One Wednesday evening, my dad, Cory, missed a phone call. It was a normal night in New Mexico as our family was busy doing our small group Bible study with some other families. Then, he missed a call from the same phone number again and again! When he reached a moment where he had some free time, he snuck off and called them back. He had won a fully-guided Dall sheep hunt in Alaska through a raffle. He had been applying for sheep hunts in New Mexico for decades but had finally decided that he needed to try other states and options if he ever wanted a chance to get a ram.
Fast forward to August 8, 2021. After a summer of training and preparing, my dad was on a plane headed to Alaska. My uncle, Willie, was going along for the adventure. After a long day of flights and delays, he arrived in Anchorage and started collecting his luggage. He quickly found out that the airline had lost his rifle. Standing at the baggage counter hours later, with the clock approaching midnight, my dad struck up a conversation with another sheep hunter waiting for a lost rifle. This guy just happened to be from the family who owns the Express UU Bar Ranch, one of the top elk hunting locations in all of America. Sometimes you meet other hunters in the least likely places, and you never know when a new friendship will show up.
Getting in later than planned, their chances of flying into base camp that day were gone. The next day, the sun struggled to peek through thick fog and rain as my dad and uncle waited in the hotel room for a call from the bush plane pilot. Finally, they got a call that the weather would open up enough to fly. After touching down on a remote gravel landing strip, they worked out final details to hit the hills. Then, my dad and uncle took turns flying out to their spike camp in the Super Cub to meet their guide, Jordan. A few hours remained for them to scout, but they couldn’t find any sheep in the several drainages near camp, so they had a quick dinner and tucked into their sleeping bags.
On day one, they hiked in a large basin above camp and spotted some sheep. From about 900 yards, they could see that the group was five rams. Dad and the other two kept repositioning all day, but they were never able to get closer than 600 yards. The wind and rain made it impossible to tell if any of the rams were shooters. After almost 10 hours of watching the sheep and trying to get in range, everyone was exhausted, so they decided to make the two-hour trek back to camp.
Crawling out of their sleeping bags the next morning, they knew what they had to do. The four-mile hike seemed easier than the night before, knowing what should be waiting in that far basin. When they reached the spot where the sheep were the day before, they cautiously crested the last ridge. Thankfully, two of the sheep were still there. This pair had moved up the ridge into a position that allowed the hunters to put a stalk on them. They left my uncle to keep an eye on the sheep while Dad and Jordan closed the distance. There was a big-bodied ram that they thought would be legal, though he was maybe not quite full curl. Two hours later, Uncle Willie could see them ease up into a shooting position, which was only 125 yards from the big ram.
Jordan crawled up and set up the spotting scope. Out of sight, my dad waited for the answer, “He’s not legal.” Sadness quickly turned to excitement as they spotted the group from last night and identified the one legal ram. My dad eased his .270 Weatherby onto a small pack and crawled up behind it to get ready for a 375-yard shot. The clouds and fog were coming down, competing with the rain, as he was laying on his belly, freezing. He told me he was praying for strength and skill. Boom! The shot rang out through the basin. Close to a mile behind, my uncle Willie watched the big-bodied ram stand up and take off. He had been keeping my mom and aunt updated by sending satellite messages. As the big-bodied ram crested the ridge and disappeared from sight, he sent a message, “He shot and missed!”
Willie shifted the binoculars from the disappearing bruiser to my dad, and much to his surprise, he saw him standing up and celebrating. My uncle had never seen the second group because they were hidden by the mountain. He had no idea that there was a full curl ram that had just been double lunged. I’m sure he figured it out soon as he watched my dad’s ridiculous dancing through the binoculars. Heavy packs and big smiles finished off the hunt. A few bush flights and a couple days later, I was excited to hear the stories of what I thought was a once-in-a- lifetime sheep hunt.
Fast forward to April 2022. We were on a family RV trip headed across the country for two weeks when the New Mexico draw results came out. As I crawled out of my bed, my dad let me know it would be a good year. “You drew javelina, deer, and antelope!” I was super excited because I really wanted the antelope tag. Then, my mom said my dad had drawn a once-in-a-lifetime Desert bighorn ram tag in the Caballo Mountains of Southern New Mexico. We smiled all summer, and nobody could believe us when we let them know all of the tags we drew.
First up was my antelope hunt. My mom and little brothers came along since the weather was warm and it wasn’t too far from home. After looking around for hours, we saw a group of antelope on a small section of private land. We went to the landowner’s house to ask if we could hunt on their property, and they said yes! We set up and sat for an hour, waiting for the buck to make his way to us. I could barely contain myself when I squeezed the trigger and he crumpled just over a hundred yards away. My first antelope! We all hoped the sheep hunt was going to go like this.
November 15th, we arrived in our campsite and saw a huge covey of quail. Then, as we were setting up the camper, we saw about 20 deer. Both of these sightings made us even more excited. Our hunting party was my dad, my brother, two cousins, my uncle Willie, my grandpa, two of my dad’s buddies, and me. We headed into the mountains to try to spot some sheep. Almost immediately, someone spotted three ewes. We went to another place called Sardine Canyon and met some deer hunters who told us to go look at a place called Bat Cave Canyon. We were glassing Sardine when one of my buddies spotted eight rams about a mile away. We watched them for a few hours and could tell that two of them were shooters. That was Plan A for the next day.
On opening morning, we got up at 5 a.m. and went to see if we could spot those rams again, but we could not find them! We started a long walk to get closer to see if we could turn them up. Soon enough, my dad’s friend, Kyle, found them in his binoculars about a mile away. We left a guy down low to watch the sheep and started the stalk. We got to a point where when we rounded a ridge corner the sheep would be there. My dad and Uncle Willie went around the corner, and my dad laid the gun down across a tall rock. He was looking at the sheep when we heard a loud “crack!” We thought someone else had shot at the sheep, but then we realized the rams were butting heads. My dad passed on five sheep before he shot. The ram was standing on top of a cliff at 180 yards when he shot, and he immediately fell off of a 30-foot cliff! We walked up on him and then got him cleaned and packed out. I carried the head down. We were all so excited to have a great sheep and for my dad to have two great hunts in a row.
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