I met Shannon Hanson in Alaska in 2003. He immediately became one of my best friends, and we did a number of hunts together during our residency. Bighorn sheep have always been at the top of Shannon’s list. In 2011, he got to hunt them for the first time when a mutual friend drew a license. In 2015, I drew in the same unit and Shannon came down again. My ram hit the ground on day one, and just like that, my 30+ year endeavor was over.
By some miracle, lightning struck in North Dakota. Shannon defied the 0.4% odds and received an email from CPW with “Successful” next to his name. He’d been granted his wish in 2023, and it was for the same unit we’d hunted before.
Labor Day weekend finally arrived, and Shannon drove 15 1/2 hours straight through from Western North Dakota to Southern Colorado. Sunday morning, we organized our gear and headed for the high country. It would be just the two of us on the hunt as everyone else was unable to commit the time.
As we hiked in early that afternoon, I hoped to have the area to ourselves. Luckily, there were no camps at timberline, but there were a number of hikers visible on the trail. They trickled by us on their way out, and only one turned out to be a hunter scouting for ewes. Now we had the area to ourselves and situated camp for the night.
Glassing that evening didn’t reveal any sheep, so we headed in opposite directions on Monday morning. I climbed to the top of the highest peak before daylight and glassed until 10 a.m. before finally turning up a sheep and it was a ewe. Shannon didn’t see any, and Monday evening was more of the same.
There was no obvious direction to take on Tuesday morning when the season opened. We had scoured the basin around camp for a day and a half without seeing a ram, so we opted to head to an adjacent drainage. I had seen a trail from above that would take us there but had never been on it. An hour and a half before sunrise on Tuesday morning, we headed out to look for the trail. The east side of the drainage came into view first. A quick scan of the short alpine tundra didn’t reveal any sheep, so we continued around the point until more country opened up. We sat to glass a second time and immediately spotted three white rumps at the base of the cliffs in the center of the drainage. “Sheep!” We could tell they were rams and set the spotting scope up to get a better look. Two of the three rams were young, but the third one was obviously mature. The hunt was on!
The wind was blowing up the valley as the air started to warm, so Shannon wanted to approach from above. We made our way across the high alpine basin and then up we went. We crawled across the top to look down. The other side fell away vertically for several hundred feet through a series of jagged cliffs. There was no way to see the rams tucked below and absolutely no way to make an approach from above. Given our vantage point, it was safe to assume the rams would be unable to leave undetected. We decided the best option would be to wait them out and only disturb them if they didn’t show before evening.
As the hours crawled by, we took turns napping in the ants while the other kept watch. With the sun dropping fast, it was time to discuss our options. If we were going to push them out, I would need time to hike. Then “Ker-pow!” There in the bottom stood a ram with Shannon to my left aiming nearly straight down. I quickly focused my binoculars on the sheep. He was already on the ground! When I looked back at Shannon, he had his fist in the air.
As we approached the ram, I stood back so Shannon got to him first. This moment is what hunting is about, and he was taking it all in. This was exactly the ram he had dreamed about, and he couldn’t have been more excited.
It had been eight years since my own hunt, and I’m running out of friends who apply for sheep. I’m eligible to draw again, so who knows, maybe lightning will strike again in Southern Colorado. If it does, I’m sure Shannon would be in for another ram hunt.
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