Credit cards were being hit for Arizona deer and sheep, and my family had six of us who had applied for sheep on two separate cards. After a hit for $1,800 showed up on one of the cards, there was a buzz of excitement around the house for several days while we speculated on who the lucky hunter would be. Most of us thought it would be my dad since he had almost 20 points and I only had 6. After what seemed like weeks, we were finally able to look on the Arizona Portal. One by one, we opened portals and each time someone was disappointed that they didn’t draw. I became more hopeful that I would be going sheep hunting. When it came to my turn, we couldn’t access the portal. Once we got into it, I had zero information and zero points for any species. My dad checked his portal and was unsuccessful for sheep, so we were pretty sure it was me who had drawn the tag, but we couldn’t verify it. Finally, we found out I had drawn a unit that none of us had even heard of.
After the initial shock of drawing a sheep tag in Arizona had worn off, we reached out to Chad Roberts, who is a good family friend. We told him the unit I had drawn and asked if he knew anything about it. Chad told us not to worry about it as he would help us find a ram. Knowing Chad and what kind of hunter he is, we decided to do exactly as he told us and not worry about it.
The hunt started December 1st, but we decided that due to my school schedule and my dad and Chad’s work schedules that we would wait until around December 21st to start the hunt. That would allow most of the other hunters to take rams and allow enough time for the rams to return to normal activity by the time we arrived to hunt.
The night we arrived for the hunt, Chad was up and had us a place to stay. It had been a long drive. The next morning, we climbed into Chad’s truck and headed out with his Polaris in tow. We were excited to get out into the desert and start hunting sheep. We went to several spots and glassed, but it was cold and windy with no sheep to be found. After a full day of glassing and covering good-looking sheep country, we had seen no sheep. We were still plenty optimistic, though, and loved the desert landscape and the unreal sunset that night.
Chad’s father came with us the next day to help glass. He was fun to hunt with and was full of jokes and good humor to keep me laughing and having a good time. He told us he’d never been on a sheep hunt that lasted more than one day, so I was pretty sure we were going to be killing a sheep in short order. We hunted hard and looked over a lot of sheep country. We finally found some ewes and a few young rams but still nothing that was very big. So much for the one-day sheep hunt! We laughed about it and made plans for the next day after another awesome sunset in the desert mountains.
It was December 23rd, and we were hoping to find a big ram today so we could get back home for Christmas Eve. We knew my mom would be happy to have us there for the family dinner and to do the normal Christmas Eve stuff. We started the day out in some new country we hadn’t see before and immediately found a ram. We watched it for a while before deciding it wasn’t very big. We moved deeper into the desert mountains and climbed several ridges to glass the red rocks and cactus-covered foothills. More sheep were spotted but nothing of any size still. As we neared the early afternoon, we were starting to get the feeling that we were going to have to drive all the way home for Christmas and then turn around and drive all the way back the next day and hunt the last five days of December to find a good ram.
We found a large cliff that ran for a few miles to the east, and we walked up on a ridge to glass it. After about an hour of glassing the cliffs, we found only feral donkeys and barren rocks with no sheep. We were sitting there glassing in the heat of the midday when I heard my dad say to Chad, “There’s a ram down in the cactus.”
I quickly looked in the direction they were looking but didn’t see what they were looking at until I realized they were looking much closer to us than I had thought. I found the ram in my spotting scope, and it looked plenty big enough for me. Chad and my dad talked for a few minutes, and they thought it was a good ram but that we could do better if we wanted to keep looking. I was thinking that the ram looked big to me. My dad had me come over closer and told me he thought it was a good ram but that we could come back after Christmas and hunt for a bigger one if I wanted. I knew right then and there that I wanted to shoot this ram, so I told him I wanted it and that I was going to hammer it.
I got the 6.5 x .284 ready to roll. When my dad said the yardage was 588 and the wind was 5 miles per hour due east, I dialed the turret to 588, held for windage, and let it rip. The ram was quartering slightly away from me, and the bullet hit right in the last rib and went up through the chest and into the front quarter. He went up the ridge, and I shot him again just before he fell over. We were pretty stoked about the ram, the shooting, and the fact that we were done before Christmas.
As we hiked over to the ram, a lot of thoughts went through my mind about what it was going to look like, where it was hit, and was it as big as I had thought. Chad’s dad, Buddy, got there first while we went back down the ridge to grab the backpacks. As we walked up to him sitting by the ram, I could tell by the smile on his face that the ram was big. I walked up to my ram and the first thing I noticed was how heavy it was and how good looking the hide and colors were on it. We spent the next hour taking photos and having a good time talking about the ram and the hunt we had enjoyed. We skinned it for a life-size mount, quartered up the meat, and hiked back out to the rig. It was a short hunt with some tougher days to start with, but we had a lot of fun with Chad and Buddy in their home country in the Arizona desert. It was a fun day and a great ending to a sheep hunt that most guys will never get a chance to experience.
We drove towards home and spent the night in Flagstaff so we could get the ram plugged the next morning at the Game and Fish office. The officer taped the ram at 168 7/8" gross. Regardless of the score, the ram was a beauty. I’m very thankful that my dad started me applying in Arizona when I was 10 years old and that I’ve been able to take two of the four sheep before I’m 18. It may be a lifetime before I ever draw a Rocky or figure out how to make enough money to do a Stone sheep hunt, but you can bet that I’m going to try!
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