Oh, where to start!?
All my sheep stalks have been fun! Two stand out.
On one day-hunt here on the Kenai Peninsula, I climbed for 2.5 hours from the valley floor, and set up to spot just below the cloud line. An hour later 3 rams came over the ridge.....across the valley, and working their way toward me! With a dozen other hunters below me- it was also opening weekend of moose season - and the sheep not yet in their view - I made it down to the trail in 22 minutes. Then 2.5 hours back up the other side.... when I broke brush line, there were three other pairs of hunters starting up after the sheep, which had come out onto the face of the ridge above. Two pairs turned back, the other pair stopped and watched... almost a year later I was on the trail when I bumped into a couple fellows who told me all about watching this guy shoot a ram off that cliff up there the year before, said ram repeatedly bouncing 10 to 15 feet in the air and sliding/rolling a quarter mile and loosing 1500 feet of elevation to come to rest 100 yards from the side-trail... It was a plus 300 yard shot, too! And I made it twice, 5 inches apart, holding a tad lower the second time, after the ram pulled itself up on only it's front legs following the first one - an obvious near-spine hit. (17 inch barreled .30-06, factory 165s which also took a 42 inch bull moose 4 days later at 80 yards while still-hunting).
That was an awful short hunting season, but a good eating one!
My first Dall sheep hunt I back-packed in solo 17 miles (Going back there this fall, God willing). Having spotted sheep (unknown sex, but all three were widely separated singles) on the ridge above me earlier on the way in from 3 miles away, up I went first thing in the morning, having read one must always stalk sheep from above. Got way back up on top nearly to the head of the canyon and spotted 11 rams leaving their beds, 2000 feet below, just above the creek bottom, 3/4 mile from camp... about 10 in the morning, just before the sun touched them... Lazy bastids!. The 3 inches of snow dropped overnight had pretty much melted off by that time - the rest of the trip would see blue-bird 75 degree daytime temps. I liked it!
No way to drop down on them, after they all spread out mid-day, so I watched them until evening, watching formy chance, and enjoying the heck out of watching the sheep. I got to see a half-dozen or so head-butting contests. Fun! It was the same two, every time. One or the other would stare at the other for several seconds, they'd square away, and BANG!. Both would wobble around for a couple seconds, then go back to grazing until the next time. ILMAO!
In late evening, they gathered together once again and went back up on their little bedding bench. I went back to my camp. I figured critters are habitual, so went right up the creek bed from below at first light.. and sure enough...
Next morn they fed in a bunch from their bedding area late in the morning, down into the creek bottom, and then around the hook behind a big talus slope.
When they went out of sight behind the talus slope, right down in the creek bottom, I broke into a dead run from a where I watched from behind a 10 foot high boulder a half-mile away, down creek. I stayed in the creek bottom, often right in the creek, to stay out of sight. (right here is where I learned screw what the "book" says is the "correct" way- you do whatever works in the situation- in this case, stalking from below!) There was one bad 300 yard stretch, where I was exposed to the sight of one bedded ram - the only one in sight, but he was facing away, and I when flopped down, I was behind a roughly 18 inch cube rock 50 yards away from where he was bedded on the far side bank of the creek. The other 10 were closer...out of sight down in the creek bottom between us, all bedded down (I assumed). The exposed ram was avery legal but tight full curl- in a 3/4 legal curl area/time, but my plan was of course to take the best of the bunch. At least I wanted to view as many options as possible before taking the best available one at the time. From the day before, with just binoculars, I knew at least half the rams were legal.
Every several minutes I'd pop my head over the rock to check to see if they were moving, but nearly going to sleep between times in the warm sunshine, laying on a soft moss bed. "Idyllic" comes to mind....
After an hour or so of this, I raised my head above the rock to see my ram about 20 feet away, staring at me- apparently he'd seen some movement and came to check it out. I instinctively ducked down again, and thought fast. The .243 was laying crossways in front of me, and I knew the jig was up! Thumbing the safety off, I rolled up onto my elbows and slapped the 4X scope on him just as he whirled away and dropped right out of sight. The tip of his horn passing in front of his eye in the scope picture confirmed his legality as he did so. As I jumped to my feet, he was just coming out of a the far side of a 20 foot deep depression, maybe 60 feet away (that was a big hole!). He stopped and turned broadside to look back, and I busted him through both lungs with a off-hand snap-shot.
Damn! There were white rams running everywhere! Two bolted right by my downed one. They gathered together about 150 yards up slope on the scree and watched me for the next hour as I was dressing out my kill. 5 of them were bigger than my kill, which was the least of the legal ones, including the two skull-bangers of yesterday, and one that came around considerably better than full curl- probably around 40 inches, maybe better....beautiful ram! And I got to watch all of them watching me from darned near point-blank range...
Man, I'm all excited just typing this- and that took place in 1974!
I've never regretted taking the one I did for an instant- that "small" ram damned near killed me getting him out- My pack weighed considerably more than my own 153 lbs at the time... One of the bigger ones would have killed me for sure. Besides, I've since evolved into a cull-killer, and proud of it! He was a good start. His head is on my wall downstairs- he went a mere 31.5 inches green - dried out now, he's less.
I have a favorite moose stalk, too. I busted an unidentified moose out of it's bed in heavy cover at about 20 yards. Kneeling down, I could see its legs from just above the knees down- but nothing else. A quick bull grunt had stopped it, some further sounds and leaf stripping convinced it I was another moose, and it eventually wandered off to the south. I gave it 5 minutes and carefully followed. It had gone in the direction of a replying bull-grunt anyway... Within 150 yards, I spied two cows feeding on a downed birch tree maybe 30 yards away, and froze. I soon discovered by sound at least 5 more feeding moose all around me. Earlier when playing with the original moose, I'd gotten a deep bull-grunt from down this-a-way, so the only thing to do now was stand and wait. Any sound or movement, and I'd likely be busted. I was right in the middle of the sucker's harem, after all.
30 minutes or so later, one of the cows wandered off out of sight, only to reappear several minutes later, walk back up to the crown of the downed birch, and resume feeding with the other cow. It took me several minutes to realize that this "returning" cow was a different color, and had funny white eyebrows to boot. The binoculars showed the "eyebrows" to be thumb-thick, 3 inch spikes - a legal bull! 3 seconds later, he was on the ground. 20 minutes later, as I was dressing the kill, our last-day-of-season take-out plane came in...tho it was several hours before we could get the bull dressed out, packed down to the lake, and loaded.
That's the biggest bodied spike/fork bull I've ever killed, too. Split 3 ways (my partner, my pilot friend, and myself) we each got 90 lbs of boneless cuts.
