As it often happens, life changes the direction of your plans and it can weigh heavy on the mind. I had booked a Dall sheep and moose hunt with Yukon Peak Outfitting in the spring of 2018, and I began the training and preparation along with shedding some unneeded pounds and doing a lot of shooting to be as ready as I could. As I got into the summer of 2019, some unfortunate curve balls changed a lot of this. About eight weeks before the hunt on a training hike, my knee got really sore and I felt a loud pop. A quick MRI showed a large tear in the meniscus with a flap. With a tight timeframe, it was decided to get an injection a couple weeks before the hunt and hope for the best.
A couple weeks later, my girlfriend, Shelley, called crying saying that she had breast cancer. My focus switched from preparing for hunting to doing whatever was needed for her and to figure out the next course of action. It was Tubular Carcinoma in a very early stage, so a best case for a bad thing. Leaving Shelley’s appointment with the breast cancer surgeon, she looked at her calendar and said, “This surgery is going to fall when you are gone.”
I said, “I know, and I will be calling to see about changing the hunt dates.”
As tears started to form, she said, “You had better not even consider it. I have told you since the time we have been going together, the one animal I want you to get is a white sheep. You better go and be dang sure you get me a sheep!” All the decisions were figured out, the hunt was still on, and though what Shelley would be going through was taking up most of my thoughts, I was still excited for the trip.
August 26th found me on a plane headed to Whitehorse where I would overnight and then be picked up by Rob Aasen the next morning to fly out to camp. I sent Shelley a picture that night with me wearing a pink breast cancer awareness shirt, telling her I would wear it every day of the hunt to show her she would constantly be in my thoughts. After a short ride in the morning, it was time to shoot the gun and then hop in the Super Cub. Upon landing, my guides, Chad and Dominic, and I hopped on the horses and headed to a nice little cabin camp for the night before spiking out the next day for sheep. After a few hour horse ride, we set up some small tents in a nice open valley and hiked up to the ridgeline in hopes of locating a band of 12 rams Chad and Dominic had seen five days before. After a little while up top, we spotted a grizzly a couple of miles off and decided to try to get on it. With the bear on the move, we could not find him after cutting the distance. We glassed until dark and spotted a few rams a ways off right before dark. I received a text that night from Shelley saying, “Get me a sheep.” Those words would weigh heavy the next day.
Up early the next day, we were off on foot back up the ridgeline in search of the band of rams and to check the ones we saw the night before. We hiked a few hours up to where the grizzly had been the night before, and I glassed a sheep way off in the bottom on the other side of the valley. Chad and Dom checked it out in the scope and said it was a solid ram and we needed to get a closer look. We started our long walk around the ridgeline to close the distance.
At around 3:00, Chad glassed a different ram bedded in a saddle on the ridgeline going down to where I had originally glassed the ram. He was a really good flared ram, and Chad and Dom decided we needed to make a stalk on him. With Shelley’s text constantly on my mind, we came to the last of the range. As we moved to about 700 yards, we got a rock pile between us and the flared ram. Just then, a ram the guides recognized called “Lucky” took off running only 80 yards from us. He ran by the flared ram, and they both ran down the ridgeline a mile before slowing down and relaxing. They then bedded down on a rock spire. As we sat, unhappy that we got busted on our stalk, we started to decide our next move. We knew we were in for a long night on the mountain and decided it was time to make the stalk.
Dom led us on a beautiful stalk with Chad getting some great video. Again, I was consumed with the constant thought of Shelley’s text as we moved to about 400 yards undetected. The flared ram lay facing us on the rock spire with the top of Lucky’s horns just showing. We decided both were great rams and to shoot whichever stood and gave us the shot first. I got set solid prone on my tripod with the thought, “Do not screw up this shot on Shelley’s sheep!” We lay there for about half an hour before Lucky stood and walked to the top of the spire, giving me a perfect shot. He dropped instantly, and we started celebrating and high fiving for the hard work and miles we had put in for this great ram.
I was overcome with emotion, not so much about the sheep, but the thoughts about what Shelley would be going through and that we had got her sheep. We got down to the ram and admired what these animals truly are, took pictures, and got him cleaned up. We took some ribs and tenderloin with us as we moved about 75 yards above and tucked into some rocks where we would try to sleep.
After a little poor sleep, we got up and started the 13.5-hour hike back to the horses with heavier packs. I was totally spent as I crawled into the tent 38 hours after leaving it on the sheep adventure, with a great text from Shelley saying, “I am so happy, now get a moose. Think power of the pink.”
The next day, we packed up and headed back to the cabin camp for a night there and a day of much needed R&R. After that, we decided the area past the airstrip looked a bit more like moose country, so we packed up and spiked out to an area Chad and Dom had camped in before. We got all set up and prepared for an early morning moose hunt.
Up early, we made a short horse ride to a high mount out in the bog area of the valley. We no more than sat down when Chad spotted a moose about a mile out and we knew we had to go after it. When we got closer, we couldn’t find it, so we split up, moving to a couple high spots trying to see it in the willows. Just then, Chad and I heard a moose grunt back over by the horses. We spotted it and knew it was a good one. We got Dominic’s attention, and he got down by us and said it was big! As the moose got in a small patch of trees, we quickly moved back across the bog and cut the distance. As the moose came back out into the open, I got seated with my tripod. Dom made a call to the moose, stopping it. The shot was true, dropping the great bull right on the horse trail. As we got to the moose, we realized he was far bigger than we thought with some awesome looking velvet still on his horns. We got it all taken care of and back to camp for moose tenderloin dinner.
The next day, Chad and Dom took the meat to the airstrip and I hung out by my inReach as it was surgery day for Shelley. This made for a long day of sitting in the bush with my mind in a different place, but it was good news as the surgery went really well. We spent the next few days looking for a grizzly to come to the moose kill with my mind much at ease with good messages from Shelley. We had a grizzly come in late on the last night but could not close the deal.
What a great trip with Yukon Peak Outfitting and hard work from Chad and Dominic! I cannot thank them enough. It was a hunt-of-a-lifetime with my first sheep and a B&C moose, yet far different than other hunts with much bigger things heavy on my mind with what Shelley was going through. All went well and all tests have come back great, and I got Shelley her sheep!
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