As I sat there feeling defeated, I kept thinking back to the words penned by legendary sheep hunter and writer Jack O’Connor in his 1960 book The Bighorn, “There is no halfway. After his first exposure, a man is either a sheep hunter or he isn’t. He either falls under the spell of sheep hunting and sheep country or he won’t be caught dead on another sheep mountain.” At this moment in the Chinati Mountains of Texas, I felt like I would never be caught dead on another sheep mountain.
In 2020, I started applying for hunts and accruing points across the West, but I soon realized this is a long process. With record numbers of applications for non-resident licenses, it was becoming hard to draw. I decided this wouldn’t work for me; I needed to hunt now! After research, I determined that an aoudad hunt in West Texas was the hunt I was looking for. I could quickly go hunt for a challenging, worthy trophy.
I arrived at camp on a Thursday and was met immediately with a decision. Monsoon-type rains had washed the road out, so I could leave my truck and ride the ATV to camp 20 miles into the ranch or I could try my truck’s ability. What I had thought would be no challenge proved to be an off-roading adventure. The roads had washed out in many places, and the usually dry creek beds ran with deep, muddy currents. Finally, we made it. I was at Sheep Camp.
The guide had me verify the zero on my rifle within minutes of arriving. I said 450 yards was the maximum distance I felt comfortable shooting at an animal, so we didn’t waste time with anything closer. He picked a rock on a distant hillside and said, “The rock in the middle is 440 yards. Shoot it.” Luckily, the rifle I had chosen was a dandy and we easily smashed the rock. That was the last easy thing we did for the next three days.
We scouted for an entire afternoon on day one and never saw a sheep. Being a newbie to glassing wide open country and big hillsides, I thought I was always seeing animals. Finally, my guide, Tayt, told me, “Sir, you’re going to have to see your first sheep before you’ll be able to see your first sheep.” I had no idea what I was looking at. Eventually, Tayt said we needed to climb to the top of the ridge behind us and investigate a spot he called Land Basin. It was a bowl feature surrounded by four peaks, the one we were climbing being the tallest of the group. There was 1,500 vertical feet to climb to the ridgetop. With much struggle, I finally reached the summit and found Tayt sitting behind his glass. The views were spectacular, and he told me he’d finally found sheep! These sheep were at least three miles away, and we’d never get to them before dark, so we put them to bed and made our way back to camp.
Day two was going to be great, and we could feel it when we woke up. Having put a big group to bed the previous night, we knew exactly where to go. We left before sunrise and drove the ATV back into the ranch where a flash flood met us. The storm rolled through the valley, and the intensity completely obscured the mountains. We donned our rain gear and waited. Finally, we made it to the glassing knob. Just like the night before, we spotted the sheep. Tayt grabbed his pack and told me to grab my things. We quickly covered three-quarters of a mile to a ring of rocks to glass again. At the top of the herd, we spotted what we were looking for – an old, rugged aoudad ram. The sheep were across the canyon on the opposite slope, so we crawled another 150 yards to the canyon’s edge and set up. After several minutes of back and forth looking at different sheep, Tayt and I were finally looking at the same one and ready to shoot. “Use this rock to rest, and don’t shoot until it’s perfect. We are 380 yards away,” Tayt told me. I waited until he presented a quartering to shot and squeezed the trigger.
“You got him! Reload, hurry! We need another bullet in him, just anywhere,” Tayt excitedly said. I worked the bolt on my rifle and shot again as the sheep headed up the mountain and heard the reassuring sound a bullet makes when it smacks muscle. Tayt had rewatched the Phone Skope footage numerous times and felt confident, but I wasn’t so sure. The first shot hadn’t felt great. We decided to hike across the canyon to where the ram had been. We descended and then regained 1,000 feet in elevation to get to where this ram was. We looked and scoured the mountain for hours but never found him, and we could only turn up one tiny spot of blood. Tired and out of water, we returned to camp.
We were joined that afternoon by the ranch manager, Levi. We climbed and searched everywhere, but there was no ram. I had climbed, hiked, and stumbled more miles that day than I had in years. “You can hunt another if you want. There’s just a small fee, but it’s up to you,” Levi said.
Feeling defeated, tired, and angry, I told them we should end this day and return to the camp. I wanted to rest and think about my options. After dinner, Tayt and I talked about the possibilities for the next day. “We can search every mountain for that sheep if you want, but I’d say he’s gone. We didn’t find enough blood for me to think he’s going to die,” Tayt said. I knew he was right. “Get your ram and go home. I’ll never come back,” I told myself as I fell asleep.
A storm knocked out the electricity that night, making breakfast non-existent. Tayt took us to some easy-to-hunt locations that morning. We scouted for hours but saw nothing before returning to the mountain from the previous day. “There they are again. Want to go after them or leave them alone and find something else?” asked Tayt. I sat for a few seconds before answering, “Let’s go get them.”
We stalked one and a half miles to the mountain and climbed the back of it. As we walked, I was muttering small prayers after the failures before. Looking into a saddle, Tayt ranged the sheep at 600 yards. Since I wasn’t comfortable shooting that far, we seemed stuck. Then fate intervened as two rams fighting caused the herd to spook and move up the mountain. We used this chance to move as well, getting to 380 yards away. I rested the gun on a shooting bag, found the ram in the scope, and waited on a perfect broadside shot. Finally, the ram was standing perfectly. I was steady and squeezed the trigger. The ram instantly dropped!
“I know we high-fived yesterday, and this ram hasn’t moved an inch in several minutes, but I’m not high-fiving or celebrating until we get our hands on him this time,” I told Tayt. We made a few jokes about wishing we would have found the same one from yesterday in this herd again, but we knew that possibility was virtually nil.
After enjoying the mountainside and letting the wave of emotions settle down, we set off around the mountain to get the ram. The shot had been 340 yards, but to get there, we had to climb the peak, cross a saddle, and then go up the opposing mountain. After half a mile and another 1,200 feet of elevation, I spotted the ram first. “Was it the right hip I hit yesterday on that follow-up shot?” I asked.
“Yes, sir, it was. Why do you ask?” Tayt replied.
“You will never believe it. This is the same ram!”
After three days of hunting, the highs and lows of emotion and elevation, it was finally over. We had come back to the mountain and found the same ram. After maneuvering him for a photoshoot, I finally let it sink in. It had sometimes felt impossible, but I was holding an ancient ram and had experienced the most extraordinary adventure I could imagine.
I can now understand what O’Connor meant in his writings about sheep hunting because I’ll never go back...until someone asks when we’re planning the next hunt.
Login