Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Shot of a lifetime - 7mm Magnum Bullet

Sam;
Good evening to you sir, hopefully this finds you folks all well and as ready for Christmas as you'd hoped to be.

So with the understanding that most of my interaction with sheep is the local California Bighorn variety, I'd say this about that.....

If one is hunting say mid October or later, then it's a completely different animal once the rut kicks in. They'll stand for photos like this all day long.

Ancient scan from the olden times - maybe '85

Sometimes though earlier in the year one can bump them on some bedding rocks and they'll sit long enough for a photo. One can readily see they know EXACTLY where I was taking said photo from though.


Again later in fall, they'll become silly enough that the local mulies will stop to watch them strut their stuff.


Back when we had a general open season however, if one wanted to tag a legal 3/4 curl ram, one would spend a lot of time cruising the old growth Doug Fir and Ponderosa stands on the edges of the ugliest, steepest rocks one could locate.

I had all of a 5 count to ascertain this guy had the required amount of horn before he and another ram began to vacate the general vicinity. It was about 80yds give or take and as he tensed up to run, he looked ahead, showed me how long the curl was and received a 180gr Hornady out of a battered BBR '06 I used back then. My goodness that's a youngster in that photo isn't it?



It was not in any way, shape or form the "classic" sheep hunt where a fellow makes an eyeball sore from looking through the spotter counting the annular rings.

Anyway, again I'd say that if the OP's buddy is hunting an area where the rams get pressured from predators much at all AND the season is earlier in fall then a fast handling rifle will be the primary concern and other items very much incidental afterward.

In looking at Brad's elk photos, I get the impression his elk hunting spots wouldn't be too, too different from where we'd chase rams.

As always Sam, there's many ways to get to a destination and that's only been our experience here with the locals.

Merry Christmas to you and yours Sam.

Dwayne