Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game Mouflon-Corsican ram

10/4
Ewes are what I take for meat!









ya!


GWB

Geedub...we had sausage made out of both these rams and it was unbelievably good!




Thanks mainly to you letting me try yours a few years ago!

FWIW this is more Mouflon than anything...

I killed this bastard a couple of years ago.

I tend to favor larger diameter bullets of heavier weight.

I've taken Aoudad with 338 RUM, 7Mag, 30-06 Springfield and 26 Nosler.


I did lose one that I was using a 308 Win.,150 gr. Accubond. However the shot was 300 yds. plus.








We had been on this particular lease for seven seasons. I keep game cams out much of the time. Some of the other guys have said they have seen Aoudad up in the rocks, but I never had. In fact only one had been killed off this lease in seven years. So imagine my elation and surprise when I viewed these pix on the game cam. Four Aoudad at one of my remote spin cast feeders. This location is about ½ mile off the road. Four images of Aoudad on October 19th. It was October 31 when I veiwed the game cam pix. Was I jazzed. Hopefully they might still be in the area.


Fast forward a year plus. It was Friday night, Dec. 28th I sat in a stand that is another half mile back behind the feeder where the Aoudad had shown up. It was about 30 minutes before dark when, as luck would have it I saw them coming over the top of the hill directly across from the hilltop I was perched on. I watched them mosey down a ways. The big ‘un was in the lead. He walked out on an outcrop and turned broadside. I ranged him at 306 yds. My Sako carbine is loaded with 150 gr. Accubonds at +/- 2,750 FPS and as I’m a short range meat hunter, it was zeroed at a measly ½” high at 100 yds. Bummer, wrong rifle and wrong zero. What the heck. Seven years and no Aoudad. I decided to take the shot. I held about 6” over the top of his back, set the trigger and let fly. At that medium velocity and range it seemed like a couple seconds before I heard a solid “whop”. It looked like he hunched up and took off behind some juniper. I watched for about fifteen minutes. No movement. It was starting to get dark but I wasn’t about to wait till morning to start looking. Problem was, I had to go all the way down the hill, across a stream bed then climb a vertical incline lined with cedar, cactus and cats claw. To make matters worse, I was in shorts. Needless to say, by time I got near where I thought he might be it was almost dark. I had a flashlight, but no good reference point. By the time I got off the side of that mountain I looked like I’d been drug behind a truck. I looked for that dude off and on for two days. Aoudad meat ain’t the most tasty, but can be mixed with pork to make pretty fair jalepeno cheese salami. I didn’t mind not recovering the meat, but this guy was a stud puppy. I sure did want the head and horns. Would have made braggin’ rights for a good while. I ended up looking for his skull off and on for months. Never a trace.


Over the last couple years I've had a troup of aoudad visiting the "canopy" on a very infrequent basis. The stand is perched on the side of a hill. I can see down into two valleys. I've not laid eyes on this guy as he only comes in from time to time. Don't know if I see him in the flesh whether I will try to take him, or just shoot him with my camera. He too is a stud!





can't tell from this angle whether this is the same ram, but he ain't too shabby!



If nothing else its a kick in the pants to sit out there and to contemplate!


ya!



GWB

A pure bred sheep is a rarity.

I thought a corsican was a cross between a mouflon and a red sheep. Is that incorrect? If that is correct, unless they were a sterile hybrid why couldn't a corsican breed with a mouflon, and have a 3/4 mouflon, 1/4 red sheep as a result?

I've never hunted Tejas, but the Mouflon I killed in Spain was as wild and spooky as any deer or elk I have killed in the US. I thought it was a great hunt.

GW,
You have a picture of that Cat’s Claw?

https://rangeplants.tamu.edu/plant/catclaw-acacia/



I do believe the two tree like bushes on the left are cats claw as well as the small weedy shrub in the middle and in the right rear of this photo



to the left of the cactus in this photo


https://rangeplants.tamu.edu/plant/catclaw-acacia/

Its nasty stuff, no way you can get by it without getting hooked or if in short sleeves, shredded.

ya!

GWB

Thanks. In all my time spent in the Hill Country, reckon Ive never paid any attention.

Bubba,

Remeber the Johnny Horton song about the battle of New Orleans.......

Well they ran through the briars and the ran through the brambles and they ran through places that a rabbit couldn't go.

Well I tend to do that, sometimes on hands and knees looking for blood. Let me tell you, when it comes to cat's claw, I guarantee you I tend to pay attention, 'specially in the summer if i have on shorts and no shirt. I'll be bleeding from a dozen or more different scratches and scrapes, and the thing about that stuff, is it don't matter if you back up, go forward or turn sideways, you're hooked!

ya!


GWB

I'd say it would be difficult to find a pure bred Mouflon in the USA. I'm not saying they don't exist, but be very careful. FWIW I agree with the earlier poster and say that is more Corsican that anything. Watch some videos of the Mouflon being hunting on their natural turf and they have very different color and horns from that sheep. It's still a nice ram no matter how you slice it.

Nice ram. I hate those damn things. We've had them all over our lease in west Texas. We killed 26 in one weekend. Now I gotta get rid of a bunch of Spanish goats. I've attached pics of some I killed.

Used to shoot quite a few rams years ago. Thought I might post a few pictures of some of the rams I took years ago when I had the opportunity. The leases I'm on now do not have any sheep/goats other than Aoudad,other than an occasional 'wander-thru"



Corsican taken with bow


New Zealand Ram taken with bow


Black Hawaiian taken w/ 270 winchester



Texas Dall, taken with S&W model 29 in 44 mag


and one more...........


Although I hunt with a bow and pistol, I am basically a rifle looney at heart. However, I do have one trophy hanging on the wall that wasn’t brought down by a bow or firearm. It actually was killed by a Goodyear Wrangler tire mounted on my ford f350.



Wool sheep taken with 315/70 R16 Goodyear Wrangler AT,Ruger Blackhawk in 41 mag and Poulan chainsaw!!!


I was hunting in Rocksprings, Texas at the time. Some years earlier, one of my brothers married the prize daughter of a family of "yellow dog democrats" who happened to all be union hands and avid deer hunters (one of the daughters, not the sons). The patriarch of the clan wanted to get my brother on the lease so his grandsons could grow up hunting deer. His sons did not want my brother on the lease, as my brothers’ main focus is making money, not working to improve the lease or hunting, was a Southern Baptist and to make matters worse, voted Republican. Consequently the “pappa” and the sons were at loggerheads

However, in time they figured out a solution to the problem. They called me, and the oldest son sez Gdub, this is your B-I-L Richard. I replied, Richard, I think my brother is your B-I-L, not me. Well Richard says, well I guess that's true, but he said that Pappa insisted that he is not going to have any grandson of his grow up not deer hunting. They had tried to convince Pappa that they could go with the lazy, money making and tenderfoot attributes in regards to my brother, but they really did not want a republican on their lease. So Richard informs me they were thinking about inviting me on their lease. However, they wanted me to know up front it wasn't because they liked me. Rather they knew that I loved to hunt and knew that I was well acquainted with Senor Manual Labor. So, they told me if I would carry my “lazy azz” brother, he and I could both be on their lease. Funny, they never asked me how I voted. LOL. I've been hunting with them since 1999. My brother got off one year later. Each year they remind me that they still don't like me but they put up with me because I bring the steaks, cigars and Patron.

Anywho opening weekend of the 1999 deer season in the Texas hill country was a washout. I don’t remember how many inches it rained but the trip that normally takes six hours took fifteen hours. We started out at six AM and after taking numerous detours and fording several rivers and streams arrived at nine PM. We sure could have used an air boat or hovercraft that day. It rained so hard that weekend in the Texas hill country that deer hunters were being pulled out of trees with helicopters.

Well, I hunted that whole weekend in the rain and cold with no success. On the way out I saw a group of Aoudad sheep going straight up the side of a hill. I stopped my truck and grabbed my rifle. An easy 200 yard shot at a running target (yeah). As it was cold, wet and rainy, I had the defroster/heater on in my truck, and when I took the rifle out to shoot, of course the scope lens totally fogged up. So, no shot on the Aoudad.

Needless to say I was pissed. I had traveled 350 miles over the course of 15 hours, to get to the lease, gone through water up to my driver’s side window in my new F350. Then I had hunted in the rain and cold for three days and finally when I had the opportunity to take a shot at game, my scope fogged up. Well I threw the rifle back in the truck and took off and was cussing like a sailor. I hadn’t gone up the hill a quarter mile when I felt a bump like I had run over something. As my windshield was still fogged up, I hadn’t seen what had run in front of my truck. I got out and looked back down the hill. I had run over a double curl ram. He was lying there gasping and most likely dying as he had been run over by a 9600 lb truck. However, I hate to see any critter suffer, so I pulled out my Ruger new model Blackhawk in 41 mag. and finished him off, then drug him off to the side of the road.

I went back to the truck to get in when a thought struck me. I’d hunted hard for three days and I wasn’t in any mood to go back empty handed. Since he was such a nice ram I decided that I would have him mounted. I backed the truck up and tried to load him up. However I was by myself and he was heavier than I could lift . As it was getting late, I didn’t want to take the time to cape him out. Well that’s where the chainsaw came in. I grabbed my saw and went to work. Well within two shakes of the proverbial sheep's tale I had him cut in half and loaded in the truck. The ram in the picture above is the only animal I have on my wall that was killed by a truck rather than a pistol, rifle or bow. He was a nasty wool sheep, so I had my taxidermist use a Mouflon cape to spruce him up a bit. One of these days I am going to add a backboard and an engraved plate with a piece of tire tread stating that he was killed by a Goodyear Wrangler A/T tire.

I have a good friend from Ireland that has a saying that “ a lie well told will serve as good as the truth anyday”. But if I’m lyin,I’m dyin.

ya!
GWB

We have lots of sorry assed Aoudads, I shoot everyone I see.

I thought that was a Peruvian Ibex???

Dunno if you got a huntin ranch but they seem to fetch a pretty good price.. If love to kill one.

One of these days I'll learn how to post pics correctly.