Congrats on the sheep hunt. I spent 18 days scouting/hunting the South San Rafael. The first 14 days I only saw 6 ewes. So I was getting a little discouraged. But the last four days I saw 70 sheep and shot a 10 year old ram on November 1st. I passed on 5 other rams that day alone.
To respond to BB. I learned a lot about using glass while hunting for sheep. Hunting sheep is very different than hunting Elk or Deer. But the glassing skils one uses can be used for Elk/Deer.
With Sheep hunting, you need to sit down and stay in the same spot scanning the area for HOURS at a time. Sheep will bed down and are almost impossible to see. But once every two hours or so they will get up, turn around, move to another bed or start to feed. When they stand up they become visable. Usually because of the white rump or the movement. Where as Elk/Deer hunting I will spend 30 minutes glassing an area, if nothing is spotted I move along to another vantage point.
A couple of examples of this, On October 28th, we rode several ATV's into an area and started to scan the area for sheep. There where 3 of us and after about 10 minutes of glassing we spotted two ewes. One of which had just stood up and turned around bedded back down. Her movements are the only reason we spotted them. They were 400 yards away. We dilengently scanned them and the area around them looking for a ram. No ram, so we looked else where. Every so often I would look back and try and find those ewes. I knew where they were, but it was always a challenge to respot where they were laying. After about an hour we decided to move our ATVs to another vantage point. The new vantage point was only about 200 yards away from the ewes ( 1/2 the distance from were we first spotted them) Even after driving up to with in 200 yards of the ewes on ATV, Milling around setting up the spotting scopes, eating a sandwich and scanning the area, The ewes did not move and were very difficult to spot. Even on a open area. They really blend in and will stay bedded. Deer/Elk would be up and moving.
At another location we had been scanning the area for about an hour. Directly below us at the base of the cliff, a 5-6 year old ram got up and moved off. I took the picture with my camera ( he is at 436 yards) If it wasn't for his white butt you wouldn't even see him.
He stood and stared at us for about 15 minutes while we thought about shooting him or not. We set up two spotting scopes and really checked him out. But in the end I decided he was on the younger side of what I was looking for and I still had 10 days left in the hunt and was seeing lots of sheep by this time.
Sheep hunting involves spotting sheep at very long distances and stalking them after you spot them. Here is one of the vistas that we sat and scanned for many hours. We saw a lot of sheep off this vantage point. Many I have no idea of how to get close enough to shoot or retrieve after shooting.
We would glass the area close with Binos first. Then use the spotting scopes and set up a grid pattern that we would work across. One of the advantages of the spotting scopes or Big Eye binos, is that you set them up on a tripod and scan. This holds the glass steady and prevent eye strain. If you need to take your eyes away from the glass, you can return to where you were last looking. We were frequently looking at sheep 2-3-4 miles away. Using hand held binos at that distance is really hard on the eyes, because of the movement. You just can't hold them still enough. You will spend moer time looking away from the glass to rest your eyes, than looking through the binos.
After 14 days of not seeing sheep, my eyes finally started to see the shapes and colors of the sheep. I don't know how many I looked right past during the earlier days of my hunt. I'm sure many.
