438 Sheep Trip!!

[Torkdiesel]

Congrats. Sounds like an amazing hunt 👍

[kstats]

Great story - Congrat's on a great ram.
K

[Double Shovel]

Nice sheep , congrats

[whitetailsheds]

Congrats Saskwhitey on a great ram!!!

[Simpatico Outdoors]

Congrats on the Ram, he's awesome!
Dedication and planning...success. You know even if you dont always connect but you come out safely, hunted each huntable day, and shared it with people you trust...that's also a success.

The story was great and thanks for the pics!

[Ryry4]

Awesome looking ram! Congrats on a fine sheep.

[Simpatico Outdoors]

Sounds like you acheived all the above
Right on!

[rasbok]

Congrats !!

[kiwimike]

Congratulations on a beautiful ram! Thank you for posting.

[woods_walker]

Great story, congrats on the ram and thanks for sharing some photos. Definitely some tough winds and all that fresh snow had to have made it a tough hunt.

[crazyfish]

great story congrats ! Would love to get that tag some day ! Thanks for sharing

[bdub]

That's a great ram, good for you. The conditions can be brutal up there for sure, way to go.

[saskwhitey]

Thanks for all of the nice comments guys. There was a lot of good memories made for sure. We got it on video as well. Maybe I will throw up a clip of it once we've got it edited.

[alpineguy]

Great ram regardless of where it came from.....Congrats!!

[koothunter]

Beautiful ram!! Gotta love sheep hunting!

[cougarhunter]

Beautiful Ram. Way to go. Congrats

[C Taylor]

I'd shoot that in a heartbeat. It'll look great on the wall congrats

[S.C.W.]

Thanks for sharing your pics and memories , and congrats on a beauty Ram !!

S

[SugarCreek]

Great ram and some great photos with some fantastic looking country. Congrats on a successful adventure.......Marco

[sevenmil]

Nice job and nice pics, sounds like a fun trip!

[Tundra Monkey]

Great ram and story!!

[rut]

Carol and I wished you guys luck as you left your horses behind and headed up. While heading for more gear the next day I noticed about 30 Ravens in the air up there and knew one of you guys had connected. Carol connected on Monday around 4pm with a heavy 7yr old. The ram is at Fish and Wildlife waiting for someone to have time to register it. We skinned it out for a lifesize mount.
The wind was crazy and for us camping on the mountain it was a survival experience mixed in with a sheep hunt....
Nice Ram!!!! Congrats!!!!

[goldscud]

Sounds like quite the adventure. Congrats on the getting the job done and bringing a fine trophy back early for the family to see

[ksteed17]

Originally Posted by rut

Carol and I wished you guys luck as you left your horses behind and headed up. While heading for more gear the next day I noticed about 30 Ravens in the air up there and knew one of you guys had connected. Carol connected on Monday around 4pm with a heavy 7yr old. The ram is at Fish and Wildlife waiting for someone to have time to register it. We skinned it out for a lifesize mount.
The wind was crazy and for us camping on the mountain it was a survival experience mixed in with a sheep hunt....
Nice Ram!!!! Congrats!!!!

Congrats! Good to hear you Guys got one. We were thinking of you guys up there in that wind! Good to hear you survived it.

[The Bit Runner.]

Just fantastic story and ram. Thx for sharing!

[Ken H]

Great ram, Congrats!!

[saskwhitey]

Hey rut, that is great news. That's 4/5 in the late season to fill tags. My rsm was 7.5 yrs old. I was thinking of a lifesize, but opted for a pedistal mount. Glad to hear you got one. Tell Carol congrats!!

[rut]

Well my big adventure began several months ago when my husband Doug came home one day and was telling our son about a lottery when my ears perked up from the other room! Apparently he had put our names in for some special hunting licenses like every other year but this time, My name was drawn! The license was for a special time trophy sheep hunt near Cadomin (just east of Hinton Alberta) I haven’t hunted in over 20 years and was quite content with that. Understanding the importance and unlikeliness of having my name drawn(only 4 or 5 names drawn per year in Alberta), my first thought was we could sell it! The rules state this is not an option, second choice, transfer it to Doug's name....this was also not an option! So I decided reluctantly at first to take on the challenge and do the hunt. My sacrifice was giving up my ritual vacation of traveling south to Vegas with my friend Wendy, going shopping...drinking wine and gambling. My preparation for the hunt consisted of target shooting every chance I could with a couple of rifles Doug owns. I preferred the 270 Winchester by far over the Lapua TRG sniper rifle. We also went and scouted the hunting area in the summer with our son Dale. Doug went a couple more times to develop a game plan as we both understood this would be difficult at the best of times but during the end November could raise the bar on difficulty! After a few target shooting sessions, I was getting quite excited and even looking forward to the adventure once in a while. Before you know it, November was here! Plans were in place to have my parents check up on our 17 and 21 year old children and make sure the 2 dogs were ok while we were gone. There is no cell service at all where we were going adding some stress for me.

Tuesday Nov 19-Doug left at 4am to get a head start on setting up the camp(we decided to stay on the mountain(I felt I would not likely be able to hike up and down 2 times per day and still be able to hunt). Since Doug used to be a big game outfitter year ago, we have the outfitters tent with wood burning stove that is good for winter conditions. The roads were terrible on the way from Edmonton and put him behind schedule.

Wednesday Nov 20-Doug continued to hike our camp up to our camp spot and had yet to get the sleeping bags into camp and had to sleep in his snow suite on the ground by the wood stove.

Thursday Nov 21-I was to meet Doug at the little store in Cadomin at 1pm and I to was also late due to poor road conditions from Edmonton. We met up at 1:30 and started to pack our food(enough for 2 or 3 days only, the rest was left in the vehicle) and clothes to take up to camp. It was -12 and VERY windy(seen little snow tornadoes randomly appear and disappear regularly). I was feeling very nervous since Doug had a panic look in his face and stressed only bring the absolute necessities, we are on survival mode....? The temperature the day before was -36 with the wind-chill so he had a couple very difficult days before I arrived. There wasn’t too much snow other than in the trees and where it drifted in gullies but It was a 3 hour long hard hike with several breaks required to catch our breath! The comment of just another 1/4 mile was getting old in a hurry...lol. Once we go there, we added wood to the fire that Doug had cut that day(enough to get us through the night). We had only a pan, coffee pot and a pail but had a nice meal(Lou's sliced roast beef, rice and corn) and went to bed exhausted by 8pm), We had the necessities to survive and one frill(a cot for me), amazing how little we really need. The wind came up so strong that night I had to sleep with my rabbit fur hat on to keep warm and to block some of the noise from the wind. You could hear the wind coming like a train from somewhere on the mountain side when all of a sudden it would hit the tent.... I was very afraid, I had camped out before but never heard the wind like this before. My sleep was intermittent between gusts and kept my mind going, thinking of everything that could go wrong.....morning came, fire was kept going all night, tent was still standing and we were ok!

Friday Nov 22- We got up at 6am(still dark), made our cowboy coffee(coffee grinds added directly to the pan of melted snow, with a few pine needles), the aroma of the coffee filled the tent and smelled incredible! We headed out to hunt, we hiked 1.5 hours up a snowy section to take us off the mine site(our license is for an area on the border but off the coal mine site). On our way we seen a pack of wolves, one was very large and black. The temperature was mild and I found myself to warm with all my gear while hiking, my boots got filled with snow almost immediately and being kind of a woos....I was only able to sit out for an hour and a half before I needed to head back to camp. I had taped my heels to avoid blisters but was only successful on one foot. The only sheep we seen on this outing were all on the mine site. The trip back to camp was better since we got on some hard pack snow and slid back down to the trail. We warmed up with some more of the cowboy coffee and Doug made another trip to vehicle to pick up his sleeping bag after he cut enough wood to last a couple more days, I stacked it around the stove so we could use it for drying our boots and gear. Doug was gone for 3 hours.... very interesting for me to go from being plugged into blackberry and laptop all the time to nothing... ...... My thoughts went from My mom growing up on the farm near Holden Alberta, without power or running water and how she had to do chores to survive every day of her youth, to my grandfather that came over from Scotland in the early 1900's and had a trap line up north with dog sled team(set up the first trading post on Great Slave Lake), I imagined some of the stories he would have had for us if he hadn’t passed away when my father was pre-school age. Doug arrived back and we had our dinner and went to bed by 8pm again, it was calm, the skies were clear, the stars were bright. The wind came up a little in the wee hours but nothing like the first night.

Saturday Nov 23-We got up at 6am again and to avoid the snowy section, we climbed a steep rocky/shale incline to take us to the spot we were at the day before. This was pretty steep and made me nervous(I am a little afraid of heights....). We met up with two of the other hunters that had been drawn for this special license. One had a guide(that brought them up part of the mountain on horseback) and the other was a hunter hiking from the bottom each day with his adult son. We sat in our spot for a couple hours but again the sheep were only on the mine site(apparently they will travel off the mine site more once the hews are in heat but we hadn’t seen them mating yet...perhaps still too early? We had seen several rams with several hews just below us on an open feeding area near the steep incline we hiked up. While we started to head back to camp the wind really picked up and we had to lean so far forward to walk across this area but left you vulnerable when the gust would stop, you would almost fall on your face from leaning so far forward, the little coal pellets(debris from the mine site) would blast your face and actually hurt. I was blown over once and hit my hip on a rock. Doug was blown over a couple times too, after that open area we came down the snowy section where we were able to slide down to the trail again(didn’t want to hike down that steep rocky/shale section!!). We took time to sit and watch the sheep, they make it look so easy to maneuver through the harsh terrain. My hip was pretty sore that afternoon so after my afternoon cowboy coffee I needed a break. Doug went in the other direction to set up a blind(naturally sheltered area to sit, protected from the wind and out of open site of the sheep) this was achieved by shoveling out snow, building it up as a wall all around a sitting area also made of snow, covered with dead fall trees and spruce bows). Doug also cut some more fire wood to last a few more days, had an early dinner and hit the sack by 8pm.

Sunday Nov 24-Doug added 3 decoys(large life like, firm posters of hews) to the blind hunting spot, in hopes this would attract the trophy sheep we were looking for(or to attract those sheep to leave the mine site), we had seen several shooters(3/4 curl of the horn) but they mostly traveled just below our tent closer to the old open pit of the mine, migrating from and an open field, down into the pit area or up on a steep narrow path above our camp. When Doug was setting up the decoys he spooked a ram away. The ram came up the trail towards our tent...only 50ft away...stood their looking at me for a minute and then went a different route. That afternoon we sat in the blind, one smaller ram came close, then proceeded up the mountain on a thin ledge over the open pit area. This was a very calm starry night, mild temperature(and the heat from the stove) was causing a pool of water to form on one corner of the tent, this needed to be drained often to avoid it spreading throughout. We used a meat tray and a used Ziploc bag. It seems that we had a great hunting area with lots of activity and we would continue to focus on this area vs the other area we hunted the first couple days. On my way back to camp this day, I spotted a large ram heading down into the opposite side of the open pit area, I watched him for close to an hour, I was curious where he could go, I thought he would surely fall into the open pit since every path looked like a dead end but he always found an effortless way to carry on. When we got close to camp, we looked back at our hunting spot and seen was a nice ram and 2 hews close to the blind we had been sitting at.....lol. Windy night with intermittent sleep but not too cold.

Monday Nov 25(my dad's b-day)- 6 am start, melting snow for our cowboy coffee we really enjoy. We arrived at our blind early that morning and waited for a couple hours. I kept practicing with the gun and scope, using the decoys as practice to make sure I was ready when the big ram did show up(Doug allowed me to dry shoot at the decoys(shooting without bullets but not good for the gun), this helped settle my nerves). I was feeling more confident than ever with the hunt and I was getting conditioned to walking in the mountains more all the time. We headed back to camp for a little while and planned to return for the afternoon. On the way back up, I sat for a couple breathers and then realized I didn’t have my hat when I got to the blind. I sat for an hour at the blind but worried that if the wind picked up my hat would get blown away...I had to go look for my hat. Doug planned to go up the mountain further to check out where that steep heavily used sheep trail went. I found my hat pretty quickly and decided I would go with him....in one section the trail was VERY STEEP and VERY SCARY(NOW, the other steep trail from a couple days earlier seemed like a walk in the park compared to this one!). We climbed up to the top area off the mine site(we were like the kings of the castle overlooking the entire valley below).... breath taking...especially for someone a little afraid of heights! We heard some shale falling on the other side of the point when a big ram came over the top approx. 50 yrds away!.....this was it...I knelt down on one knee to steady my gun for the shot, took one shot and the sheep jumped! I reloaded quickly and rather calmly and took a second shot, he went 20 yrds and dropped. Heart racing.....now what? We are at the top of a mountain...scary mountain! Thank goodness Doug knew what to do cause I didn't plan that out(I doubted I would really get one)! It would be getting dark soon and we had to make it back down to camp before that. Doug pulled the sheep over to the tree line in hopes the ravens and predators wouldn’t find it until we could get back up to look after the meat, hide and horns. We headed back through the trees, the snow was deep, hard packed in some areas, this was a difficult hike too, since you could walk on top of the snow for a few step then sink up to your thigh in snow and struggling to get up on top of the snow again! We were pretty excited but realized we had a ton of work cut out for us. The wind picked up that night, coyotes were howling and we were worried about our sheep.

Tuesday Nov 26-We were up especially early this day and ready to head up that SCARY trail to the top of the mountain again...hopefully for the last time if we could get all the meat down in one trip. On the steepest section, I seen the open pit way below, between my legs....I froze, I couldn’t move....Doug secured himself just above me and pulled me up the last few feet of the scariest section, the rest of the way wasn’t so bad....Once we got to the sheep, Doug started to gut, skin and de-bone the meat(being a meat cutter by trade he was fairly quick). The wind was blowing and it was very cold for me. We had only the one knife so I was unable to help. By the time he was done I was shaking from cold and couldn’t wait to get back to camp....I warmed up quickly though, when I had the entire hide and horns in one big hockey bag and had to maneuver the bag through the trees back down to camp. That was a work out! Doug carried all the meat in another 2 bags and heavier than my bag. We arrived back at the tent around 12:30, had a coffee and had to get the meat down from camp to the truck now! Doug took the hide and horns on his backpack while I took half the meat on mine. We made good time down and back to camp by 3:30. Doug decided to make one more trip to lighten the load for the next day....he got back camp after dark with the flashlight. I made a nice dinner and we had a plan for taking down camp the next day. This was the calmest night yet, starry night not even a breeze!

Wednesday Nov 27-I was up really early again...perhaps missing the noise of the gusting wind or just really excited to get home to my family! We took down the tent and had everything lined up. Doug had a heavy awkward load with the decoys and chainsaw and one more trip planned back up to get the tent. We started down, Doug couldn’t take any breathers since his load was so awkward so he trekked ahead. I plugged away, sweating all the way with my heavy snow suite on, heavy back pack, two big awkward sleeping bags and warm weather.... but I made it. Our paths crossed close to the truck. He was going on his last trip to get the tent, we chatted for a minute and then I waited in the truck for him to come back. I started to take off my wet gear at the truck when I realized my camera was not clipped on my snow pants anymore!!!....my heart sank....was I going to have to go back up looking for it....? I got on my dry clothes, shoulders down in disappointment, feeling sorry for myself with my blisters....and I started back up the trail when I saw it laying on the snow where Doug and I met only 150 yards from the truck! Yeah!!!! Doug arrived back a couple hours later and we were going home!(We stopped at BP in Hinton....Doug had his order planned two days earlier). We arrived home at 8pm that night, went and showed my mom and dad the sheep, hugged my parents, our kids and the dogs....and had a bath!! I had to lose the dreadlocks....little too early for our Jamaica trip in January man.

I have really enjoyed my adventure with Doug(aka, M &M...mountain man), I appreciate the simple things a little more and want a little less. I will not be putting in for this hunt again and strongly suggest Doug doesn’t either : ).
Sincerely,
Carol

[sakogreywolf]

Great read and a great ram! Congratulations.

[Advantage Taxidermy]

Great sheep for sure Olson family