I was scanning through my email one afternoon when I stopped on a Huntin’ Fool update about the current Membership Drive. On the video, I heard that the Dall sheep drawing was at an all-time low and if I wanted to win a hunt, it was time to enter as these were the best odds we were going to get. I gave them a call, bought $250 worth of tickets, and forgot about it.
A few months had passed, and while I was sitting on my couch on the 4th of July, I received a call from Huntin’ Fool. I always get excited when that name pops up on my phone because that usually means I have drawn a hunt for one of the states I put in for that year. This call was a little different. I remember hearing, “This is Austin from Huntin’ Fool. Do you have any idea why I would be calling you?” It took me a second, but then I knew I had won something!
After hearing the details of the hunt I had won, I was super excited. I called my hunting buddies and my dad and told them the big news. They all had the same response. They were happy for me but warned me that I needed to start training now. I started my physical training for the hunt and had a couple of mountain hunts that helped get me in better shape than I had been before. However, “sheep shape” is a different kind of shape.
After months of research, watching videos, and ordering gear and clothes, I was finally ready. I arrived in Anchorage on August 19th and met up with Steve Johnson with Ultimate Alaskan Adventures for him to review my gear and to get my license and tags. I was good to go on clothes and equipment, so we were ready to hunt.
On day one, we met up with Mitch Davis (my guide) and flew into the Alaska Range on a Cessna and landed on a small runway just off a large river. We then jumped in a boat and started glassing for sheep and looking for a place to camp. We saw several sheep that day, including two rams that were just not quite big enough. We spent the next day glassing from the boat with no legal rams to be found. On the afternoon of the first day of actual hunting, we spotted a ram that we thought was legal, but we needed to get a better look at him.
We could see the ram the next morning from where we set up camp, and he had actually moved one ridge closer and we had a better view. At 10:00 a.m., we decided to go after him and started our stalk. From the river, we hiked several hours through the forest with the soft undergrowth and tall evergreens. Then, we spent about an hour trying to work our way through the thick brush. Eventually, we hit a creek/waterfall and followed that up the mountain until we got to “sheep country.” At this point of the hunt, when we finally get to sheep country, I was almost done.
We started the steep climb through the grass and loose shale for about two hours and then we finally hit flatter ground. Steve and Mitch were ahead of me by about 100 yards, and they were behind a rock, glassing for the ram we had seen. As I looked up to see the area they were looking at, the ram stood up and was in plain sight of me at 300 yards. I froze in the wide open with absolutely zero cover and thought that the hunt was probably over. It was a staring contest that felt like it lasted hours but was probably only a few minutes. The ram calmly walked over the ridge, and it appeared that he might have bedded down. We jumped up, leaving my pack there, and climbed up the ridge between us and peeked over a rock. We could see the top of his back and his head as he grazed for several minutes at 125 yards. Eventually, he fed off in the opposite direction as we sat wondering whether we should wait or aggressively go after him.
It was just a few minutes before we decided to go after him. We low walked for about 50 yards and then bellycrawled the last 50 yards. My left leg kept cramping up as we were crawling, but I knew that I could not give up after coming this far and being so close. As we slowly crawled, eyes on the horizon, we all saw the tops of his horns at the same time and stopped. He was bedded down, looking away from us with no worries in the world. I sat up straight, got my rifle propped up on my knee, and waited for him to stand up. It wasn’t but just a few minutes before we saw his head start to move and look around and he stood up. I squeezed the trigger, and he immediately went back down. We jumped and ran to where he was and saw that he was just barely lying on the edge and still moving. Steve and Mitch ran and grabbed him by his back legs and dragged him a few yards back to keep him from falling off the cliff. We were all staring at each other in disbelief that we were able to get so close and actually pull it off as we watched this great ram take his last breath.
We staked a tarp in the ground and dragged the ram under it to clean and cape him out before the rain started. We stayed on top of the mountain that night and packed him out the next day. The trip in was almost four miles, and we gained 3,000 feet of elevation. It took seven hours to get to the top and five hours to get back down. My advice to anyone training for the hunt-of-a-lifetime would be to establish a workout program that you can commit to and then double it. The walk back was almost as hard as the walk up, but the feeling of going out with that heavy pack always beats the feeling of going out empty handed.
Steve and his guides were outstanding! Thanks again to Huntin’ Fool for the opportunity to experience a hunt-of- a-lifetime!
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