A warning, these are my long, unedited, rambling thoughts after a hunt so that I won't forget anything. Feel free to scroll through and just look at the pictures.
A few years back I scouted out an area that looked to have some nice numbers of sheep but at the time didn't have a hunting partner ready to go up after them with me. After doing goat last year my regular buddy felt ready to do sheep but unfortunately ended up needing foot surgery and was unable to do either of our planned hunts this fall. I put out some feelers and eventually found two friends interested in going up with me. Both of them were new to hunting, but in good shape, tough, and willing to learn and one (Drew) had recently finished military service and had experience shooting. We did some shooting and hiking together to make sure they'd survive the trip then started planning.
The hunt area I selected is in central Alaska, in a unit available to residents via harvest tag with no draw requirements, although you are limited to harvesting rams with a minimum of a full curl on at least one horn. We all took a week off from work and planned for up to 8 days in the field, Saturday to Saturday. The trip ended up delayed a day due to some scheduling conflicts but this allowed us avoid a front moving through the hunt area that drove windspeeds up to 100mph on Saturday night so it ended up being for the best. For this hunt we started out from the car in the afternoon after driving north from Anchorage early in the morning and had a mild 2 mile hike in to a rocky braid plain at the base of the mountain with about a 600 foot elevation gain over the distance.
From here we passed through a narrow river channel for approximately 2/3 of a mile and 800 vertical feet, winding through dense willows and crossing the river repeatedly to avoid the worst of the snarls. Coming out of canyon we made it to flat bench at the toe of a subsidiary ridge and were able to make camp on level ground for the night. One of my new friends was lagging the last quarter mile so when we reached camp we went through his pack and were able to pull out and stash a significant amount of duplicate or unnecessary gear (including the optimistically included camp chair) and get his pack down by about 20 pounds, although that also meant leaving our backup rifle.
After a drizzly night we departed the following morning for a higher elevation campsite I had preselected along the edge of the highest lake in the group of mountains in a relatively protected swale at about 5650' of elevation. Climbing the last stretch up to the campsite we spotted a group of three young rams perched on rocks near the top of the bowl behind the lake but quickly lost track of them in the drifting clouds after confirming none of them were particularly close to being legal. We set camp here and quickly set about the job of scouting the area.
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We hiked up to the nearby ridgeline at about 6450' and glassed the mountain adjacent to ours where I had previously seen some larger rams, although this days efforts produced only a group of ewes and lambs and a ram with wide bases but only about 3/4 curl. Having come a long way that morning and not wanting to stress the legs and lungs of the new hunters so early in the trip we decided to call it a day here and return to camp.
I wasn't fully prepared for a three-man party so ended up bringing my ultralight backpacking tent and billetting the new guys in my trusty 2-man Hilleberg. This turned out to be quite relevant on this second night of the trip when I was rudely woken about 11pm by the weight of fresh, heavy, wet snow collapsing my poor featherweight tent while the 4-season held firmly nearby. Subsequent roustings to clear snow and pop the tent back up nearly every hour until 3 am meant that by the time morning rolled around I was not particularly rested.
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Fortunately the presence of the snow meant trickier spotting and party that was more than happy to nap while the snow melted back a ways. The afternoon was spent working our way up the steeper ridge (behind the tent in the earlier snow free picture) to view the other side of the adjacent mountain from the previous day before sidleing around the spires on the ridgetop and around to the path we had taken uphill the first time. We were able to relocate the three young rams from our hike in but didn't see any additional sheep.
Day four we decided it was time to start ranging further from camp so we got an early start and began working our way out along the spine of our little group of mountains. We stopped first at a triangular peak nearby at about 6750' whose three sides each fell away to a different valley giving us ample opportunities to glass the slopes and ridges as the cloud cover shifted with the mornings anabatic winds. An hour or so in this area produced sightings of several groups of ewes and lambs and a smattering of smaller rams but nothing that couldn't be ruled out as sub-legal from our vantage point. 32 sheep in total without a legal ram (but who's counting). Shifting a few points further out the ridgline, a group of six larger rams were revealed in a gap in the swirling fog, albeit across a sizable valley from our home ridge.
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A cursory examination through the spotting scope revealed significant headgear on each of them. Although we didn't quite have the clarity to make out the degree of curl from our vantage point a mile and a half distant. We dropped down a side ridge, glissading down to about the 5000' level around 1000 yards distant from our targets. A frustrating hour behind the lense later had eliminated five of the six from being legal (although at least 3 of them will be next year should they survive the winter). The last ram, dubbed #4 from his starting position regardless of where he wandered amongst the group, we fretted over for about half an hour before coming to the conclusion that he was likely about an inch short and that if we couldn't say definitely after that amount of time it wasn't safe to take the shot. A rain/snow/hail combination euphamistically dubbed "wintery mix" by my weather app began to fall, matching our mood as we trudged back up the 1500' towards a ridgeline that seemed somehow much further distant while traveling in the upward direction.
Our fifth day ushered in a change in the weather and with it, we hoped, our fortunes. We climbed back up towards our ridgeline from the previous day, passing quickly over the triple peak and continuing onward with a determination to see as much mountain as we could in hopes of rustling up some new, and potentially larger, rams. We spied many of the same groups from the previous day, usually within a few hundred yards of their previous locations but after reaching the end of the ridge had found no new sheep. We could still see the band of larger rams from the previous day, albeit split up and at a more oblique angle from our position further out the ridgeline. A group of two maybe five hundred feet above their previous perch (~5000'), another three a thousand feet higher and a quarter mile to the south (~6000') and three in a bowl further northeast around 5500'. If you've already noticed that 3+3+2 is more than the 6 we had seen previously, congratulations, that took you significantly less time than it took me. After glassing them each in sequence and (finally) realizing that we were finally seeing a few new rams we were able to eliminate 6 of the eight and identify our old friend #4 as one of the 3 high up the ridge to the south across the valley. One of new rams to the northeast however looked promising, if not a sure bet, and after a quick discussion about how the hell we were going to get the thing back over the ridge if we did manage to shoot one we began working our way towards him.
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We slid down the slope, first on scree, then down the remnants of an avalanche, moving to the side where the meltwater had hollowed the hardpacked snow into a continuous bridge of sorts. We hung to the left side of the bowl after crossing the valley floor to stay behind the ridges from the sheep as we approached, first switch-backing up some green alpine tundra clinging to one of the more stable slopes then scrambling up a short cliff face of broken rock onto the toe of the ridge forming the left side of the bowl.
View attachment 595631From here were separated from the sheep by only a large hill of broken rock formed from the remnants of repeated landslides spilling down from a valley to our left and as we crossed the crease between the ridge and hill we stumbled across the moss-encrusted skull of a decent sized ram, a sobering reminder of how difficult it is to eke out a living in the high alpine and survive long enough to be legally harvestable.
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Crawling towards the top of the hill we peeked over the summit and were finally able to get eyes (and more importantly glass) on the rams, resting resplendent in the sun as they chewed cud, from a more reasonable distance. Passing over the two smaller rams perched slightly lower on the slope I settled my scope on our target ram and within a few minutes he obligingly turned his head to reveal his left horn, turned perpendicular to us and making the perfect circle we'd been waiting all week to see. I excitedly whispered that he looked good to my compatriot and passed the spotting scope as I pulled out the rangefinder. 708 yards, too far in the gusty winds driving north across the bowl between us and the sheep.
After we'd all had a chance to glass him and agreed he was a legal target. We backed down the hill, staying low to stay out of line of sight. I may have been less than graceful creeping forwards up the hill but comparatively I was basically a ballerina. Going backwards I felt more like a heavily laden baby just learning to crawl.
We stashed packs on the hill out of sight and then made for another small ridge roughly 200 yards closer. Beyond this was all unstable scree and we had no hope of getting across that without making significant noise, so it was the small ridge or working backwards and up around the lip of the bowl, a maneuver we felt we didn't have sufficient time in the day (or energy) for. We belly crawled 100 yards across the rocky flats between our hill and the next ridge, exposed to view from the sheep and nervously eyeing them through binoculars every few meters to ensure they stayed calm. We had a brief scare when one of the smaller rams stood up briefly to graze but he showed no signs of spooking and quickly returned himself to his perch (and my heart from my throat back to my chest).
After completing the crossing we were able to stand up and scramble to the ridge, finally setting up at a much more reasonable 513 yards. Drew set up to my left with the spotting scope and I began taking wind and temperature reading to set up the shot. Wind gusting 3 to 8 mph from the right, the air heated to a moderate 54 degrees by the afternoon sun. We had plenty of time to prep, so everything got dialed on the scope as we prepared to take the shot.
View attachment 595731I was once again using a 7SS I assembled on a Defiance AnTi action with a Proof barrel shooting 155 gr Hammer bullets at 3160 fps over RL26. The sheep was quartering towards us laying on the slope and my shot hit him just forward of his left elbow, cutting a groove across his heart before exiting the ribs low and behind his right leg leaving a 3" hole. Our ram turned and ran approximately 40 yards uphill and away from us, at first keeping pace with the two smaller rams before collapsing among some boulders on the far side of the scree slope.
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There were fist bumps and hugs all around and then the real fun (read: hard work) began. We went back to where we had stashed packs and then began breaking the sheep down. A little over an hour and a half later, we were fully packed with every scrap of meat we could manage to extract (including my favorite, heart) and ready to begin our trek back. Unfortunately by this point it was 6pm and we would be racing against the sun to make it back onto at least a safe path to camp.
We picked our way back down the hill, stopping to refill water at the stream in the valley center before traversing at a long, slow incline down the righthand side of the valley towards our camp and the lowest pass over the ridgeline separating us from a night of well deserved (and hopefully dry) sleep. The distance went quickly over the side-hill traverse but we were left with another 1200 feet of elevation gain just to make the ridge and another 400 to get to the slopes above camp and this was a brutally slow slog. We switched headlamps on just before making the ridge and were in pitch black by the time we began to upwards the remaining distance towards camp. We had pre-selected a slope to drop down on the way back and luckily had an easy time making the controlled descent in the dark, first stashing the meat a short distance away then finally reaching camp around 0120.
We had intended to sleep in and recover but a solid mass of threateningly gray clouds in the morning convinced us that it might be better to clear the area before the rain decided to introduce itself. It took about 9.5 hours to work our way down and out to the road, although if you ask my friends I'm sure they'd tell you it was much longer. We hit the route almost perfectly to avoid the densest brush and soggy ground aside from one brief detour where we were lured into following an old trap-line, still mostly packed out by animals despite not being cleared of fallen trees in recent years, that abruptly terminated at a muskeg pond that was a much more significant impediment to us than it would be to a trapper passing through in the dead of winter.
As we had wrapped up the hunt a touch ahead of schedule, we had a day to spend processing, grinding, and sealing the meat and enjoying some well-earned cuts of tenderloin, and a day to rest on our own and recuperate before having to reintegrate with modern society on Monday.
