Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Alaska Sheep Hunt 2014

I tried to condense this year's sheep story, but I didn't do a very good job.

We hunted sheep in the Alaska Range again. We have hunted this area before and had some idea of what the terrain looked like.

I spotted some rams on day one. They were traveling with a black bear.


Better picture of the rams, worse picture of the bear.


They did not really seem to mind the bear, and he fed well within 200 yards several times, but never made a move toward the sheep. They watched him pretty casually while feeding.

We tried climbing up after them on the opener, but got cliffed out with waterfalls after about 5 hours. Bummer, because the route would have put us into good position to see the whole valley and some country we had never seen before. Back to base camp to try again the next day. Watched the rams again when they came out to feed around 8PM.

Climbed up through the alders the next day and set up a little spike camp. We saw the rams again around the same time. Developed a plan where we would hike through the valley that separated us, up the other side, and kill one or two. It appeared that there was a double broomer and a full curl ram in the group, and we had watched him butting heads and generally being a pest to the double broomer.

At the last minute, we decided that it would be a good idea to bring sleeping bags and pads. We have been in situations where you are waiting for sheep to appear before and wished we didn't have to back out and run back to camp. What the hell, they don't weigh much. So, we added a couple days worth of food, and a jetboil. We had seen a couple of caves that looked like they would work for bivy spots.

We had been seeing sheep in the green, just under the highest point here:



As usual, things didn't go exactly as planned. We hiked down the canyon only to find the stream at the bottom was 1) a serious SOB to get to due to cliffs, and 2) really pissed off.


We located a potential crossing, and I made an attempt. Naturally we had decided to leave our glacier socks down low so as to save the 2 lbs, so this attempt was a strip down to your skivvies and try to wade the creek type of thing. I was not successful due to slimy rocks on the bottom that were huge and slanted with the current, which was pretty fast. Hiking poles told me that the water was going to be too deep anyway, and I backed out. I'll spare you the picture of me in my skivvies (for now), since I don't have it yet. FYI, the water was cold.

Long story short(er) we ended up sidehilling up the valley and crossing about 3 miles up, then climbing the other side and working our way back.

Once on the sheepy side, we sidehilled through the boulders until we saw sheep. There were actually 7 rams, some bedded down and some feeding. Set up spotters and got a good look. We confirmed that one ram was double broomed, but we just couldn't get to 110% confidence on the ram that appeared to be full curl. They were working into a location that would be a problem for us - high probability of a 1000+ foot fall if you were to shoot a ram. We decided that we would back out and drop over the edge of the ridge in order to be out of sight, and then work on around a smaller finger ridge that would hopefully take us closer for a better look. One of the rams spotted us as we were backing out, and they all laid down and watched us. Of course, the valley between us is at the top of the waterfall in the Barney's pack picture above, and that valley has a glacier at the head of it. So now it is raining, and wind blowing down vally is gusting somewhere in the 70mph neighborhood. It is getting late, and the sheep know we are here... time to replan. We decide that my buddy will stay put in the rocks and I will try to sneak closer. He wants to watch the second ram to try and confirm that he's full curl. I want to get broomy on the ground before he gets into suicide position.

I take the little spotter that I stole from Art, my rangefinder, rifle, and binos, and start my stalk. The finger ridge that I'm hiding behind gets me close to where I want to be. I end up in a tundra/boulder field, which gives me great cover, and I belly crawl about 150 yards between boulders until I run out of cover. Rangefinder says 400 yards, and the rams are all bedded down. I take another really careful look through the spotter, as there are 3 rams bedded close together - the double broomer that is my favorite, the possibly full curl ram, and a heavy 7/8ths ram that we already decided was not legal. I found my ram, got a good rest on a rock, and took my shot. All 3 rams got up and stared in the opposite direction. None of them fall, or even have a red spot on them. I had missed completely... not a good feeling. I started checking horns in my rifle scope. Lamb tips, lamb tips, no lamb tips... ok, I have my target again. I waited for gusts to stop, held on the shoulder and shot. He went down.

The other rams stood around, looking at the dead ram. I stood up, in plain sight, and walked back to where my pack was, and where my buddy was watching through the spotter. He had decided that the second ram was full curl, but he had stayed back at 600+ yards, and couldn't make a determination until after I had shot. The rams were now at 800+, but not really moving off. Had I known the second ram was full curl, I would have stayed a little more concealed, but we had our work cut out for us, so we didn't pursue a second one. We took some pictures, caped, and cut up my ram.



Then it was back to the cave. Pretty nice diggs! At least we didn't have to pack it. Sorry, my sheep partner is camera shy.


[img]http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll201/cwh2/Sheep/2014/DSCN3093_Annonymous.jpg[/img]

To be continued when I have more time to type.