Old and heavy, that was what my wife and kids were starting to say about me. I was in no position to argue but needed additional motivation to do something about it. At 63, I took the challenge and changed a moose hunt I had booked with Big Time Hunts and Scott Mackenzie in northern British Columbia to a Stone sheep hunt. No horses or motorized vehicles, just my own firepower for a backpack hunt.
Training daily with a heavy pack, I shed 15 pounds climbing South Mountain in 100+ degree temperatures in Phoenix, Arizona. Jim Shockey calls backpack thin horn sheep hunts the most mentally and physically challenging of any hunt in the world. Hunters need to have the economic, physical, and mental toughness to pull it off. Only a small percentage of the hunting population can appreciate what is involved, much less the general population.
After arriving in the northland, a Beaver dropped my guide, Carlo Weise, a 28-year-old German, and me at an alpine lake in northern BC. We arrived to set up camp two days before the season opened on August 1st. We did final preparations at the lake and left at 4:30 a.m. the next day. We hiked over a mountain pass and scouted before we set up camp in a large valley below. We spotted several small rams, but I questioned why we paid much attention to them since I knew Carlo wanted to hunt a distant mountain over yet another mountain pass.
Climb we did on day one of the season over a second mountain pass. We stayed on top and glassed until a late afternoon thunder and rainstorm pushed us to base camp down the backside. Mid-morning, I found a bedded ram on Carlo's mountain two miles away, which Carlo confirmed with his spotting scope was a mature ram. In all, eight mature rams were milling about in a very accessible area for a day two stalk.
It was sunny and in the 80s when I arrived, but after the season started, it was windy and cold and rained daily for the next six days. In other words, it was typical sheep weather. I sunburned my face and lips, which irritated me the rest of the hunt.
On day two, we climbed 2,500 feet from base camp and searched the front and backside of Carlo's mountain but couldn't find the rams. A nice six-year-old ram popped out 400 yards below us and fed off. Carlo saw another young ram down the slope. The wind picked up as we hiked the two and a half hours back to camp. The wind blew hard all night and the next morning. Its intensity caused us to take the morning off and rest before climbing a ridge behind camp to glass. The band of rams skylined down the ridge from where we first saw them, so we planned another climb and assault on the mountain for day four.
We left at 6:30 a.m. and reached the mountaintop at 9:00 a.m. At 10:00 a.m., we found the rams way low on the backside of the mountain. The stalk began and didn't end until 4:45 p.m., even though the sheep were only 600 yards away when we initially found them. Despite the wind and a long distance shot, success brought me an “old and heavy” 14 1/2-year-old monarch. A brutal pack out ended when we collapsed back at base camp around 10 p.m.
After two days of packing over two mountain passes, we made it back to the lake. Weather kept us there for two more days until we could be picked up. By satellite phone, we got word that Allyn Ladd, another hunter with Big Time Hunts, and his guide, Jackson Hilton, took a ram with his bow on the first day. That ram completed Allyn's 29 North American animals with his bow, an archery Super Slam! My old ram reminded me of my NWT Dall that I harvested in 2010 that was 12 1/2 years old and also “old and heavy.” The Stone sheep was the oldest ram that Scott, the outfitter, had taken in his area.
Next up is the Rocky to complete my slam. I may not have to endure the unpredictable weather, a heavy pack, freeze-dried food, climbing over boulder fields and through spruce thickets and moose bog and over mountain passes, and pushing myself to my physical and mental limits, but then it wouldn't be a sheep hunt. I can't wait!
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