R
roger
Guest
Above is a picture of a ram that I took last month on a backpack hunt in the NWT with Harold Grinde of Gana River Outfitters. The story would be more interesting if I hiked for days and fought through bad weather and dangerous conditions, but that was not the case.
We were dropped off by the bush pilot the day before the hunt and we set up a our tent. The next morning I crawled out of the tent at 5:00 AM and was looking at 6 legal rams within 300 yards of the tent. With sleep still in our eyes we were already looking through the spotting scope at two very good rams. It was decided the largest of the two was 38". We decided to hold off since it was the first minute of the hunt.
After we had a quick bite to eat we started working around a small range along the Ram River. We were seeing rams in almost every drainage, but nothing to get excited about. At 2:00 PM we found 5 rams and 10 lambs and ewes in a very green valley about 1.5 miles from our position. We could tell that two of the rams seemed good enough to hike down and take a closer look. We stayed behind a ridge and got to within 300 yards of where we thought the rams were. As we were trying to get a better look over the edge we got pinned down by the lambs and ewes. After they fed off we looked over the edge and much to our surprize there were 11 rams bedded directly under us. Once I pulled up my binoculars it was immediately clear which ram was the best in the group. We looked over the other rams just to be sure. I rested my rifle of the edge of the cliff and took the shot and the ram wilted in his bed.
After only 1/2 a day my ram hunt was complete. The ram is almost a curl and a half and his measurements were 14 x 41 and exactly the same on both sides. The ram had quite a bit of color and could be classified a Fannin. In half a day I seen 22 legal rams. So I had nine days to find a mountain caribou and we did. Harold Grinde runs a class outfit made up almost entirely of family, his guides are superb and his gear is excellent. I recommend Harold to anybody looking for a quality Dall hunt.