Heading into the summer, my hope was to spend some time scouting some new areas that I might be able to hunt with my son. He’s 11 years old, and while I didn’t figure that I’d take him sheep hunting until he was in his teen years, he really impressed me during his first caribou hunt, so that had me thinking. I had come across a pretty cool area the previous summer that seemed like it had potential, so that was on my mind as the snow receded from the high country. Unfortunately, those plans changed when my son suffered traumatic injuries to both of his hands in early June. It’s a long story, but thankfully he received excellent care and is mostly healed apart from the need for further OT to regain full range of motion. Still, any hope of mountain hunting with him had to be shelved as did any scouting trips, as our summer was largely focused on pain management, doctor’s appointments, and taking care of a kid who had a rough go of things for a while.

As sheep season rolled around, my plans were uncertain right up until the days before departure. Things had improved markedly for my son, but there were still struggles, so my wife opted to stay home. On the 7th things fell into place and my brother agreed to join me for a quick attempt at a hunt. My brother and I would both claim sheep hunting as our favorite, but somehow we’d never gone together. We talk sheep hunting a lot, but we have very different schedules in the fall, so it had just never previously worked out. I didn’t have super high expectations due to my constrained schedule, but the forecast looked good, so we threw our gear together over the course of a few hours, kissed our families goodbye, and set off to see what awaited us in the mountains.

I flew part of the way there on the 7th with plans to get a base camp set up on the 8th before heading back to pick up my brother. On the morning of the 8th I fired up the engine at first light and was soon descending into the valley that we had planned to hunt. I was on a long final approach to my intended strip when I saw it – a small tent partially obscured by willows at the far end. Dang. I passed over the strip twice to make sure that I was seeing things right, and when I saw someone step out of the tent, I decided that I needed to consider other options. Of course, no hunter owns sole access to public land, but I didn’t want to drop in on top of someone else when there were other possibilities. I flew for another hour or so, trying to find another location to land and hunt but unsure of what to do.

A few hours later, I picked up my brother, and after talking things over we set out to scout a place to land on a mountain that had piqued my interest a few years prior. It took a while, but we finally found a place that we felt was landable, and shortly thereafter we were setting up camp around 5,000’ with a band of rams visible on a plateau below us. What a band of rams! There were 17 in the group, and they were on terrain that would make for an easy walk if things worked out. Unfortunately, at first glance it looked like only one of them had potential, and that was a big maybe. Still, we were encouraged by what we saw, so we laced up our boots, parted ways and spent the rest of the day exploring the higher country that wrapped around us.

A quick note on the boots – one big, BIG mistake I made on this trip was not trying on my boots before leaving home. Years ago I had a set of boots shrink to the point that they bit into my feet badly. (I think being too close to a hot fire caused the rubber rand to shrink.) I kept those boots thinking that maybe someday they’d fit my kids or nephews, but bought a new set for myself. In the last minute rush to make this hunt happen, I just grabbed my gear and ran. Again, big mistake. As soon as I laced up my boots on the 8th, I knew I was in trouble. My boots were immediately painful, both biting into my heels and squeezing my toes. By the end of that first night, after only a few hours of hiking, I had blisters on my heels and toes that were burning with each step. Ugh…this was going to be fun. (By the end of the trip I had purple toenails that would eventually fall off, and every step of the hunt was painful. But, what was I going to do? Putting one foot in front of another was all I could manage as a solution.)

By the end of that night we hadn’t found any other rams, but rather found that the surrounding mountains were covered with bands of ewes and lambs. There was still potential, of course, but it seemed that we had found quite the nursery, the rams on the plateau notwithstanding.



We intended to give them a really close look the next day, but that plan changed late that night. A bit before last light, after we had already climbed into our tents, we heard the approaching sound of a plane. I stepped out of the tent and watched as a Cub buzzed our camp…then buzzed it again…and again before proceeding to circle the band of rams further down the ridge. This went on for a few minutes, and then the plane landed midway down the ridge between where we were and where the band of rams was. I didn’t hold out a lot of hope for the legality of the largest of the rams – he was marginal at best – but still, this was pretty darn discouraging.

In the morning we decided that it was time to consider a move. It was the day before opening day and there was another hunter between us and the only rams we had seen, so we figured it was time for plan C. After a short conversation we decided to return to the strip where we had originally planned to go. There was another hunter there, but there was also a lot of country, so we figured we would at least go have a conversation. I’ll never forget the first comment we received upon landing – after parking the plane, my brother and I were walking over to the camp when I heard a grizzled voice say ”Tell me you’re eco-tourists.” Ha! I laughed, then responded that no, we certainly weren’t. After introductions, I told the man that I had zero intentions of stepping on his toes and would completely defer to him since he was there first. We talked for a while, and we asked if he had any intentions of hunting the next valley over. He laughed immediately and responded with words that I can’t print here. To get into the adjacent valley required a significant climb, a fair amount of alder busting, miles of sidehilling, and ended in mandatory glacier travel. The man we were talking with was solo and in his mid-60s. While he was plenty capable, he made it clear that he intended to hunt the valley we were in and that if we were foolish enough to want to try heading elsewhere, we were more than welcome to have at it. Done. Plan made.

I returned to the high strip to gather the rest of our gear, and soon we were back where we had originally planned to start from, only with a different game plan. We visited with our new friend a bit more, and soon began the arduous climb up and over to where we hoped to find sheep the following day. It was a harder trip than I expected, made more so by our decision to drop down to the glacier too soon. We were hoping to avoid more sidehilling than necessary, but got turned around by an uncrossable glacial stream, and eventually had to climb back up a few hundred feet before sidehilling another mile or so before finding solid, flat ground. In the meantime we spotted two lone rams on the far side of the glacier. One looked good and the other had potential, so we went to sleep with the hope of having something to pursue the next morning.









As dawn broke on the 10th we were up early and anxious to explore. We considered crossing the glacier immediately, but we decided to move further up valley first to see if there were additional sheep before committing to a glacier crossing. About a half hour after leaving camp, we found a high spot above the moraine that offered a good view up the valley, and that’s where we first saw them – maybe ¾ mile further up valley there was a band of 3 rams. It wasn’t a perfect view, but it was immediately clear that two of them were mature and deserved a closer look. We considered our options for a few minutes, then decided to drop down onto the glacier where we could use the lateral moraine as cover as we approached. Getting there required us to be exposed for a hundred yards or so, but thankfully the rams didn’t seem to notice, and soon we were picking our way through the jumbled rocks and boulders that covered the glacier.

A bit of a side note – this was without a doubt the loudest, most geologically active valley I have ever been in. Rock and ice falls were happening constantly – from the huge peaks towering over the end of the valley, from the hanging glaciers clinging to the mountainsides, and from the holes and crevasses in the glacier itself. Scarcely a minute would go by without the sound of crashing rocks or collapsing ice. It was simply awe-inspiring at first, but it also turned out to be incredibly beneficial. There was no way to be quiet as we closed the distance on those rams, but with all of those rock slides, what was the sound of yet another rock rolling over? With the visual cover of the moraine above and the auditory cover of mountains being carved by ice all around us, we soon drew near to our quarry.

We took a peek over the lip of the moraine once, but found we were further away than we had thought and at an angle that was far from ideal for a shot, so we dropped back down and moved another few hundred yards after mentally marking a better spot in the ridge. Once there, we moved slowly, deliberately up the slope of the moraine, stopping to look up with every step. Soon we were at the top, and it was clear that within a few feet we would either see legal rams before us, or it would be time to regroup and move on. We each loaded a round, checked the safeties on our rifles, and on to our bellies we moved. A few feet later we both tensed up and stopped. One ram…then two…then three. Binoculars up, we both immediately confirmed in whispers what we had seen from the previous view - that two were legal - one perfectly full curl, the other broomed on both sides. Being the great older brother that he is, my brother quickly asked which one I wanted. I whispered back, we both clicked the safeties off, and then….



I’ve never been in on a double where both animals were taken near simultaneously. I’ve had scenarios where multiple caribou or deer are killed in close proximity, but nothing like this. These two rams were standing not five feet apart. We agreed that one would shoot first and then the other, but the speed with which my brother fired the second shot shocked me in the best possible way. I pulled the trigger on my 30-06 and immediately saw the flinch confirming a hit, but before I could blink I heard my brother’s rifle fire. His ram dropped in its tracks, while mine ran up towards the cliffs above. It didn’t make it far, though, as a few moments later it stumbled momentarily, turned back downhill and collapsed.

Two brothers, two rams, side by side. Unbelievable. We were looking at a pile of work to get them out of the hills, but man, what a moment. It all worked out perfectly – from the last minute hunt to the plans that changed, then changed again in such a way that we ended up in just the right place at the right time.



As we butchered the rams, we were buzzed once more by another plane. I simply smiled and waved, happy to have the good fortune of being where we were even though that wasn’t exactly what we had planned.











The trip back was a beast. We rolled into camp around 10pm that night, and despite the desire to sleep in, we were back at it by 6:30am the next day. We ferried loads the next day, and after 13 or 14 hours and two trips each we finally set our last load down next to the plane that would carry us home. We were greeted at the strip by the gentleman that had so graciously welcomed us in a couple days prior, and we gratefully accepted his offer of a drink while we shared stories and laughter.









As with many of my favorite hunting memories, this one didn’t start out as planned. I didn’t expect that I would hunt with my brother this fall, and when that happened at the last minute I certainly didn’t expect that we’d double up on rams on opening day. Sometimes amazing things happen in the mountains, though. Next August can’t come soon enough...

Great story, thanks for sharing.

Nice write up Brian. Well earned rams!

If you want to PM me some lat and longs I'd appreciate it.

That’s a great story!! Incredible trip!

Good trip report, and I'm glad to see TC is still serving you well.....

MTV

Excellent, happy for you guys and thanks for the riveting tale!

mtv wrote:Good trip report, and I'm glad to see TC is still serving you well.....

MTV

Indeed it is! It's the only Cub I've ever flown, but I sure love that plane!

A great read, thanks

Thanks, great story, and well written!

Great report, thanks for posting & congrats on an awesome hunt!!

That is awesome, what a great experience!

akaviator wrote:Nice write up Brian. Well earned rams!

If you want to PM me some lat and longs I'd appreciate it.

There is not a sheep hunter alive in Alaska that would share that kind of information. I've taken numerous sheep over the years, no single one from the same location, but always share the sheep hunter's code of keeping those spots to ourselves. That kind of information leads to decimation of that herd by any number of other hunters in the future -- and the rams left by you won't be available to you in the future if you do want to return.

Very good write up and congratulations on the nice rams.

Great to read, Thank you, and congratulations, and look forward to another great read when your son is able to accompany you on as hunt !

Really great write up and pictures. I live vicariously, and it looks like sheep hunting is really a reward for a lot of hard work.

You should maybe get it printed as a book from one of those photo services for you and your brother. You will always have the memory but it won't always be that fresh:)

Epic trip. Stuff dreams are made of! hopefully one day get one like this with my brother!
Cheers!