Huntin' Fool Cover, December 2011

If you've been following my blog for awhile you may remember last year's sheep hunt in Oregon.  I never gave a real thorough recap on the blog, partially because I submitted the story to a magazine that required an exclusivity contract until publishing.  Well, this month I've been published in one of the most popular hunting magazines - and I made the cover!  This is great news because cover stories win a pair of $2000 Zeiss Victory FL T 10x42 binoculars.

Here's a scanned copy of the magazine:

Here's the story (and a few pictures at the bottom):

My winter/spring is probably like most hunters': using the Huntin' Fool to help with my decision-making as I pore through websites of the western states, comparing notes and point totals with my dad and uncles, and finally applying.   The spring of 2010 started like all others: checking websites as the results came in and watching my point totals tick up while the backup plan to an 'over-the-counter' state seemed like the reality once again.  But then I checked Oregon, the second-to-last state to post its results.  I'd drawn the only nonresident Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep tag in the state - one that 535 of us applied for!

I live and work as an English teacher on a small island in Okinawa, Japan, which makes scouting in Oregon difficult.  But thanks to the Internet, I was able to do a lot through email and Skype.  I made hundreds of phone calls to the biologist, past hunters, landowners, and anybody else to whom I could get a phone number.  I gleaned a lot of valuable information from the choices of the lottery and raffle tag holders and also tried to learn as much as I could about the resident tag holder for my same season.  My dad and uncles attended the Oregon FNAWS welcome orientation in July and I was also lucky enough to get a passionate response on an Oregon hunting forum from Shane, a guy who took time off work and away from his family just to join us on the sheep hunt.

It took me 34 hours and over 7000 miles of travel via ferry, flying, and driving before I could meet up with my dad and uncles to embark on this most epic of hunts, one which I am only allowed to draw a tag for once in my lifetime.

Scouting proved difficult as the unit is huge, but having permission and gate combinations sorted beforehand helped immensely.  Shane’s wise decision to bring along his dirt bike helped to reach some of the far corners of the unit while my dad, uncles, and I concentrated on the long, centralized ridges.  But the pickings were thin – and mostly ewes.  More than once I’d wished for a bull elk tag, but I reminded myself not to get too greedy.  I had talked to one of the two hunters from the September sheep season and he offered advice on where he'd last seen the biggest rams.  My dad and I made a plan to hike seven miles out that ridge and hunt it from above on opening morning.

We reached the end of the ridge in the late afternoon and set up a small camp in the only grove of trees before making our way to the very end for evening glassing, where my dad promptly spotted three rams.  I examined them as best I could on 60x before finally determining that one was probably a full-curl on his left and over a full curl on the right horn. It gave me a lot to think about that night while my dad did what dads do: he built a fire much larger than we needed.

On opening morning we were up at dawn for the 10-minute walk to the end of the ridge, where we could still see the rams feeding on a faraway point.  Just as they appeared to be going out of sight, two of the rams turned and began working back towards us.  Eventually the bigger one bedded on a point facing us, conveniently so that his hide served as a light-colored backdrop from which we could judge his horn lengths every time he turned his head.  This sheep hunt differed from all my deer and elk hunts  in that I had ample time to make a decision. There came a point when I was sure of the horn lengths, a little apprehensive about the mass, but feeling like I had all the information I needed to make a decision.  That, of course, was agonizing.  It was 9am on opening morning of a ten-day once-in-a-lifetime hunt and I had a dream ram in front of me.  But I was also hunting in a unit that put out a 189 ram last year and has the potential to produce more like that.  If I subtracted the 3-4 inches from the broomed side along with my questions about the mass, I could be looking at a low-180's ram.  Was that what I came for?  Well, the answer, as it became apparent, was that I came for a ram that would make me happy.  I had to balance my circumstances - a huge unit, unguided, help that is getting up in age - and conclude that this was a beautiful ram less than a mile away and unaware of my presence.  So I decided to take the plunge down off the top of the mountain and see if I could get a shot at him.  My dad followed a little ways, but stopped knowing that we'd have to go back up to retrieve the camp.

I made a plan to follow the backside of a ridge down and pop out across the creek bottom from the big, bedded ram.  The smaller ram was feeding in the bottom so I expected the larger ram to follow.  I'd take him when he fed closer to me.  But I only made it a short distance when the big ram jumped up, ran to the bottom, crossed to my side, and began working out away and to my right.  I quickly adjusted my plan and climbed back over to the center finger ridge to head him off from above.

When I came upon a cliff - an inevitability in this country - I started ranging everything below me.  All the likely shooting windows were 250-300 yards - further than I'd prefer but a distance I can do.   I only sat for a few minutes before I spied the two rams feeding between large boulders below. I tried to set up my camera to video the shot, but fighting the tall grass with my short tripod became a chore that cost me at least two shooting chances.  After moving down to the left 50 yards, I set the camera down to concentrate on the nice window I was expecting the sheep to enter.  The big ram came out first, standing broadside at 304 yards.  I quickly checked that the curls extended down to his jawline and came up to his nose (and beyond) before settling the bobbing crosshairs behind his shoulder and pulling the trigger. I ejected the .270 Win. shell, put in another, and lined up again.  Unfortunately the ram was still standing.  He had flipped directions, but he was still broadside so I took another shot.  The rams were confused after the first shot, but now they knew trouble was brewing.  The younger ram led the way back.  I looked left and saw him run through a window before the bigger ram appeared and paused.  Recognizing this could be my last good chance, I fired once more before he stepped out of sight.

I worked my way down until I could look back into the hole where the ram had last stepped and there, on the ground, was a downed sheep.  I put the binoculars up and immediately felt an awful knot twist in my stomach.  The left horn looked half-to-three-quarter curl.  Something I had learned in my sheep research was that when rams run, the biggest always leads.  Even though I was sure the smaller ram had been the first to retreat, doubt crept in.  I ditched my rifle and pack to be more agile on the 20-minute ravine crossing, but once I reached the sheep and lifted his head, I was relieved to see I had in fact killed the ram I was after.

When I got back to my dad I sat down without saying anything, not realizing until I sat down that his vantage point didn’t afford him a view of the action and he didn’t yet know the outcome.  After recounting the story and radioing the result to the rest of the team, we hiked back up to get our camp.  Shane immediately set out from the truck and reached the ram at the same time my dad and I returned.  A flurry of picture-taking ensued along with appreciation for the ram's ability to die on the only flat spot around.  The meat-cutting went quickly, the pack down out of sheep country did not.  Needless to say, we slept well that night.

The next day, the second of the season, we were packing up to move onto our next hunt: South Dakota pheasant hunting.  But we had to stop at the Enterprise Fish and Game office first, where the biologist took a green score of the horns then – much to my dismay – drilled a hole in the horn for a DNA sample and to insert an identification plug.  The final Boone and Crockett score on this 7.5-year-old ram was 182 4/8.

It’s hard to explain hunting tag lotteries, once-in-a-lifetime $1300 sheep tags, and B&C scores to non-hunters.  It’s even harder doing it to children who speak a different language. So instead, when I returned to Okinawa I spent a lesson with each of my Japanese classes giving them a video and pictorial tour of the American hunting experience and its cultural importance to us.  I was also able to share a sample of Bighorn Sheep summer sausage with every student, which they loved.