hundreds of downed trees and through patches actively burning trees. We were getting fatigued, and frustration had set in long ago. We knew we were getting close a large swamp that would likely give us a buffer from the active fire burning all around us. When we reached the swamp, we found a small pinnacle that sat above two small creek tributaries in the swamp bottom. In the darkness, it was easy to see the slowly burning flames that surrounded the swamp in all directions. Throughout the night, the sound of falling trees in the distance woke us up periodically.
Day 2
We were happy to wake up to a light rain shower falling on our tent. It didn’t last long, but it gave us some hope. Looking up the valley, the haze from the smoke was still thick, limiting visibility to less than one mile. At this point the only thing that would help us would be a strong wind off the glacier to move the smoke out of the valley. After breaking camp, we continued to push the bicycles through the middle of the swamp until we were both so tired and frustrated that we couldn’t push the bikes any farther. We decided to ditch the bicycles and tied them to a lone tree in the middle of the swamp.
We remained optimistic that the trail conditions would improve on the other side of the swamp. Unfortunately, the next section was probably the worst yet. Many recent deadfalls covered the trail, and the trees in this area were now much larger than in previous sections. In addition to the downed trees, many trees were leaning over at a 45-degree angle, some resting on other trees and looked like they could fall over at any moment. We made sure to communicate these hazards to each other as we moved through, and we made as little noise as possible while moving swiftly, being sure to stay on the outside of the leaning trees.
The deadfall mixed with standing thick alders made for very slow travel while we sluggishly picked our route. As we got closer to the stash tree, we were beginning to feel less optimistic about our gear’s condition.
Luckily, about 75 yards before arriving at the stash site we reached the edge of the burned area. After discussing amongst ourselves what a wildfire would do to a plastic raft for the last 12 miles, we had finally made it to within 25 yards of the stash and began trying to locate the tree it was left in. We were incredibly relieved to know the fire never made it to the raft. That feeling of relief quickly went away, however, when we realized the raft was no longer hanging in the tree it was left in.
As we approached, we saw that the stash bag was on the ground below the tree and torn badly. The raft paddle was sticking out, and we initially thought that a bear had messed with it. After closer examination we could see that the bag had just ripped, likely from the wind, causing it to fall from the tree. We gave the raft and gear a quick inspection and it seemed ok; we were once again relieved. There were a few scratches on the raft, but it didn’t appear that it would be a problem. After another short trip, now with all our gear once again in one place, we dropped our packs to rest and prepare for the river crossing.
After a day and a half of hiking through burned deadfall, we were relieved to finally make it to the river with hopes to be hiking into the sheep mountains the following day.
Our intended hunt area was the same area I found success in three years ago. To get there, we had to get to the opposite side of the river, and continue up river about another 8 miles. It wasn’t as straight forward as making a single river crossing, however, due to the winding nature of the glacial river. The river cuts into the steep mountainsides as it winds through the valley and requires crossing back-and-forth several times while advancing up the valley (or an even nastier bushwhack around the high cut banks would be required).
It’s important to be aware of the rapidly changing river conditions of a glacially fed river like this. In the sunshine on particularly sunny or warm days, the glacial melt causes the river to blow up and makes it swift and hazardous. Morning crossings tend to have less water and are less intimidating, but all crossings demand respect equally. The cold glacial water and the remote nature of our location make the river very unforgiving.
We began assembling our rafts for the first crossing. As Terry pumped his raft up, he realized that he was putting air in, and the raft was as flat as when he started – upon further examination, the fall that it took out of the tree had punctured at least 6 small holes in the tubes of his boat. We immediately dug into my repair kit and pulled out a large piece of Type B Tear Aid. We cut into several patches and covered all the punctures we could find. Luckily, it seemed to be holding air. After 30 minutes we were getting geared up and ready to cross the river.
I helped Terry get his raft into the current first. The fast-moving river required strong back-paddling to slow the speed of the boat and turn it toward the opposite shore. Crossing the river, unfortunately, also meant going a certain distance down river before finding a safe take-out spot, thus losing ground each time. I watched Terry navigate the silty brown water until he found a take-out spot on the other side. Fortunately, our patches on his raft held. When it was my turn, I double checked that my gear was secured properly to the boat, then kicked my raft out into the current. I followed Terry’s lead and quickly was on the opposite shore pulling my raft up onto the gravel bar.
After we crossed the main channel, there were several smaller braids to cross before we were able to continue upriver. To keep our hunting boots dry (and because we didn’t have space for actual wading boots), we slowly hobbled around in our stocking foot waders, being careful not to put holes in them while we drag the rafts 40-60 yards between braids. Once we crossed the final braid, we changed out of waders, put our boots back on, deflated the rafts and loaded the rafts back onto our packs.
We followed the river gravel for a couple more miles, then a high cut bank forced us to cross the river again. We stopped, reinflated the rafts, put the waders back on and crossed back to the other side. I found out later that Terry had put holes in the booties of his waders and was wet and uncomfortable the entire time.
While we worked our way farther up the river, we notice an encouraging shift in the wind direction. The wind was now coming from the glacier at the head of the valley, and shortly after the smokey haze began to lighten and visibility slowly began to improve. By about 8:30 pm that evening, we had our first clear views of the mountains surrounding us.
The river crossing process repeated itself again after a couple more miles, and just as the sun was setting, we made the final crossing. At this point, we were tired but thankful we made it through our last crossing of the day without any major issues. We setup a campsite on the gravel bar and began to organize our gear for the following day. We were only a couple miles from where we wanted to start our hike up into sheep country, and for now, the river crossings were behind us. Both exhausted, it didn’t take long to fall asleep that night.
Day 3
When our alarm went off that morning, we were both feeling sore and were slow to get out of our sleeping bags. At about 5:30 in the morning, we worked up the courage to put on our damp gear and began to consolidate camp. It was August 10th, opening day of sheep season, but we still had 2-3 miles of hiking along the river before we could begin hiking up into the drainage we wanted to hunt. At this point, we no longer needed our rafts for crossing the river, so we hauled them to the tree line, well away from the edge of the river, and stashed them in a tree.
With our packs each 20 pounds lighter, we started hiking. As the sun lit up the valley, we were pleased to see the visibility was still excellent. Looking back down river we could see the smoke from the ongoing wildfire as it continued burning. Luckily, it still appeared to be moving in the opposite direction. There were now nearly 10 miles between us and the fire we had crossed the day before. With conditions improving, morale remained high.
As we worked our way deeper into sheep country, we glassed in all directions from the valley floor and did not see a single sheep anywhere. I remained confident in our original plan, and believed the valley we were heading to was in fact a ‘ram valley’ – a place where I expected to find a few mature rams, but not large numbers of sheep in general. The trend for sheep numbers statewide at this time was generally low, which was confirmed by the area biologists for this area as well. We tried to not let this discourage us, and we set realistic expectations that finding a single legal ram on this trip would be a huge success.
On day 3, we still had not laid eyes on a sheep anywhere in the valley. We remained optimistic as we turned toward the mountains and started to climb.
We continued to work our way up the creek into our drainage. As we shifted our focus toward the mountains, I began to reflect on my previous trip into this valley three years ago. That trip was life-changing, and I never thought I’d see this valley again. It was a surreal feeling to be hiking into that place again.
Having been to this area before, I was able to follow my GPS and navigated to some of my old waypoints from years before. I marked the location where I left the creek’s bottom and began the climb up the steep ridge into the mountains. We stopped at this location for a while to refill our water bottles, dry some of our clothes out, took our boots off and prepared ourselves for the steep uphill climb. Now much heavier with packs due to adding water, we began the very steep climb into sheep country.
After a couple hours of hiking up the steep incline, we were once again starting to feel exhaustion set in. We were about halfway up the slope to where we wanted to setup our tent when we got our first real rain of the trip. It down-poured hard for 30 minutes or so, and while we were getting soaked, we both hoped it would continue as long as possible and help put the fire out. Over the next few hours of hiking, several more of these heavy downpours soaked us and the vegetation around us. Although the fire continued to smolder for our entire trip, from this point forward the smoke was no longer an issue for visibility.
Taking a break on our climb during a heavy downpour. Terry found a broken horn tip from a ram laying on the ground; we speculate if it’s possible it is one of the missing horn tips from my ram of three years ago.
We reached our camp location in the evening as another downpour began. The ridge had a series of high, semi-flat benches that worked their way toward the top of the mountain like a set of stairs. While the rain continued, we pitched our tent and put as much gear inside as possible to attempt to keep it dry. We hunkered down in the tent for a moment; after another 30-minute downpour the rain started to let up again. We loaded a couple light packs, grabbed the spotting scope and tripod and crept up to a nearby vantage point that gave us view of the valley behind our campsite.
We got excited when we saw three sheep-shaped dots high up on the mountain in the back of the valley – quickly the excitement disappeared when we realized they were just sheep-shaped snow patches. As we glanced over the bowl, it appeared there were no sheep in sight. We sat and glassed the mountain for a while, and finally we see a sheep on its feet on a rocky outcropping above a set of cliffs high above the valley floor. I get a closer look at the ram through the spotting scope and notice another ram bedded nearby. Although the rams were still over 1.5 miles away, I could tell these rams both had potential to be legal.
We discussed the excitement of the possibilities and continued to watch the rams as they would feed, then bed back down and they repeated this process a few different times over the course of the evening feeding window. At around 10:30 pm it was too dark to see the rams anymore, so we started back toward the tent and began making plans for the next day. The sheep were in an area that would make them almost impossible to stalk, but we decided we would need to get a lot closer the next day to determine if these sheep were in fact legal rams.
Day 4
We woke up to the heaviest sounding rain I had ever experienced while in a tent. We slowly gathered our gear together inside while we discussed some plans for the day, hoping the rain might let up a bit before venturing outside. We packed our sleeping pads, sleeping bags and ultralight tarp shelter just in case we had to spend a night away from camp. We took our extra food with us and found a hidden stash location 100 yards or so up the ridge and buried it under a pile of rocks in two separate stashes. In this same location where we stashed our food, there also happened to be a nice steady stream of water seeping from the mountain where we could resupply with water. Much of sheep country in this area is dry, so we were relieved to find such a reliable water source so close to our camp site.
We continued to climb the ridge and pass the location where we had seen the sheep from the previous evening. We quickly glance over the bowl from that location and do not see any of the rams from the night before. We decided to continue much farther into the drainage to see if we can get a better look at the bowl at the head of the drainage.
The terrain within the bowl is made up of a lot of country that can easily hide a sheep, so we are very careful to look over the terrain each time a vantage opportunity is presented. We followed the ridge until we reached a point where we had to start being very careful to stay out of sight. We discussed our options, and decided to take the more indirect route that involved dropping behind the ridge and walking parallel to the bowl in order to stay out of sight.
We side-hill for a mile or more, then see a vantage point that we believe will give us a better view of the area the sheep were in the day before. The skies were clear and visibility unlimited, which also meant the sheep could easily see us if we were careless.
We dropped our packs to crawl up to the top of the ridge. As we peered into the bowl on the other side, we saw a band of four rams near the same hillside where the rams were located the night before. I carefully setup the spotting scope and studied the sheep for a while. One of the rams was clearly legal – the large, dark-horned ram with tips going well past the bases (passes the stick test), looks to be full curl and was clearly the largest of the group.
Of the remaining three rams, there was another with very wide flared out horns that appears to pass the stick test as well – from this distance, it was impossible to tell if the remaining two were legal or not. I believed they were very close, and that made us very excited about the possibilities.
We carefully examined our possible stalk routes while we glass and watch these rams. Unfortunately, the location these rams were in made them nearly impossible to stalk without being seen (we talk about this being the reason they probably like that spot so much). We watched the rams for a couple of hours. During this time, they only move a few feet in either direction, remaining bedded most of the time and only standing to feed for a few minutes, then re-bedding again. They were completely relaxed as indicated by their body language so we continued to watch them from this location for a while.
As we sat and watched the rams, we notice the storm clouds beginning to build as they moved over the mountain peaks from the east. The dark clouds started moving in our direction and we felt a few drops of rain accompanied by lightning and very loud thunder indicating the strikes were very close to us.
From the looks of it, we were about to get hit with some very heavy rain. We moved off the top of the ridge about 60 yards and quickly set up my ultralight tarp and crawled under it. As we get situated under the tarp, the rain picked up substantially. We felt lucky to get the tarp setup in time to avoid being completely drenched – after a 20 minutes or so the rain subsided, but it was quickly replaced by hail. It started as small pea-sized pieces bouncing off the tarp, but quickly grew to nearly marble sized hail that fell fast enough to completely cover the ground around us. The hail storm didn’t last long, but when we crawled out from under the tarp we commented on how valuable the tarp was to our kit and how thankful we were to have it. The sky immediately opened up a bit, giving us a window in the weather to head back to our glassing post and watch the rams again.
We quickly relocated the four rams. They were now on their feet, but still high on the valley wall on the opposite side of the drainage. As the evening feeding window approached, they began feeding their way down from their perch high up on cliffs. They were steadily moving from left to right, then started dropping toward the drainage bottom.
We watched them as they moved between feeding, walking, and taking time to butt heads with each other and chase each other around. They are now moving quickly toward the valley floor and have covered a lot of ground at this point. We watch as they feed down low on the hillside and near the drainage at the head of the valley. They were approaching halfway around the bowl from where they started. As they continued to move around the bowl in our direction, the possibilities of a stalk began to improve. Although too late to begin a stalk that evening, we discuss some options for the next day.
Once the rams appeared to have settled into the spot that they would spend the night, we decided to make our way back to our tent. At around midnight, we were back in our sleeping bags planning the next day. With the rams now closer to what appeared to be stalk-able terrain and closer to our side of the drainage, we discussed a few approach scenarios that might work. Although still early in the hunt, we decided we would need to get a little more aggressive to put ourselves in position for success.
Day 5: A stalk from above the clouds
After getting some much needed rest, we woke up August 12th and began packing with the intent to spend a night under the ultralight tarp up on the mountain to stay close to the sheep. We set out that morning and travelled up the ridge, using the terrain to hide us just as we had the day before. Although the visibility was still quite good, we noticed the clouds had dropped and now covered the peaks of the mountains around us. As we moved up the ridge, we started to periodically disappear into the clouds. This was shaping up to be a very similar to the scenario that ultimately led to my success on my ram back in 2020 in this same valley.
Being hidden in the clouds would give us a great opportunity to move in closer to the rams undetected (if you can’t see the sheep, then they can’t see you). We attempted to locate the rams, but were unable to see the back wall of the bowl due to the dense fog, so we continued moving further up the ridge. We stopped again and glassed from several vantage points along the ridge as we work further toward the bowl. Finally, we briefly spot two of the rams along the back wall – they were very close to the same location they were last night. With the rolling fog banks there to give us cover, the rams were now in a place we could potentially make a play on them.
With dense fog hanging in our valley, we contemplated our next move and began to plan a stalk through the clouds.
Patches of clouds began working their way up the valley and would completely hide us for 20-30 minutes at a time. As the clouds lifted, we would drop to the ground to avoid being seen. Only after being completely certain there were no sheep looking at us, would we continue moving. Under the cover of the thick fog banks, we moved quickly past the location we had glassed the rams from the day before. By this time, the thermal started to move up the valley, and we were high enough above the bowl below that our scent was being carried into the valley behind us and not into the valley where the rams were.
We continued to use the ridge as cover and stayed behind it as much as possible. The somewhat gentle sloping terrain slowly turned into steep jagged rocks, and now the ridge top had become a sharp knife-ridge. While hidden in the clouds, we carefully positioned ourselves at a vantage point on top the ridge looking down into the bowl. The clouds now hung in the valley, giving only occasional glimpses to the back wall where we expected the rams to be. We searched through small holes in the clouds and caught several more glimpses of the rams, including the big dark-horned ram and the wide-horned ram from the day before. Although only getting a few occasional glimpses, this was enough information to plan our next move. With another thick bank of fog rolling in and the wind still generally in our favor, we decided to take the opportunity to drop into the otherwise wide-open bowl, using the fog to stay concealed.
The fog at this time was extremely thick, visibility limited to only 60 yards or less at times. We decided to take advantage of this and make our move. We worked our way as far up the ridge as we could until it turned to a steep, impassible rock slide at which there is no choice but to drop elevation and head straight toward the center of the bowl.
Using the fog as cover, we moved down the rockslide and descended toward the rams’ last known location. We moved as quietly as possible, but each step sent several large rocks falling down the slide toward the bottom of the bowl. The terrain was about as steep as we were comfortable on, and we moved swiftly but cautiously down toward the sheep. The fog would briefly lift as we descend the wide-open rockslide, revealing the rams still on their feet and feeding in the same location they were hours before.
We could now see that two of the rams, including the big one, were still well below us. The other two remained at about our same elevation and along the back wall of the bowl. They continued to feed completely unaware of our presence and we sat and watched them for a half hour or more. I carefully checked the range of the closest rams and they were still over 800 yards away. As we looked down the valley, we could see another bank of clouds moving our direction.
With a brief view of the terrain, we were able to plan a route to get us closer to the rams. We got ready and start moving again as the fog hid us from the sheep. We were aiming for a series of humps that stood alone in the center of the otherwise wide-open bowl. We moved as quickly as we could, but the rockslide was steep and each step needed to be well calculated. If we could drop just another 100 feet, we would be able to stay hidden long enough to get ourselves in position and within range of the closest rams. Unfortunately, the weather did not hold out quite long enough.
We once again dropped to the ground as the fog lifted out of the valley. This time, however, as we looked up the valley, we could see there were no more clouds coming. Reality set in that we were stranded on this open hillside with nowhere to hide. Terry was about 10 feet in front of me and I could see from his position that he was just as uncomfortable as I was. We both were sprawled out on the rockslide trying to stay as low-profile as possible.
We sat there motionless for quite a while as we watched the sheep feed down into the valley. The large dark-horned ram continued feeding lower and lower into the bottom of the drainage along with a smaller ram that I could now tell was sub-legal. As we watched the sheep feed, I very carefully pulled my spotting scope and tripod out of my pack so I could get a better view of the other two rams that were still up higher on the back wall of the bowl. I finally got them in view, and verified the larger of the two rams up high was the wide ram, and did in fact appear to be legal by passing the stick test. These two rams slowly moved along the back of the bowl and in our direction.
We sat patiently and still as we watched these four rams. We sat in this position for over 4 hours. As the two upper rams moved closer, I carefully ranged their distance. The wide ram had come as close as 398 yards, but Terry did not want to move for fear of spooking the sheep. It was also a very uncomfortable steep position and it would have been very difficult to get a good rest from that position. We passed on this very brief opportunity.
Unfortunately, the two upper rams caught our wind shortly after, which was still being carried up the valley by the afternoon thermals. The two rams spooked and made their way back up to the top of the ridge. We were disappointed that they winded us, but happy they didn’t leave the valley altogether. The big dark-horned ram and smaller ram in the center of the valley seemed unfazed and continued to feed into the center of the drainage below. They moved slightly closer, at a certain point, we thought we might end up with an opportunity. Unfortunatly, 550 yards was as close as the big ram got before it started getting dark. We realized at that time that we were in a bit of a predicament – spending the night on this rockslide was not an option for us, but any movement at this point was certain to spook those two ram in the center of the valley.
The only thing we could think to try at that point, was to get into our white suits and pretend to be a pair of sheep leaving the area. To our surprise, we were able to dig into our pack and get into our suits, then cover about 40 yards this way before the two rams paid any attention to us. Unfortunately, the steep terrain made it impossible to move in a manner even remotely resembling a couple of sheep. The rams caught on, and eventually spooked up the hillside and joined the other two rams high up on the ridge above.
Knowing we had blown this stalk opportunity, we walked quietly out of the valley and back toward our campsite. We were out of view of the rams before we said much of anything to each other. I knew we were both feeling the same way, but we hadn’t verbalized our disappointment at this point. These were the only 4 sheep we had seen so far on the trip. We felt the valley was now blown- out, meaning any sheep with a brain would just go up and over the cliffs to another valley and we would never see them again. Finding more sheep at this point in the hunt felt unlikely for some reason, but we both tried to stay positive. I suggested just pitching the tarp and spending the night just out of view of the rams in the bottom of the valley, but Terry insisted on continuing back up and over to the ridge to get out of the valley. I agreed, and this turned out to be the correct decision.
The wind started to pick up after the sun went down that evening. The wind hammered us while I attempted to set the tarp up, but I managed to put together a shelter that we could crawl into. After a few minutes trying to sleep under it and getting constantly whipped in the face by the tarp in the wind, I decided to reconfigure the tarp setup to make it sturdier. On the top of the ridge, there were very few places to get out of the wind from this direction. Our lightweight tarp shelter was exposed to gusts that were probably in the 35-45mph range. We set our sleeping pads directly on the ground. I placed the end of my sleeping bag and pad in a black contractor bag to keep moisture off my feet, and to protect the pad from getting torn from rocks below.
In a rush to set up our makeshift campsite, we hadn’t paid much attention to what exactly we were sleeping on. While I got out of the sleeping bag to fix our tarp, I had Terry lay on top of my sleeping pad and sleeping bag to keep them from blowing off the mountain in the wind. While on top of his pad, he slid over to my sleeping pad to get a leg on top of it, which resulted in a 5 inch gash in the bottom of his pad. When I finally got the tarp situated properly and crawled back under it, I attempted several times to patch the gash in his sleeping pad with repair materials from my emergency kit. In the end, the repair effort was not successful as many times as I tried, and his sleeping pad would not hold air for more than a few minutes before going flat.
Day 6: The Gift
I was fortunate and managed to get a few hours of sleep that night. Terry reported sleeping for only a few minutes. A stiff south wind continued to blow that morning while we packed up our sleeping pads and sleeping bags. When we finally get out and look around, we spotted a young ram on the ridge behind camp – a new sheep! A few moments later, I find an ewe a few hundred yards above him on the same ridge. It’s nice to know there are more sheep here than what we have seen so far, even if just a sub legal ram.
It appears these sheep moved onto our side of the ridge to escape the wind. We wonder what else the wind may have stirred-up that night. After securing our gear from the wind, Terry walks ahead and stalks up to the ridge top to look over into the valley the other rams were in the night before. I was surprised by his reaction—he spun around and was quick to tell me a ram was bedded just over the ridge from us! He tells me he doesn’t think it’s legal but wanted me to crawl up to the ridge top and take a look for myself. I crawled up to the ridge top and carefully setup my spotting scope to get a closer look at this ram.
I examined the ram closely for a few minutes with the spotting scope. Initially, he was sitting facing in our direction and I watched as he turned his head to his left, giving me a side-view of what I was almost positive was a perfect full-curl of his right horn. I was pretty sure, after viewing for a few minutes, that this was the wide-horned ram we had been watching for the last few days. I was not 100% confident he was legal on full curl, but I knew it was close. As I watched through the spotting scope, I finally saw an angle that made me quite confident he passed the stick test without question.
We decided to get closer to the sheep to be sure. We dropped back behind the ridge top and paralleled the valley for 100 yards or so. When we crept back up to the top of the ridge again, we carefully set the spotting scope up on the tripod to get a good look at the ram from a different angle. The ram was about 500 yards away at that point, and still outside of Terry’s comfortable shooting range. Through the spotting scope, I again saw what I believed was a full curl horn from the side. When the ram turned to face us again, I could see the sheep was incredibly wide and one horn appeared to clearly pass the stick test, again confirming my belief that he was a legal ram.
We dropped back behind the ridge and move a little closer to the sheep and setup again. This time, we range the ram at 342 yards. I spent a lot of time examining him through the spotting scope and Terry took a turn giving him a good look. It is almost certainly the same wide ram we had been seeing for the last couple days – the second biggest of the group of four. Terry and I discuss and come to the same conclusion – the ram is legal. He decided he was going to shoot the ram. With plenty of time to setup a perfect shot, he double checked his ballistics and setup on the ram while I setup to watch his impact through the spotting scope. While we set ourselves up for the shot, the ram stood up from his bed, turned 180 degrees to face in the opposite direction, then bedded down again.
This situation was about as perfect as it could get. After bedding down again, the ram appeared to be nodding off to sleep as Terry looked at me to inform me he was going to shoot, then pulled the trigger. The shot was a perfect hit, and the ram barely moved after the shot. We were both somewhat in shock of what had just happened. After the challenging events of the previous couple days, this ram truly felt like a gift to us and it could not have worked out any better.
We let that moment soak in for a little while. As we looked around the drainage, I pointed out to Terry the exact spot I had taken my 11.5 year old ram just three years prior –we were only 500 yards away and the spot was in clear view from Terry’s ram’s final resting place. Years prior, I had nicknamed this area ‘Ram Valley’, since I had mostly seen only rams in this area on my previous trip into this area (very creative, I know). Being able to bring Terry here a few years later was something I only dreamed about. It was incredible to be a part of this first sheep experience, and although I would never say I ‘guided’ anyone, to lead him to this valley and be a part of this success for him was truly special. I had put some hard-earned miles in that previous trip, climbing many sheepless mountains and finding unpassable terrain to arrive on this location. Now, we were enjoying the benefits of my “scouting trip” three years later.
We approached the downed sheep, and after counting rings on the ram, we determined he was only 7 years old but clearly legal based on the ‘stick test’. The ram also appeared to be full curl on his right side. Afterward, Terry disclosed he remained nervous about the sheep’s legality until the ram was sealed at the Fish and Game office several days later.
After plenty of photos, we agreed that while Terry broke down the sheep into quarters I would head up the valley and investigate the bowl we hunted the day before. Considering this ram had moved into this location due to the strong winds the night before, we felt confident I may find the other three rams just over the next ridge doing the same thing.
I carefully stalked up the drainage a bit further, slowly working around each finger and peeking over each ridge as new country was exposed. I finally made it far enough to have the entire bowl in view. To my surprise, I didn’t see any sheep at all. I sat and glassed the drainage for over an hour and didn’t find a single sheep. Disappointed, I start to head back down to meet up with Terry in time for it to start getting dark. Mixed emotions ran through my mind on that hike down. I was ecstatic for Terry and his first ram, but in the back of my mind I knew the trip was over. I felt we had blown the valley out and the large dark-horned ram, the only other surely legal sheep we had seen, had left the valley for good.
When I got back to Terry, the ram was nearly completely butchered with only the skull to remoe out when return. I helped him cape out the ram and we split the load of the ram between our two packs. We hiked down to the drainage in the bottom of the valley where we took some time to clean the blood off the cape and refill our water bottles. By about 10:00 pm, we were heading down the mountain back toward our campsite with heavy packs. We arrived with the ram about 11:30 pm that evening.
We set up the ultralight tarp to create a safe place to stash the meat. Under the tarp, we laid the meat out on rocks to ensure it cooled quickly. With two of us to carry the sheep back to camp, we were able to leave all the meat on the quarters, and Terry’s plan was to bone the meat out the following day while I went back up on the mountain for one last chance to find a ram. With the meat setup to cool for the evening, Terry cut up some pieces of the heart, liver, and the inner loins. We cooked them in rendered sheep fat in our backpacking stove and ate as much as we could. Maybe it was just a matter of the circumstances surrounding the occasion, but the organ meats were the best tasting I ever had.
It was an amazing feeling to have a ram down. As we celebrated our success that evening, we began to discuss what the remainder of the hunt was looking like. Considering this was day six of our hunt, we knew we had our work cut out for us to get this ram out of here and back to the vehicle within our 10 day time frame (I had obligations to get back to, Terry probably would have stayed another week if he had to). We decided that the next day would be our last day in sheep country, and I would head out alone for one last chance to fill my tag. Although we both felt the chances were thin of locating another legal sheep at this point based on what we had seen on the mountain the past few days, I was looking forward to one last look at the mountain. After much laughter and recounting the days events, we finally passed out in the tent around 2:00am.
With one sheep down, we knew we had our work cut out for us and we needed to think about starting our pack out to make it out on time. We agreed on spending one final day in the mountains to give me one last chance to find a ram while Terry processed his meat. The remainder of this story will be in ‘Part 2’, please check back soon as I hope to have this posted in the near future.
Part 2 now available here
One extreme hunt and great attention to details! I am as exhausted just reading it! Persistence paid off. Can’t wait for part two!!
Great story, buddy! You need a subscribe button for when the next one comes out.
Thanks! I hope to figure out the subscribe button soon… it’s not as easy to do as I was hoping.
Very well written. Couldn’t stop reading.
Thank you, glad you enjoyed it!
Very well written! I am thrilled that you have created a platform to share your vast experience, experiences, and knowledge!
I am honored and ecstatic to have been allowed to experience this ( a trip of multiple lifetimes ) with you (thank you , truly ) and now to read it in detail brings me great joy and leaves me longing for the next post! Thank you for this !
Thanks Terry! It was certainly quite an adventure. I hope to have the rest of the story posted soon!
[…] For ‘Part 1’, click here […]
Well written story Alex.
Mark Roz
Thank you!