The Nearly Epic Stone Sheep hunt
Posted: Mon Aug 27, 2012 2:59 pm
It had been 25 years since I chased my first Stone sheep. Lightening had struck for me on that first hunt and I took a decent ram. I was hoping it would strike again for another novice sheep hunter (my wife) and it did… unfortunately it was the high voltage type and it hit the ground near our camp one afternoon.
This was the Mrs’ first fly in trip and we had planned on spending 14 days primarily chasing Stone sheep, but also mountain goats and/or caribou if opportunity presented itself.
The Beaver dropped us off late in the afternoon and we spent a pleasant afternoon and evening around the lake shore.
Had a couple of fish for dinner and set up our cache of extra food, clothes and emergency equipment that we would leave behind at the lake. We also watched a decent mountain goat through the spotting scope feeding high on the mountain where we were headed.
It took us 2 days to get up the mountain. The first 3 hours was spent trying to push through 500 metres of scrub spruce, willow and various other forms of shin-tangle while trying not to break an ankle among the moss covered rocks and boulders hidden underneath all that crap. This got us through to the boulder slide that got us out of the scrub and we used it to climb up the rest of the way. Half way through the climb the skies opened up and the lightening storm went through. We finally made it up to some benches in the sub-alpine and called it quits for day one.
Wind and rain pounded the tent pretty good all night but the next morning showed promise and while we had breakfast a band of sheep showed up. Nothing legal but they were fun to watch. We decided to stay put for a day or so and look around but also to ferry half our gear up to the top of the mountain where we wanted to end up.
August hunting in the Northern hemisphere can be a short- sleeved shirt endeavour. But at nearly North of 60º the weather can be rather unpredictable- especially above 4000 ft.
It was a good thing I had marked our cache spot on my GPS as the day we moved camp above the tree line the fog was so thick you could barely see 80 metres. From the cache site I plotted a route to a small lake that would be out base camp and we headed out into the gloom.
The clouds really clamped down by the time we made the lake so we pitched camp, had dinner and rolled into our sleeping bags. About 9:30 PM it looked a lot brighter outside so I unzipped the vestibule and was met with this view.
We worked the slopes and valleys for 6 days without finding a legal ram (had to be full curl).
Bugs were rather annoying from time to time- fortunately the wind usually kept them away during the day then once the sun went down it cooled off to around 4-5C so that slowed them down.
One evening we heard a helicopter buzzing around the peaks. It flew up down a bunch of the small valleys then disappeared. A day and half later it returned, then we bumped into a crew of prospectors who had arrived to collect ore samples from the surrounding mountains.
This pretty much ended our sheep hunting.
We spent the next couple of days looking for goats (or “goat shopping” as my wife calls it) away from miners but didn’t find the billie we had seen from the lake or any other billies that were bigger than the one the Mrs had shot a couple of years ago.
On one of our last days in the high country we were returning to camp late in the evening and bumped into this caribou. The season for caribou had opened that morning but he did not have enough antler points on the rear beam to be legal.
Ground that took us an hour cover this caribou trotted up there in about 5 minutes- thats him on the snow patch.
So while we did not find a ram (or two) it was a very good hunt. The Mrs now knows she is capable of this type of endeavour and is already talking about a sheep trip next year. I’m happy to know I can still pack that far!
I did come back 6.5 kg lighter- now to keep it off!
RC
This was the Mrs’ first fly in trip and we had planned on spending 14 days primarily chasing Stone sheep, but also mountain goats and/or caribou if opportunity presented itself.
The Beaver dropped us off late in the afternoon and we spent a pleasant afternoon and evening around the lake shore.
Had a couple of fish for dinner and set up our cache of extra food, clothes and emergency equipment that we would leave behind at the lake. We also watched a decent mountain goat through the spotting scope feeding high on the mountain where we were headed.
It took us 2 days to get up the mountain. The first 3 hours was spent trying to push through 500 metres of scrub spruce, willow and various other forms of shin-tangle while trying not to break an ankle among the moss covered rocks and boulders hidden underneath all that crap. This got us through to the boulder slide that got us out of the scrub and we used it to climb up the rest of the way. Half way through the climb the skies opened up and the lightening storm went through. We finally made it up to some benches in the sub-alpine and called it quits for day one.
Wind and rain pounded the tent pretty good all night but the next morning showed promise and while we had breakfast a band of sheep showed up. Nothing legal but they were fun to watch. We decided to stay put for a day or so and look around but also to ferry half our gear up to the top of the mountain where we wanted to end up.
August hunting in the Northern hemisphere can be a short- sleeved shirt endeavour. But at nearly North of 60º the weather can be rather unpredictable- especially above 4000 ft.
It was a good thing I had marked our cache spot on my GPS as the day we moved camp above the tree line the fog was so thick you could barely see 80 metres. From the cache site I plotted a route to a small lake that would be out base camp and we headed out into the gloom.
The clouds really clamped down by the time we made the lake so we pitched camp, had dinner and rolled into our sleeping bags. About 9:30 PM it looked a lot brighter outside so I unzipped the vestibule and was met with this view.
We worked the slopes and valleys for 6 days without finding a legal ram (had to be full curl).
Bugs were rather annoying from time to time- fortunately the wind usually kept them away during the day then once the sun went down it cooled off to around 4-5C so that slowed them down.
One evening we heard a helicopter buzzing around the peaks. It flew up down a bunch of the small valleys then disappeared. A day and half later it returned, then we bumped into a crew of prospectors who had arrived to collect ore samples from the surrounding mountains.
This pretty much ended our sheep hunting.
We spent the next couple of days looking for goats (or “goat shopping” as my wife calls it) away from miners but didn’t find the billie we had seen from the lake or any other billies that were bigger than the one the Mrs had shot a couple of years ago.
On one of our last days in the high country we were returning to camp late in the evening and bumped into this caribou. The season for caribou had opened that morning but he did not have enough antler points on the rear beam to be legal.
Ground that took us an hour cover this caribou trotted up there in about 5 minutes- thats him on the snow patch.
So while we did not find a ram (or two) it was a very good hunt. The Mrs now knows she is capable of this type of endeavour and is already talking about a sheep trip next year. I’m happy to know I can still pack that far!
I did come back 6.5 kg lighter- now to keep it off!
RC
When are you going out hunting with the bow again?