It has been said that a Dall sheep hunt is the pinnacle of big game hunting in Alaska. Is that true? I don’t know. For a few years now I’ve been walking around in the country they inhabit and rubbing elbows with those in the know and I feel like I am beginning to understand where this notion comes from.








Dall sheep country can vary from place to place based on the mountain range they call home and the time of year. There are 8 mountain ranges that hold sheep in Alaska. For the most part the sheep zone is where green turns to gray and brown, and where the terrain goes from steep to steeper in the high alpine. Rugged peaks, glaciers, deep river valleys, soaring ridges and gnarly faces are all hallmarks of sheep country.



In my story last year about moose hunting I said that the easy part is getting a moose on the ground. With sheep hunting, I am not sure there is an easy part, it is all hard. To go after the king of the mountain you are going to pay, usually in more ways than one. Sheep hunts are long, arduous, often expensive, and most usually involve a significant element of danger.






Sheep hunting, in Alaska at least, is often a hybrid of mountaineering and hunting with a little bit of bushwacking, death defying aviation, and river navigation tossed in for good measure.

The animals themselves are extremely sharp and notoriously hard to get close to even in relatively benign terrain (where they are rarely found). It is a spot and stalk game for most and stalking usually involves many days, hours, miles on top of miles, and thousands upon thousands of feet of elevation gained and lost. The odds of success are relatively low, usually in the neighborhood of 25% statewide, much lower in some areas. Generally speaking you can’t drive a 4-wheeler to sheep country and you can’t land a plane near a kill site and so for most the name of the game is large loads in big packs and long walks for days at a time. Good old-fashioned blood sweat and tears style work.






Put all of these factors together and it becomes more clear why a successful sheep hunt could feel like the pinnacle of a hunting career. The harder something is to attain, typically the more value or meaning we assign to the achievement.

This fall I was finally able to set aside a few days to hunt sheep and here is the story of a week I spent in the hall of the mountain king.
























On the way to sheep country you often encounter other wildlife in the lower elevations.




























Gandalf: I am looking for someone to share an adventure that I an arranging, and it has been very difficult to find anyone.

Bilbo: I should think so in these parts. We are plain quiet folks and have no use for adventures. Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things, make you late for dinner. I can’t think what anyone sees in them.

Gandalf: You will have a tale or two to tell when you come back.

Bilbo: Can you promise I will come back?

Gandalf: No. And if you do, you will not be the same.




More to follow.

Tease!

This is gonna be good....

When my father was stationed at Elmendorf in the late 60's / early 70's, he was lucky enough to take a full curl and a 1/4". They were socked in by fog for the entire trip and never even got out of the tent to hunt. On the last morning just before their flight out, they awoke to sunshine and a small herd 300 yards outside of the tent. I still have the shoulder mount back in Colorado.

When looking for someone to share a sheep hunting adventure with it is well advised to pick your partner carefully. The reality of hunting out of a backpack in the mountains means at a minimum you will be sharing everything from gear and the daily work down to toothpaste, TP, and a tiny tent. Knowing your personal limitations, strengths, and weaknesses should go without saying but being fully confident in your partner is key to not only having a good time, it could also mean the difference between surviving and not if a turd happens to hit the oscillating wind machine far from help.

This particular adventure was quite a few years in the making. It wasn’t so much that I had a hard time finding someone to who was interested but rather I knew who I wanted to make this hunt happen with and it took us a while to line the stars up and hatch the plan.

I can’t imagine having had a better partner for this mission. Andy is as solid as they come and I was sincerely worried about being the weak link in the chain, primarily because I was. Andy is a certified assassin, fit as a fiddle, strong as an ox and the nicest damn guy I think I’ve ever met. In school his nickname was “the specimen” and he finished first in all pursuits both mental and physical. He’s endlessly optimistic and is an encyclopedia when it comes to hunting and Alaska. This would be the first sheep hunt either of us had been on. We had no expectations and sure didn’t plan on bringing home meat but rather were treating the trip as a learning opportunity where we would gather information and learn more about the animals and strategy with the hopes of continuing to fill in knowledge and experience to eventually “succeed” down the road. Expectation management is key and while our hopes were certainly much higher, we are both painfully aware of how slow the learning curve can be for these types of pursuits.

The planning started in earnest about a year ago when we made a short list of potential destinations. Our priorities revolved more around time and money in trying to pick a spot and develop a strategy. Neither of us have much of either (time or money) to throw around these days and we wanted to narrow the options down to one that would allow us to hike in instead of having to fly and allow us to cover a fair amount of ground in the 7 days we had to hunt.

Several options became one good one and soon enough it was time to launch. As my work and personal life usually dictate, I worked for a few weeks straight with barely a minute to breathe leading right up to the minute I tossed bags in the truck and headed south to rendezvous with Andy at the trailhead. Between the beginning of August and early October I spent two nights in my own bed. Summer tends to keep me on the move and as per the norm I did the duffle bag shuffle for most of the summer and lived in the dirt more often than not.

The vast majority of the sheep taken in the general season in Alaska get killed in the first week to ten days of the season. Being unable to get away for the opening day we were bringing up the rear so to speak and felt a little in the hole from the outset. The area we had planned to hunt is fairly accessible in the front-range at least and we knew that it would have been busy for the opening week. We had hoped that the first wave of hunters would be headed out by the time we headed in and that we’d have a bit of real estate to ourselves. Another component of our strategy was to try and hike farther, higher, and harder than the competition to get into some terrain that wouldn’t have been touched by others.



Two guys nuts-to-butt on one four wheeler doesn't exactly scream masculinity


We left the trailhead intending to drive a 4-wheeler as far as we could up a drainage and the set out with 8 days of food and fuel up the drainage and over a few passes into some more remote country.

My pack was feeling pretty healthy at the trailhead. I’d call it 65lbs pretty easily. I’d gone heavy on food, which I always do. There are a few things I don’t mind running out of, toilet paper for example, but I get pretty cranky without grub. The first few days would be a bitch no doubt about it with the majority of our elevation gain coming before we would have a chance to eat our packs lighter.

The ramble up the lower part of the creek drainage was pretty uneventful and we made good, quick progress. We popped out of the creek at one point to scout the route ahead and I had a seat to look around and eat something. Being quite a ways from what we thought would be prime real estate neither of us were in hunting mode really but were more intent on the commute. As I sat and starting digging through my snack bag I pickup up four white dots on a distant slope not far from where our route should eventually take us. I put the scope on them and sure enough, four sheep were crossing a bowl a few miles north of us and headed towards our drainage. Suddenly we were in the game and entirely unprepared for what to do next. Our mental model had been hike for a few days to get off the beaten path and then start climbing every peak, ridge, and high point in the area and let the glass do the walking from there. After a bit of head scratching it was obvious we had to have a closer look at these sheep. We were sheep hunting after all.




View from the commute



This scenario would play out a few times over the course of the next week. See sheep a long way off, get close enough to see if they have horns, get close enough to see if they are legal, make a call to go after them or give up based on size or circumstance.

Almost without exception the open season for sheep hunting is for rams that are either 1) full curl on at least 1 side, 2) have 8 growth rings (annuli) or ,3) have the tips of both horns broken. So that is what we were after here.

We dropped our gear and scrambled up the closest high point hoping for a better look. Through the scope I was fairly certain I could see horns but they were at least four miles away and so it was a little hard to tell. After some deliberation I was convinced they were rams and we took the bare essentials and went for a closer look.

The terrain leading across the flats and into the foothills was rolling and offered us decent cover, not that we were worried about getting busted from so far away, but still better to be cautious. A few miles and an hour or two later we were close enough to get a better look at horns and see if any might be pushing legal. Two of the four looked to be close so we had to keep going. Across the flats and now into steeper terrain our pace had slowed as we had to be much more careful about staying hidden from sight. We were still a mile or more from the sheep but had to pick our route carefully following micro drainages up a broad face using the ridges above or cover. The plan was to get even with the sheep and then work our way across a face that would put us at about 150 yards from them by our estimation.



The bachelor flock we got within 80 yards of on our first day



Another hour or two went by and we were almost into the position we were aiming for and we went into stealth mode, creeping and crawling and using micro features to conceal ourselves without having seen the animals for some time. We thought we had a good idea where they were bedded down but we had no idea if they had moved since we’d last seen them. Andy was in the lead as we poked our noses over a slight rise and there they were, four rams at about 80 yards. We had hoped to wind up just above them but we were exactly level with them on the slope. They busted us instantly but didn’t bolt. We got a good, long, hard look at them and one was super close to being legal but we couldn’t quite put him at full curl. He may have been but from our angle he looked like 7/8ths and neither of us wanted to cut it that close. We needed a sure thing and I had left my horn stretcher at home. We watched the rams and they watched us as they nervously gained elevation and worked their way into a rock band and into a position that they were fairly confident that they were safe in. Being that close to such proud creatures was inspiring.

We were pumped. Day one and we’d already put the sneak on a few rams and felt like we were in the game far sooner than we had anticipated. The elation was soon replaced remembering that we were five miles from our packs, which were still eight miles from where we had hoped to be at the end of the day and it was already early evening. We hightailed it off the side of the mountain back into the flats and tried to keep our tired legs moving at a quick pace back to our packs. An hour or two of effort had us back to our gear. We loaded up with far less enthusiasm for heavy burdens than we started the day with and retraced many of our steps back up the drainage towards the pass where we planned to cross into another valley the next day.




Back to our packs and headed towards where we had hoped to camp on night one



The going was straightforward but it still felt like work with good-sized loads. We humped as far as we could until our legs were done and made a hasty camp next to a small creek. Hot water in dry food made dinner and we were all but ready for the sack. As we were heating water, lounging on the moss and blueberry covered tundra a group of lambs and ewes crossed a ridge above us and started grazing in an open bowl high above. It was a magical sight in the pastel light of dusk.

Steelhead fishing has taught me that very often it pays to put in one last effort, one last cast, one last gear change, or to poke around one more bend in the river. After a long hard day, especially one that has been unproductive, it can be hard to maintain enthusiasm, but I have had that one last effort pay off so many times that I can’t ignore it.

With light fading fast we were more than ready to sack out but I suggested an quick stroll just up the hill above camp to get a look at our path for the morning and to get a slightly different perspective on a few of the angled valleys that fed into the one we were in. From the top of the knoll we had a decent view of the pass we would cross in the morning. Other than the lambs and ewes above camp we didn’t see any other signs of life and we were just about to head back when we both put our binos up for a quick scan of the terrain far beyond the pass. As we did we both spotted two white dots near the top of a prominent gray peak some 6-7 miles distant. Curious.

In my observations of them, quite often rams hang out in smaller bachelor flocks, two and threes are common, sometimes a few more. They almost always prefer a position or vantage point that is well above whatever lambs and ewes may be in the area. They bed high above their food source and venture down to feed when they are fairly comfortable and convinced that it is safe to do so. The position of these sheep, that there were just two of them, and that they seemed to have decent body mass all pointed to them being rams. You never know until you get close, but we had hope, which is a good thing to have when going to bed in sheep country.




Home sweet home



To be continued.

Alaska Dall sheep hunt & Co/g.

Looking forward to this one

As always with 'G, the journey is the best part. Thanks for taking us along once again....

Feeling like I am on my first hunt---- minus the tired legs, sore shoulders and minor hunger. Sometime take a few smile lessons from "the specimen"

Being a guy that loves the back country and being on top of it, I really appreciate your efforts, attention to details, and the story ahead.
Most of all I hope you find your way home to your own bed more frequently.
Now start typing.

My own bed is overrated. I've been closer to home for a few weeks now and am already bored out of my mind

This thing has already turned into a longer winded ramble that I had intended. The next installment or two will be somewhat poorly supported from a photo standpoint. Be warned.

Your words are every bit as great as the photo's! Can't wait.

“His name was Jeremiah Johnson, and they say he wanted to be a mountain man. The story goes that he was a man of proper wit and adventurous spirit, suited to the mountains. Nobody knows whereabouts he come from and don't seem to matter much. He was a young man and ghosty stories about the tall hills didn't scare him none.”



In pursuing the things I’ve have in life I’ve noticed a few patterns. The progression usually goes as follows; something piques my interest, I am captivated by it, I fail miserably for a while as I beat my head against suboptimal performance, I eventually realize some margin of success, I reach a plateau, and then I either lose interest or motivation, perhaps both. I think the underlying reason for this stems from the notion that perhaps it isn’t the thing I am after at all, but the process? I enjoy new things, new places, new challenges, overcoming hardships and accomplishing things I am uncertain if I am capable of. I don’t mean to measure success by tangible results or a certain “thing” having been attained either. For me asuccessful adventure is typically defined as one where:

1) I come home alive with all body parts intact,
2) I left the place in the same or better condition than when I found it
3) I learned something and became a better person
4) I had fun

Nothing ventured, nothing gained. So often we hear these clichés and we let them pass by without savoring the truth they have to offer. With greater investment comes greater reward. I am nearing the point in life where experience is starting to take the place of unbridled motivation and blind determination and I am not necessarily sure that is a good thing. The old man in me is more cautious and less likely to act on whims and instead defaults to making decisions based on my framework of past experiences which we all do of course. On one hand I like to say this is a net gain if I have developed sound judgment, but in reality I can’t escape the feeling that I am slowing down, getting soft, and losing strength in both body and mind. I think back to the many harrowing experiences and epics I’ve endured in the mountains and few things have taught me more than my close calls and “failures” that I was too naïve be scared of at the time.

What’s my point, you may be wondering at this junction in the ramble. For those that have suffered through my past trip reports you’ll know I can’t avoid philosophizing for at least a paragraph or two. In this case I will summarize with the following, this trip awakened something in me. Being the father of a 1.5 year old and functionally the sole income earner for our household has really limited my time and ability to engage in the things I love outside of work and family as of late. These days I am trying to make the most out of limited windows of opportunity and quite often the added stress makes the reward not worth the effort, or so it can feel. This trip was a spark, a push past a developing comfort zone back into an arena where I felt challenged, engaged, and alive more than just living for the first time in a while. It was so much more than just a grocery shopping trip and that is hard to put into words, photos can never tell that side of the story.




“It’s a life’s work to see yourself for what you really are and even then, you might be wrong. That is something I don’t want to be wrong about.”
-Cormac McCarthy in No Country for Old Men.





Back to the hunt.

We left our vantage point on the knoll above camp as the last of the light faded and made our way back to our tiny. We passed out as soon as our bags were zipped and slept like the dead.

We were anxious to get on the trail in the morning and got to it as sun rise hit the country but our packs kept us from moving too quickly. From the knoll we had spotted the two sheep from the night before we scanned the mountain top where we had seen them but it was barren. They had moved, which wasn’t unexpected. We trudged on, over the pass and into a glaciated valley with sweeping views of a larger river far below and a ripsaw of a ridge above us. Still many miles from the peak we’d seen the sheep on and still not knowing what they were, we had some decisions to make. Eventually we decided that before we descended from the hig pass we should drop our big packs and go light to poke around the micro terrain above us and then make a play at getting got the top of the peak we spotted the sheep on to see if they were still in the neighborhood. It seemed early in the trip to be devoting so much time to unknowns but at the same time we were fairly confident there were two rams somewhere across the valley and to borrow a concept from fishing, you shouldn’t leave sheep to find sheep.








The small drainage we were in climbed steeply and terminated at the toe of a pocket glacier above us. As we worked our way up the scree and talus, well above treeline at this point, we spooked a single ewe that was bedded down in gravel near a trickle of a creek coming off of the glacier. We hadn’t exposed ourselves to the entirety of the bowl above and chose a path behind a rock band to our right that kept us hidden from anything that may have been lingering in the small hanging valley. The only logical exit from the bowl was a notch in the ridge we had been paralleling and as it tapered out near its top we reached the bottle neck and peaked over the crest to see a dozen ewes and lambs making a hasty exit, no doubt alerted by the single ewe we had jumped below. They were at 40 yards and we locked eyes for a moment before they continued their escape onto a jagged precipice. We reclined and watched them scramble up the rocky, knife-edge ridge, the lambs dancing just as deftly as their veteran mothers. They weren’t running but rather confidently ambling along knowing that they were out of our reach, masters of their domain, fully confident in their position and distance from harm. They paused every dozen steps or so to survey the strange creatures looking back at them.

We continued on, dropping from the col we were at to cross an old terminal moraine before skirting a lake and gaining the lower flanks of the peak we that we had seen what we thought were rams on the night before. We started up a broad ridge that would lead in about 2500 feet to the top of the peak. The crest of this faint ridge was littered with sheep sign, beds, tracks, trails, and sheep shite was everywhere. The terrain dropped away on either side to the point where we couldn’t see it all and we paused at intervals to peak over the edge and see what lay below. Nothing materialized and we eventually topped out. From the top of the mountain there were three distinct ridges, the one we were on, one running due south, and the other running due north. We started down the southern ridge first, inspecting both sides as we went. We eventually reached a point where we had to decide to continue down this ridge which would likely involve several more hours of effort, or head back to the top to do a quick recon of the other ridges leaving the summit to see if the sheep were tucked somewhere just out of view higher up.

The ridge leading north was fairly narrow and we picked our way, slowly, quietly, along a small sheep trail just off the crest. We came to a small gendarme and wanted to get a peak around it before continuing. Andy was in the lead and started working from left to right around the rock formation as I did the same just uphill from him. I was in a slightly better position to slice the pie and as I eased around the rock trying to bite of small chunks of view as slowly as possible I picked up a white dot in a small saddle in the ridge far below. I froze and motioned to Andy to do the same. The rocks were blocking his view and he couldn’t see the sheep. I eased out a little farther and there was the second. This had to be our boys from the night before. They were 1000 yards off but I didn’t want to take any chances in spooking them so in slow motion keeping as much of me hidden as possible raised my binos and had a quick look. Rams. One was good sized. We had to get closer and put the big glass on them.

The next hour was agonizing as we crept down the ridge just off the crest being careful not to roll a single rock or make a sound. There was a stout breeze at our backs and we weren’t in danger of getting winded yet but we would be close to in-line with them by the time were in comfortable spotting and shooting range.

On our bellies now we crawled to the top of the ridge to get our first view of the sheep since we left the top. It was a sickening feeling to know they could have vacated the area as we crept along out of sight. To our relief they were still there and our position was good. With just heads and a scope above the ridgeline we put the glass on them and ranged then at about 250 yards. One was obviously too small. The other looked to be very close to full curl. From where we sat it also looked like he had at least one broken tip but from this distance it was extremely difficult to be certain. A wise hunter once told me that it is ideal to shoot a sheep that is legal by two standards in case you happen to misjudge one. After a closer look I was fairly confident that he wasn’t quite full curl, which is to be expected if a sheep is double broomed. I could see the close tip and it was clearly broken but the other was much harder to get a clean view of. I was fairly certain I could count eight growth rings as well, but that is a very inexact science and a dangerous basket to put all of your eggs in. We deliberated for what felt like an eternity. The rams were bedded down and didn’t seem to be going anywhere soon. They sat, ruminated, and continually scanned the terrain below them, never looking up. Danger comes from below or so they are trained.

We took turns looking through the scope and had all but given up not being able to see the far horn clearly enough to make the call when he finally turned and laid his head down looking straight towards us. His second tip was broken too, he was legal and it was time to make a play.

250 yards isn’t a long sheep shot by any means but we thought we could close a little more distance and up the odds of putting one on the money. The sheep were in a somewhat precarious position and in two or three short steps they could be in no-man’s-land on the side of the steep peak with no easy way to get to them even if we could find them again.

The plan was for me to cover them from this spot while Andy worked down the ridge to a lower vantage point from where he would take the shot assuming one presented. Andy left as I trained m crosshairs on the bedded ram and waited. The seconds passed like hours as I watched Andy crawl his way down the ridge in my peripheral vision while trying to keep my primary focus on the sheep. Suddenly for no reason, I hadn’t moved I swear, the larger ram, our target, locked eyes on me and stood up. I remained frozen and many agonizing minutes passed as the sheep stared me down, neither of us moving a muscle. Snot streamed down my face and my neck began to cramp from being frozen in the prone position. In my peripheral I saw Andy sliding up to the ridge but I could tell from my perspective above that it looked like his view was going to be obstructed at the point he had chosen to look over. Still not moving and watching the sheep watching me I saw Andy start to crawl back down, knowing that he couldn’t see them. He was close. As he moved the sheep busted him and looked away from me for a split second as they crouched to bolt. Their glance averted for a moment which presented a small window for a shot. I pulled the trigger.

He was off his feet instantly and struggled on the ground for a kick or two before standing back up. I launched another and he cratered back into his bed and didn’t move again. After so much calculation and observation the final events of the stalk all happened so quickly. I had to make a snap decision in matter of a second or two whether or not to take the shot and it is still hard to believe it call came together.

Andy I both stood from our respective perches on the ridge and pumped a victorious fist before scrambling down to our prize to pay respect and get to work. I really wanted Andy to shoot and my emotions were certainly mixed feeling elation at having a ram down but also a bit guilty for having to pull the trigger robbing Andy of that honor.
















We had done it. The king had fallen and we felt blessed beyond belief to the point that words were hard to find, so we settled for a big ole man hug.

I’ll hurry through the events of the next two days for the sake of, uh…brevity?

We boned out the meat and loaded up our day packs to cover the 5-6 miles back to our big packs where we would regroup and figure out what to do next. We rode the adrenaline high back to our gear and things got a lot harder from there. 50 pounds of meat and 30 pounds of head and horns had to get added to the 65 pounds of backpacks we had already. We stumbled, drunkenly at times back up and over the pass and camped at the site we had left that morning some 14 hours after having left.

I couldn’t be bothered with carrying my camera and/or using my camera on the stalk and so I don’t have a picture of him in one piece, which I regret. He was a beautiful sight and magnificent animal, as they all are.










You try smiling with 125lbs on your back.






Keeping stride with "the specimen" is no easy task





Casing the groceries back at camp








Sheep tenderloin in the frying pan, oh so sweet.





There is more to the story if you guys aren’t entirely bored yet.

Score. I just knew there would be a happy ending to this story. The build up was just too much to leave us empty handed.

Please continue!

We're off for our hunt in just a few hours. Whidbey Island Blacktails probably won't compete....

Crocs are the only way to fly when getting out of your boots in or around camp is needed. They weight -.00001 lbs.
Moving forward I suggest a different stalking style next time.

Stand and run directly at the sheep.

Your pack will be lighter on the way out.

Jealous.

Congrats on another epic adventure and story.

And yes, please continue!

Crocs are awesome. Just the ticket when you need a camp shoe to let your boots and feet dry out but don't want to carry weight. Handy for crossing rivers/creeks as well when you want to keep your boots dry. They are also my alternate footwear of choice on longer float trips where I want to get out of my waders in the evenings and let things air out.

I suggest a color scheme other than camo. They are kinda hard to find when packing up in the morning after having lost them during a night of hearty drinking around the camp fire.

Re: stalking, you may jest but a tried and true strategy for getting close to Dalls is to don a white suit (tyvek is a popular favorite due to weight and packability) and walk right at them. Apparently they tend to stare like a deer in headlights, wondering what the hell it is they are seeing I suppose, and often let you get close enough for a shot you otherwise might not have had. We didn't test this theory, obviously, but I have heard it can work. Don't forget to doff your suit when you are done with the stalk. Wouldn't want another hunter to think the nuclear holocaust has arrived early.

Very well. There is more to the brand than just gimmick and good marketing. They make solid products and the workmanship is on par with the best out there. They have a pretty big line and not everything, to me at least, seems to fill a need. Lots of fluff. Softshell materials for example have sort of run their course and I don't see the niche or need that they once filled existing any more.

I have a pretty basic system going from base layer, to heavy weight layers, to shell layers then insulation. The stuff is light, packable, and for the most part durable. The biggest durability complaints I've heard are re: the shell layers and they offer several different "weights" of those from practically disposable to fairly rugged. The Stormfront is the most rugged shell layer and it is pretty bomb proof. Last fall I rolled my 4-wheeler and landed in a pile of dry, broken spruce bows while wearing the Stormfront jacket and pants and I expected them to be riddled with holes as a result. Not so much a leak.

All of that having been said, plenty of animals have been killed in Carharts and flannel and I wonder if this camo stuff is really worth the expense...

More story, I sure don't mind the philosophizing as That is why we are out there. Searching for meaning.

A long day of walking downhill found us back at the trailhead. I would talk about how crushing the packs were, our hamburgered hips, compressed spines, and deformed scapula, but I wouldn’t want to let on that I am getting soft. I am pretty sure I could have marched another mile or two with that load on top of the 12 or so we'd covered so far, but I was really, really glad I didn’t have to find out.




Packing up for the long march out.



Back at the trailhead we put meat and gear out to dry, unpacked and had a few celebratory beers. Dinner was again based around sheep tenderloin and we were still riding the high of success so early in the hunt. The lingering question however, was of course “what next.” With a handful of days left to hunt we’d be silly to head home so soon, though we really hadn’t considered trying for more than one sheep and we thought we’d be lucky to find that.



On one hand we were entirely satisfied and would go home happier than we thought we could be if we left now. It would almost feel greedy to try for another, let alone the possibility that a miserable failure on round two or a troublesome event could leave us with a bad taste (a best) when we could easily quit while we were ahead now.


Though these thoughts crossed our minds and came out in conversation, in reality there was never really a question. We were going back in.


There was however a problem. It started raining that evening and didn’t let up all night. We awoke to blown rivers and swollen creeks. All of the prime real estate involved stream crossings that were now functionally impossible and it was still raining. Not to mention the clouds were now on the deck and seeing the trail ahead was a challenge let alone being able to search for animals in the distance and high above. We were shut down.


Over the course of the next few days morale began to circle the drain a bit as the rivers continued to rise and rain continued to fall. We got a break on two consecutive days and took the opportunity to try and find an alternate drainage to explore that didn’t involve the water hazards. One of these days was a waste of time entirely where we wandered around in the bushes at lower elevation and never found a logical path above treeline and into sheep country.

The day after, we spotted a small flock of lambs and ewes at the top of a short but steep drainage only a few miles from the road and we hatched a plan for a long day trip up the valley and over a distant ridge with the hopes of finding something tucked away in some unseen nook or cranny.



“When you see someone putting on their big boots, you can be pretty certain that an adventure is going to happen.”
-Winnie the Pooh



We set out from the trailhead in steady rain. Our path basically lead directly up a steep cascading creek that we hopped back and forth across and clambered around in as we gained elevation sharply. Our destination was only a few miles away but would gain over 5,000 feet to the head of a hanging valley above.

Above treeline the travel eased as we were able to leave the creek behind and travel through open meadows. We started seeing sheep immediately. Through breaks in the clouds we found groups of lambs and ewes in practically every direction. Throughout the course of the day we would count over 60 sheep and we had the chance to study all of them without seeing so much as a sickle horn in the lot. All lambs and ewes.





The final scree slope leading to a ridge above the u-shaped valley was arduous, a bitch if you will. One step up and two steps back type terrain. We were in the clouds again and it was starting to snow. Having passed so many lambs and ewes along the way we thought there had to be some rams in the area, but where were they? Well above the green zone now and in the crags and rocks above we thought for sure we would pick one out atop some rocky prominence keeping overwatch of the flocks below, but nothing materialized.















We were soaked to the bone in a building snow storm and had seen everything we could on this mission so we retreated. The relatively small creek we bashed up earlier in the day had swollen and we essentially waded and scrambled it back to treeline and the flats beyond and back to the trailhead at dark. I would have probably been drier (definitely warmer) had I laid down in the creek. We got a fire going and were eventually able to wring and evaporate enough moisture our of our gear to keep us happy.










Another weather day had all but passed when the clouds broke and the rain subsided. We took a quick look at the major drainage we had traveled up at the outset and it was still puking mud and whole trees, small ones, but trees just the same. Things didn’t look good but in this country water is fast to rise and fast to drop. With clear skies above and cooling temps there was a chance it would drop to the point where we could cross it and get back into the high country that offered better prospects. We’d have to wait for morning to find out.




The trailhead was now part of the river...









Morning dawned clear and crisp and the river had dropped significantly. We packed hastily and with two days left to hunt planned to blast in as far as we could get, camp, and then hike every peak and ridge we could with light packs to see what we could see.

Crossing back and forth across the still high and muddy creek was tedious at best and the going was slow. Soon enough we reached the point where our route left the drainage and climbed to a high bench. Having learned a lesson from the last time through this front range country we stopped to glass before we planned to hurry towards the end of the trail and our intended route up and over the front range and into the high country beyond.

I saw sheep immediately, quite a few of them. What was more, there were rams. I don’t know what had transpired in the last few days of no hunting pressure, bad weather, and new snow, but the southern aspects of almost all of the peaks we could see had sheep on them. Small bands of lambs and ewes lower down with a ram or two above in each case. We had three strong possibilities in front of us but being so far away we couldn’t begin to tell which, if any, might be legal. We had to make a call, right, left, or straight ahead. Each option would take the whole day if not more if we were even able to get close enough in that time. We'd have to move quickly if we were to have a chance.

At the head of the drainage immediately in front of us I picked out a sheep that looked to be considerably larger than any of the others. I could tell he was a ram but couldn’t come close to judging horn size being 5+ miles away. We made a decision to go after him based on body size alone and had hoped that we weren’t passing up a better option somewhere else. We didn't have time to deliberate, we had to pick an objective and get after it with the clock ticking.

Again we dropped our big packs (camera included) and pared down the bare essentials and we set off as quickly as our still sore legs and wet booted feet could carry us. We were soon breathing hard and sweating in the crisp air and leaving real estate behind us at a satisfactory pace. We stopped at intervals to glass the three possibilities at a few intervals. Unfortunately the big bodied ram that we thought might be our best chance was the first to disappear behind terrain as we got closer. We were able to rule out the two other possibilities as we got closer and got really good looks at them through the scope, but still didn’t know if our plan A was close to legal or not. We would have no way of knowing until we were on top of him and too far committed to change our plan.




On the approach, plan A in the distance.


We forged on crossing two minor valleys each with streams that afforded a nice chance to refill water bottles, catch our breath, and charge uphill reinvigorated. We had come a long way and still had a long way to go with the biggest challenge yet to come. A long, steep, serrated ridge waited for us above. To get into position above the sheep we’d have to run the ridge for a half mile or more and it looked fairly heinous, maybe a show stopper. We wouldn’t know until we were there but it was our only shot. When you don’t have any other options, the choosing is easy.

Awesome story with pictures to match. Thanks for sharing.
More is always welcome.

I feel tired and wet.