marley
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I remember sitting in my dad's garage at 7-8 years old pulling out boxes and boxes of old hunting magazines and thumbing through them until I found a sheep story. It has been my dream, as is yours I'm sure, to hunt the Dall sheep in Alaska. Two weeks ago I got a call from Chris Zwolinski to let me know that he had a spot open up for a opening day sheep hunt in Alaska. I got my plane tickets and threw my gear together and my wife and I were off to Alaska 4 days later. This would be my wife's first ever hunt and her first time backpacking. We spent the first night in a little homestead cabin built in 1963. The gold miner, Bill, built this one room cabin where he raised his four children hundreds of miles from the nearest town. Bill passed away about 5 years ago and the family still allows Chris to use this cabin as his base camp.
With the season starting last Sunday the 10th, we started packing in knowing that we had a 2 day trip just to get to where the sheep were hoped to be. The first 3 or 4 miles were boggy, swampy bushwhacking mess before we broke out of the tree line to follow the knife edge mountain. We spent the first night up on top out of the mosquitos. We made it to our spike camp late the next day.
I was like a race horse at the gate in the morning, waiting to head up to where we had seen a band of 12 rams the day before. They were so far away from our camp that even with the swaro spotter we couldn't tell if they were legal or not but we could tell that they were all rams. We spent a lot of time checking every canyon on the way up as the sheep were no longer in their same spot. I peeked up over a chimney rock to see 4 rams bedded 500 yards below us. I set up for the shot with my .264 WM and waited around an hour for the one legal ram in the bunch to stand up. When he stood, he gave me only a butt shot. He then took about 5 steps and disappeared into the next canyon. We grabbed our gear and ran higher for a better vantage point to no avail. The sheep had to come out into sight eventually no matter which way they walked so we decided to lay down and wait them out rather than run the risk of pushing them by getting closer. After about an hour I could see about 2 inches of spine from one of the rams. A few more steps and it was confirmed that this was the shooter. With him ranged at 430 yards I took the broadside shot AND MISSED!!! Right now I'm thinking about the fall I took earlier that day and knew that my rifle had taken a hit. With the bullet striking the dirt just over his back and knew that I needed to compensate. The ram bolted forward and started running right at me. I rechambered and held low on his brisket and squeezed. He instantly went down at the shot and luckily stopped just shy of a HUGE drop off. This was the highlight of my hunting life by far to finally get my Dall Sheep. He's not a giant dall by any means but the adventure, the challenge, the sweat, the burning muscles and blisters and the fact that I got to share this with my wife makes him a MONSTER!!
In camp after 2 days of packing him out with a belly full of backstrap!
With the season starting last Sunday the 10th, we started packing in knowing that we had a 2 day trip just to get to where the sheep were hoped to be. The first 3 or 4 miles were boggy, swampy bushwhacking mess before we broke out of the tree line to follow the knife edge mountain. We spent the first night up on top out of the mosquitos. We made it to our spike camp late the next day.
I was like a race horse at the gate in the morning, waiting to head up to where we had seen a band of 12 rams the day before. They were so far away from our camp that even with the swaro spotter we couldn't tell if they were legal or not but we could tell that they were all rams. We spent a lot of time checking every canyon on the way up as the sheep were no longer in their same spot. I peeked up over a chimney rock to see 4 rams bedded 500 yards below us. I set up for the shot with my .264 WM and waited around an hour for the one legal ram in the bunch to stand up. When he stood, he gave me only a butt shot. He then took about 5 steps and disappeared into the next canyon. We grabbed our gear and ran higher for a better vantage point to no avail. The sheep had to come out into sight eventually no matter which way they walked so we decided to lay down and wait them out rather than run the risk of pushing them by getting closer. After about an hour I could see about 2 inches of spine from one of the rams. A few more steps and it was confirmed that this was the shooter. With him ranged at 430 yards I took the broadside shot AND MISSED!!! Right now I'm thinking about the fall I took earlier that day and knew that my rifle had taken a hit. With the bullet striking the dirt just over his back and knew that I needed to compensate. The ram bolted forward and started running right at me. I rechambered and held low on his brisket and squeezed. He instantly went down at the shot and luckily stopped just shy of a HUGE drop off. This was the highlight of my hunting life by far to finally get my Dall Sheep. He's not a giant dall by any means but the adventure, the challenge, the sweat, the burning muscles and blisters and the fact that I got to share this with my wife makes him a MONSTER!!
In camp after 2 days of packing him out with a belly full of backstrap!
