This was a great hunt. Real unusual, but a great hunt. I went with a buddy of mine, and it was his first sheep hunt, so the outfitter spent a lot of his time making sure my buddy was taken care of. We got him flown into an area in the Talkeetnas where the outfitter had seen a good ram from the air. My buddy and his guide spent 3 days getting on this ram, and then decided he was too small. Then the 4th day, they got within 60 yards of the ram, and my buddy couldn't resist, and shot it. He measured 33 inches.
Then we had to get them out of that area. The upshot of all that is the outfitter and I spent every morning and every evening flying in a Super Cub in the Talkeetnas and the Chugach range. Over the course of that time, I saw over 100 black bears, dozens of grizzly, moose, caribou, sheep, goats, whales, salmon, etc., etc.
When I finally got dropped off in my area with the guide, we saw a real nice ram while we were coming in to land. The next day we spent working our way through the fog trying to find him, only to discover later in the early evening that he'd changed mountain ranges. We put a high speed stalk on him, but he made us at about 500 yards. I tried one shot at him, shooting nearly straight up as he crossed a slide, but shot a couple inches low.
We went back to our tent that night, pretty dejected and discouraged. My 7 day hunt was pretty much over and we were going to walk out the 7 miles to the trail head the next morning. That night it rained real hard, and then froze. The next morning, I flipped back the tent flap to see what the world looked like, and spotted 3 rams on a distant hill, grazing their way to the bottom. It was clear they were going to cross from one mountain range over to another. The spotting scope showed one exceptionally heavy horned ram that was over 10 years of age.
We hurried and threw our clothes on, grabbed minimal gear, and literally sprinted the mile up the canyon where the sheep were just crossing. I made a 250 yard shot and the rest, as they say, is history.
This ram is 37 inches long and has 14 inch bases, and he carries his mass way down the horn, for a Dall sheep. The Fish and Game aged him at 12 years old.
