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I shot this ram in 1983 when I was just 16 years old on a hunt by myself on Saturday, Dec 3, the last day of the season in the famed Canmore bow zone.

On that day, I was dropped off in the early morning darkness by my Dad on the side of the highway. My plan was to hike several miles to the back of a valley, and see if there were some sheep up there. I hiked all day, sometimes in deep snow, and in my hand was a state of the art, compound bow, shooting a wooden arrow at a blistering 190 ft per sec. Homemade turkey, feather fletches were on the back end and a glue on bodkin broadhead was on the front. My Dad had also glued tiny pieces of razor blades to one of my bodkin heads to make it sharper. The arrow only had one razor left because I had shot it at something else but had retrieved it, two razors had come off. I still figured it was better than the other arrows I had because they had no razor blades. Arrow tuning wasn’t my strong point back in 1983.

I ended up hiking all day, shooting the ram at 15 yards, right in the heart, it rolled way down the mountain. I climbed down to it, took a look at it and then hiked out to get help. I got back to the highway at dark and told my Dad the story. He said, “Congrats, we will go get it tomorrow.”

We did and got it scored at 175 gross and an official 173 6/8 net. I didn’t think it was that big a deal until I spent the next 40 years trying to get a bigger one!

Here’s my story. (Might take me a few days, weeks, please be patient)

Very cool pictures.

Anyway, back in 1983 The Canmore bow zone had over the counter sheep tags that went all the way to the last Saturday of the last week in November. But still not a lot of sheep were killed, I only knew of a handful of hunters that killed sheep each year. 1985 was probably the peak of it all when snow and cold hammered Canmore and I think 17 rams were killed that year, Chuck Adams was hunting that year too, camped up on the side of the mountain in 30 below temps! We thought he was nuts, not just because of the cold but because we would walk by his tent in the dark in the morning after a good nights sleep in a hotel. You just needed young legs to go up and down every day. I was 18 years old and figured an even bigger ram was soon in my future! How wrong I was, a big, long serving of humble pie was coming my way

We saw some big rams in 1985 and I missed a couple shots at a giant, low 180’s ram, range finders made any shot over 30 yds a challenge. I kept at it from 1985 to 1991, getting out at least a few days a year specifically for sheep and not shooting at anything under my estimated 175. It was hard to not be distracted by all the elk, mule deer and whitetails down in the valley though. We shot a few of those, the good ole days!

I'm really looking forward to this story! Heck, it would be fun if you retold the whole story of the first ram!

In 2006 Matt and I hunted mule deer with Mike as his first hunters in his new concession up in Spirit River. Mikes, Mom, Dad and brother Phil were there as well. Rock solid, big family for sure.

As good a guide as Mike is, he IS an amazing accomplished bow hunter. Mike may have more Canmore rams than any one. Thanks for posting this hunt.

Keep it rolling!!!

Mark

And the story of your first big ram was great. I think most of us older bowhunters can relate to hunting with rigged, subpar equipment.

I hesitated to do a thread on it all, didn’t want to seem too braggy about it but I love to read everyone else’s adventures too, so I figured why not?! Hopefully you enjoy me going down my own sheep hunting memory lane.

(I think Tom Hoffman has killed way more rams than me on guided hunts with the Simpsons. Maybe some other Americans have too, they like to keep it pretty low key.)

My 1992 ram was killed in November when it was either still an over the counter tag or an easy to draw resident tag, I can’t remember. Good rams were getting harder to find and I was frustrated with several years of passing up rams and not finding many big ones. But I wasn’t hunting all over the zone either, I was kind of sticking to the easier to hunt areas that I knew well.

For the story on this sheep I decided this year I would shoot the first no-doubt legal ram that I found and hope he scored well.

I was hunting with my buddy Jeff Gaudry when we spotted this ram from the highway, hanging out with some ewes. You can’t shoot a ram within a 1/2 mile of the highway though. We hatched out a plan where Jeff would try to stalk up/walk up on the ram and I would go to the escape route. In the rut with ewes around the rams can be pretty mellow and acting like a hiker and walking up on them is probably the most effective way to get a shot opportunity. If you can stay totally hidden then a stalk out of sight is best but if they can see you, we don’t get sneaky, we just try to walk up on them. If they get nervous then we would just follow them. Sometimes they would move off into the no hunting mine property or get in the cliffs. Jeff and I would risk our lives by going in the cliffs, young and dumb.

In the end the sheep moved away from Jeff, I picked a good escape route and they came my way. I could see them coming for 100 yds and held my spot. The ram ended up walking by at 20 yds! One aluminum, 2215 arrow topped with a modern Thunderhead 125 grain broadhead did the trick. He went 80 yds and piled up. He was a great looking, almost full curl ram, much longer in horns than my first ram, 37 compared to 34, but smaller bases kept his score well under 170 at 163 6/8 net, about 165 gross. A full 10 inches less than my first ram, this was my wake up call on how big the first one was and how tough it might be to kill a bigger one.

Figured out we are dang close in age, Mike! You definitely grew up with legends in legendary country! Love the story of your first big ram… I was dreaming it while you were living it!

So looking forward to the next installment!

A successful Alberta sheep hunter has to miss a year of sheep hunting before he can buy another tag or enter the draw. (Non residents have to skip 2 years.) So after killing my 1992 ram I didn’t hunt them in 1993 and now I was up to my neck in my outfitting and guiding business. I was taking 20 mule deer bowhunters, 8 archery antelope and 10 rifle mule deer hunters per year, guiding as many of the hunts myself as I could, sheep hunting would have to wait till I drew another November tag. Then I would make the time to hunt them. No bighorn sheep hunting for me from 1993 till 1998.

I had a fellow guide for the first 2 days of my hunt, Cam Lancaster, but Greg dropped a note from a plane to tell Cam to go back to the air strip and get picked up, he needed him for another job. I was on my own, which was fine with me. I had enough food for 9 days and killed this ram on the 10th day, completely out of food, sheep meat was my food till I got picked up at the end of the day on the 11th day. No radios, no maps, no gps, no compass and certainly no helicopters, just bush plane airstrips. You just went back to the airstrip and waited for pickup, hopefully you had a food stash, mine had been stolen by a bear.

It was a 70-80 yd shot with an aluminum 2314 arrow and a thunderhead 125 again. No range finders yet too. It was a beyond the last day, desperation, Hail Mary shot after blowing several stalks on this same ram and missing him one other time. I dogged him for the whole hunt, moving camp 3 times. He was with four other rams but after being harassed by me he left them and started hiding in the trees. I spotted him on my way out, thinking I was done. I dumped my camp out of pack, hiked back up over the mountain and down the other side to get close to him. Huge cliffs wouldn’t allow me to sidehill to him. The closest I could get was 70-80 yards and the wind was howling. It was my last, last chance, Greg was selling the area so I shot and got lucky. I had no lightweight gear either. The pack out was a brutal day and a half with 127 lbs.

(The Lancaster family bought Nahanni Butte the next year and unfortunately Cam was killed in a plane wreck. Such a shame, he was a great guy!)

I'll be checking for updates through Christmas.

Great read so far

Keep it coming. This is awesome!!

Christmas can wait....this is sheep hunting!!!:)

Mark

In Alberta we have a priority draw system where tags are drawn only from the highest priority draw pool and they post the results so you know when you have say a 50% chance, 75% or a 100% chance of drawing a tag. It’s a great system. In 1998 I drew a tag for the November hunt. This time I was going for a big one, 175+for sure, preferably 180+, I had high hopes and big plans!

I was going to get away from the front slope hunting along the highway. I had heard about hunting way back in Cougar Creek but I had never been right to the back end where the outfitter, Randy Babala had a camp flown in by helicopter. The guide and hunters and their weapons had to hike all the way in, no free ride for them! I decided I would go check it out for at least a couple of days. Me and my 70 lb pack went for a big hike, I was told it was 4-5 hours to the back of the valley…

It's Christmas Morning for me right now and the bride is still scrambling with gifts.... So I'm on Bowsite!

I was in Mike’s camp this fall and his trophy rooms and stories to go along with them are great! I remember the him telling the Dall story from 95 in camp, it was excellent! Keep it coming!

As I got to about the 2 hour mark of my snowy hike I realized I had made one crucial mistake. I had forgotten matches, or a lighter or anything to start a fire, so dumb, so dangerous. When I was 16 yrs old that was the only thing my Dad made sure that I had with me and here I was without it. I figured I would get some from the outfitter Randy but I had heard that he was a grumpy bugger, not easy to deal with, hated when resident hunters showed up at the back of Cougar. Would I be in a fistfight I wondered, maybe? I kept hiking…

Now when I hit the 4 and then 5 hour mark of my hike I really started to wonder how long it was going to take?! All I knew was to take the 2nd creek on the left, no gps or map for me. I found the 2nd creek, took a left and boom right in the creek bottom was a nice ram with a couple of ewes, down low on the mountain. I looked the ram over, he was legal but not what I wanted. I walked by him and the ewes at 30 yds. A Banff park ram for sure, not too bright.

I think it took 6+ hours and the snow at the end was knee deep when I finally spotted the outfitter wall tent and my apprehension began to grow, what would this really be like?! I noticed two big sheep heads laying in front of the tent and I yelled out a greeting. Two guys came out of the tent with big smiles on their faces and we introduced ourselves. I wish I had a picture of that! They were Alberta resident hunters and man had they had some success! I can’t remember their names, dang it.

I hiked up higher and as I was getting out of tree line a ram walked by 100 yds in front of me, a big one! Full curl, double broomer, very heavy. He was going at a pretty good clip headed somewhere and he disappeared from sight. I got to his tracks and followed them, very excited to be tracking what appeared to be a giant!

I quickly caught up to the ram, he had been heading over to a group of ewes and now he was checking them out. The hill in front of me had a roll to it and I could only barely see his back and horns when he lifted his head. I was already convinced that he was a Booner so now I was just trying to get close, I wasn’t attempting to size him up anymore. I had a new, laser rangefinder in hand and had been practicing out to 60 yards or more. At 53 I could see enough of his body and he was focused on the feeding ewes. I took a shot with my aluminum XX78, 2314’s armed with a Thunderhead 125 once again. The arrow struck too far back on the quartering away ram hitting him in the front edge of the hip, but burying forward to the fletch. That will do the trick I thought, the ram stumbled around, tried to bed, the ewes scattered and then he fell off a 20 foot cliff, down into deep snow. He couldn’t get up and soon expired. I was thrilled and plowed through the deep snow to get at him!

I was in Mike’s camp this fall and his trophy rooms and stories to go along with them are great! I remember him telling the Dall story from 95 in camp, it was excellent! Keep it coming!

Thanks for taking the time to share.

Then I had to get him out of there, on my own. You can’t put meat, hide or a weapon on the helicopter for the ride out. Most of my camp went in the net for the chopper to carry out but I had to get all the sheep out myself. And I decided to skin it for a life size mount to maybe sell, they are worth a lot of money. I took every scrap of meat and the life size cape, my bow, binoculars and spotting scope. My pack was just under 130 lbs and it took me all day to hike the 10 miles out of there in the snow. What a tough hike that was! I fell down at one point and slammed my bow against a rock and cracked the limb. There’s no way I could do a hike like that now with that kind of weight.

The ram gross scored 165, about the same as my last lamb tipped ram from 1992. This one just had a very different look which was kinda cool too though. Back to the drawing board, literally!

Bernie

I waited for 2000, 2001, 2002 and then the government introduced the zone 408 bow only November draw tag. 408 is right beside the 410 bow zone but it’s a rifle zone with over the counter tags open all of September and October. There are no outfitter sheep tags in it. It’s a very rugged zone with big mountain peaks and lots of hidey holes for sheep.

In 2000 a big chunk of the area had been turned into a Provincial Park and the ram harvest numbers went way down. Sheep were dieing of old age in the park or in 408 but they weren’t moving into the huntable zone until November. They figured 5-10 more rams could be killed in November that were dieing of old age anyway. They could make it a rifle draw with 5-10 tags or a bow only hunt with 20 or so tags. Since the rut would be on even a bowhunt would have a pretty high harvest.

They went with 20 archery only tags with a November 1-30 season. I knew it was now a much better place to kill a big ram than 410 so I entered the original draw along with about 400-500 other bowhunters. It meant I couldn’t enter the 410 draw but I could still hunt it with an over the counter September/October tag if I didn’t get drawn in 408. I’m so glad I got in the original draw pool!

So from 2000 through 2005 I didn’t hunt sheep while I was waiting for my 408 draw tag. It was now a random draw with 20 tags for 400-500 guys who all had the same priority. I started hearing about the November 408 bowhunts and they sounded crazy!

The main two main areas to hunt, Mount Allan and Wind Ridge or Windy are wintering grounds for the sheep. They are very steep, grassy slopes, with cliffs nearby, and hunting the areas without crampons on your boots is life threatening. A hunter actually died on Windridge when he went sliding down the open slope. A memorial plaque is on the mountain as a reminder to bring your crampons.

The snow would pile into the areas but the strong Chinook winds would blow the grassy slopes free of snow, but also polish them up and then they would freeze up when the minus 20 and -30 temps rolled in. Many guys who were in the draw were in way over their heads, not bowhunters, not sheep hunters, and definitely not used to the rugged, snowy, cold conditions they were about to face!

The winds could reach over 100 miles an hour on the top of Mount Allan. Some hunters made one hiking attempt and then quit, But if you were a seasoned November sheep bowhunter it was paradise! The sheep were there, about 50-100 of them would come into Windy and 150-200 on Mount Allan with 20% of them being rams and some big ones! Sometimes big, dumb Park rams. A 180+ ram or and even a 190 was a definite possibility. If the snow didn’t come in November though the sheep would be dispersed all over 408 and the hunting would be tougher, it’s a bigger zone than 410 if you have to start exploring everywhere in it.

I decided to give it a try with my brother Phil and if nothing else we would have some fun, busting our butts hiking all over the mountains looking for sheep. We weren’t going to be too picky on size.

Well, we got lucky and found a group of rams and I got a range found, 73 yd shot off a big cliff across a canyon. This wasn’t an old school Hail Mary, it was a more calculated shot with a modern 2006 compound. I drilled him perfect on a slight quartering away shot, and he went rolling down the mountain for Phil and I to go retrieve. Another tough pack out and I had ram number four, an 8 1/2 yr old, 165 inch ram. I was thrilled, a solidly legal ram in the general season!

Take your time, we got nowhere to go.

We were usually backpacking in and staying for a few days. We would begin a days hike often in just long underwear but with a puffy jacket at the ready to put on as soon as you stop or if the wind picks up. If the weather is nasty you don’t feel like stopping to drink water or eat which is not good, you won’t last. A water hose to a water bladder on your pack freezes up so you have to stop and get out your water bottle. You want to start the day with hot water in the bottle or it will freeze up too. We would carry spare clothes, full rain/snow gear, ski googles, extra food, a tarp and of course matches! Haha. And a few lighters, fire starter etc.

Finding boots that are rugged enough to hike in the mountains, will take a crampon, but still keep your feet warm in -20 C/0 F or colder is a challenge. If you get the boots wet in the snow when it warms up midday then they freeze like a brick overnight.

A part of you has to somehow enjoy the adversity of it all, doing something most people just wouldn’t want to do, even if they could. It’s not enjoyable half the time, and can be very uncomfortable, maybe it’s a mental illness?

What you describe in is beyond grueling

Keep feeding us hungry bow hunters MIke!!!

Mark

Thanks for sharing,

Robb

Now after killing a general season ram, which I thought was nearly impossible or just a random fluke by elk hunters it gave me hope that maybe I could find a big one in the general season? I could now get 3-5 days off in October from guiding to see if I could find a big sheep in WMU 410 or even in WMU 408 but I would be competing with over the counter rifle hunters in 408 for all of September and October.

I had to sit out 2007 and then get sheep hunting again in 2008. I did several solo hunts and some hunts with my brother hiking all over the zone from 2008 to 2015. You truly have to simply enjoy hiking in the mountains with low expectations to even see rams never mind a big one. There are quite a few other hunters and if you do find rams most times someone else is already looking at them too. They are usually in bachelor groups with the odd, loner or two buddies hanging out together.

I also fine tuned my gear into the best clothes, mostly Kuiu, the lightest pack, sleeping bag, thermarest and bought a Kifaru tipi tent and stove. Wow! What a game changer! Thrown in a laser range finder and the latest tack driving bow and it was nothing like the 1980’s. Of course there weren’t the big sheep like the 80’s either though. Dam which is better? Big sheep but little chance of hitting one past 30-40 yds unless you are a range guessing guru or great gear and the ability to easily stay out for days at a time and shoot well out to 70-80 yds or more for some guys?

Anyway, from 2008 till 2015 I hunted about 35-40 days total and I found some rams and could have probably killed just a couple of 160 class rams but only had three opportunities on big ones. One big, double broomer, full curl ram bedded on the very top of a big bare mountain peak in a pile of boulders. I just barely caught him walking across the slope and bedding down. It was a very stalkable final 100 yds if I could get there and back safely. It would involve taking a very intimidating, exposed ridge climb to get to him on a somewhat windy day though. Not too windy to shoot, but it would be tricky. It was noon and I gave myself a 5 pm turn around time so I would be completely out of the nasty stuff by 7 pm and headed back to my camp on an easy trail at last light.

Finally at 5:01 pm I reached the top. I couldn’t see the ram in the boulders though. The wind was blowing so I stripped my arrows from my bow quiver, so my bow didn’t act like a sail and I tried to spot the top of his horns in the rocks. I was certain I was within 50 yds of him. He spotted me first, stood up, I went to draw and he bolted off down the mountain. Game over. He won. I hiked back to camp 3 1/2 hours and ran into a grizzly at 30 yds at last light. He growled at me and I slunk away, not wanting to get mauled that day with just my bow and maybe some pepper spray on hand. Fun, fun.

Thanks for taking us along, this is truly awesome.

It really doesn’t get any better for sheep hunting stories!

The sheep finally came out of the trees in the last few minutes of light and the biggest ram, a solid high 170, broomed ram, gave me a 91 yd shot opportunity. It was tempting, he was perfectly broadside, I could dial my sight to the exact yardage, there was snow… I passed and hiked off the mountain, my last day that I could hunt that year. Another bummer defeat.

And then I had one other mid to high 170 “loopy” horned ram feeding at 40 yds, broadside, completely unaware of me. The problem was that I couldn’t say for certain that he was a legal sheep, he was 9 1/2 yrs old but I couldn’t be 100% sure so I passed on him too. He was in a band of 13 rams and again it was my last day to hunt, that was in 2015. By 2016 I thought I had the over the counter, general hunt, pretty figured out, where to go, how to approach places, where to glass, and to cover as much ground as possible, don’t think there is one secret spot, look everywhere, high and low from daylight till dark. Don’t be a wuss.

2016 came around and my brother Phil could come with me this time for a 3 day hunt. I told him I felt good about our chances this year. “Really?” He said, “I’ve never heard you say that before.” I do like quiet optimism better. But I was hoping we could find that same band of rams. The weather conditions were very similar to the year before, and it was about the same time of year. I felt good about finding them. So we hiked and glassed, hiked and glassed.

Kevin West, that must have been an entertaining hunt. He was quite the character! Haven’t seen him in a long time, good guy, as far as I know? How far a shot did you get, which day? Just curious

It was quite the adventure guiding those hunts, best ram I guided to was a mid 160’s, the hunter Pete Iacavazzi, killed it with a recurve at 15 yds, head on shot, very exciting!

Kevin West was a great guy to hunt with. He was funny and always up beat. Great storyteller. He had been a bull rider. I think that he said that he took a first in Calvery one year. Lots of stories about the rodeos and interactions with biker gangs. He was quite an athlete. We were following a ridge when it topped out with steep drops on both sides. We were going around it on a ledge which was maybe 18"s wide at one point. The ledge broke under Kevin's lead foot. Instead of falling to his possible death, he pushed off of his back foot, grabbed onto something and ended up on the other side of the broken ledge facing out over the open valley. As calm as can be, he looked at me and said, "Don't come this way". Of course, I had already figured that out.

I shot my ram on the 6th day at about 25 yards. We had seen some rams on top of a rock formation. The next morning, we were waiting for them. We followed them by listening to them. When they were close enough, I drew, got to the edge, leaned over and shot one.

Have you guided moose for Pete Jensen? If so, I think that I was at their lodge on a hunt drinking wine with Pete after everyone else had retired and you walked in. Sound familiar?

I didn’t guide for Pete Jensen though.

I was so fired up to guide for Dall sheep bowhunts that I would have done it for free! Great times!!

And we found them! I’ll bet it was the same band of rams that I was on the year before, with two big loopy horned, heavy based but barely legal sheep.

To make a long story short, the sheep were a long ways away and we had to really get after it to get to them before we ran out of daylight. We got busted in the last 100 yds of the stalk and the sheep blew out but hung up in some cliffs. I wasn’t sure either of the two biggest rams were the class of sheep that I was hoping for so I told Phil to go for it. He made an aggressive last stalk on them while I held their attention. He ended up getting a 40 yd shot at the 2nd biggest ram and made a beauty double lunger!

The mortally wounded ram tumbled down a rock face and Phil was soon at its side. We were both hooting and hollering like idiots, shocked that we had pulled it off. Phil’s first ram, and it was a heavy based beauty!

The biggest one got away but I was out of time to go after him. We needed to get the ram and our camp out and Phil had to get back to work the next day at noon and I had to get back to guiding.

Best Bowsite thread ever so far, and only going to get better!

Back to my long winded, multi year story for anyone who is still paying attention. After my brother’s successful 2016 sheep hunt I was eager to get after it in 2017 at the grand old age of 50. But, in the summer of 2017 I was struck down by a pinched nerve in my neck, it really messed me up. I spent the late summer and all of the fall in a haze of pain and drugs, unable to even draw my kids 20 lb bow by late October. I got a C6-7, spinal disc replacement surgery in November, off the drugs and on my way to healing. (I had also had hernia surgery the year before after suffering for a painful, solid month and cataract surgery where I became half blind within just a 6 month period.) My health problems continued with upper body, nerve pain on the other side of my body from my pinched nerve side and a nauseous feeling every time I exerted myself, not good when you are trying to sheep hunt. My brother Phil is an ER doc and he suggested a battery of heart tests. All came up negative.

We ended up figuring out that the problem was a tumour in my arm pit and I had to get surgery for it in the winter of 2020. Once I started healing from the tumour surgery I realized that I had been suffering from it for years and years. I only mention all this to maybe give hope to someone who is thinking they couldn’t ever do this sheep hunting stuff because of health problems, maybe they truly can’t, but maybe they could…

I did get out in 2018 to 2022 but we couldn’t find any big rams, nothing over 170. A couple of giant snow falls had come down in September and October of those years and I think most of the older rams died in the winter or were stressed out and not growing big horns. More and more hikers and hunters were also keeping the sheep in marginal, rugged country where good feed was scarce. This continues to today unfortunately, especially in the Canmore 410 bow zone.

Keep the epic stories and pics coming!!!

Mark

So to continue my sheep hunting saga. In 2022 I once again did not draw the coveted 408 tag and my kids wanted to be a part of the sheep hunting, they had heard all the stories, so brother Phil said he would do some solo hunting and I would go to a different area first with my son Tyler, 14 yrs old and then my daughter Brooke, 16 yrs old. It was a no snow October so it made the hiking much easier but the finding of sheep much tougher, they can be anywhere, top of the mountain or in the trees, who knows?

Tyler was up first with 3 days of hiking/hunting from a high mountain base camp. It was his first big mountain hunting adventure, no trails, and he’s not a big 14 yr old so it was tough for him.

A couple days after settling in Calgary, I went to the local Archery range and noticed a poster about the Alberta Bowhunters Association having their annual Banquet at a local Hotel that weekend. Well I went and sat at an empty table at the back near the entrance. Shortly after, in walks Mike, Phil, and Jeff Gaudry. Jeff asked if anyone was sitting there. I said, just you guys and me so far.

Well that initial meeting was very beneficial for me. Thru the course of the meal and meeting we exchanged some history and I found out more about the famous Canmore Bowzone.

I also found out that Mike and Phil were both into power lifting and that Phil had the Canadian record weight in the 18yr old class. Beast, is a good way to describe those two and yet very humble and down to earth.

After getting to know the family later I could see why. Pat, their Mom was my math tutor for both my trades. She was already retired from teaching and we learned how to use a calculator together. A lovely lady that always had a smile.

Their dad, Ehor was a natural story teller and was always the highlight around a campfire. I remember once during "math class" him telling about the close call he had w a Grizzly just days before, while hunting Elk. He managed to get his banger pen out just in time and the Bear turned to the side.

When Mike and Phil were in school they used to hike the Banff-Jasper trails during their summers off. Any where from 50-100 miles at a time.

Jeff took me out to Canmore on Monday after that weekend Banquet and explained the lay of the land in the Bowzone. He was my good luck charm for a few years after that as we hunted together quite a bit. Both Jeff and Mike took me out quite a bit for sheep in those years and I missed two easy chances at Rams. We never thought that there would ever be a draw season.

Carry on Mike. A classic to be, from a hardcore Sheep hunter.

Thank you Gun for the memories of the 1980’s with Jeff and my brother and the ABA! Great times!

We resupplied and headed up the mountain with me carrying too much weight. I wanted to make it comfortable for the kids and overdid some of the gear and food. Back to back hikes were wearing me out. Brooke had a good load too, and we covered the miles. But no rams were seen, which was disappointing for her especially but that’s bowhunting. Five days of adventure with my kids and the 2022 sheep season was done for me.

In July of 2023 I found out that I had drawn the tag! I was one of five lucky bowhunters!! This is an incredible opportunity to kill a big ram, definitely the best chance in Alberta for a bowhunter. There are no non resident tags for the area, no outfitter tags.

It had a very high success rate, especially if it got snowy and cold. Many 170-180+ and even 190 rams had been killed in the past 20 years, sometimes by rookie bowhunters. The toughest part to deal with I was told was the weather, deep snow, cold and it could be super windy, especially on the main rutting, wintering grounds. There is a ski hill on the main mountain that opens in November so that tells you how much snow it can get. The hunt isn’t for everyone though. Some guys quit after one day, especially if it’s cold, windy and snowy.

I reached out to everyone I knew for advice on where to hunt. I had never hunted the main rutting area. Cam Foss, son of legendary sheep bowhunter Tom Foss sent me some routes to check out and my old friend Jeff Gaudry gave me some tips on where to go too. Jeff had done the hunt in 2021, killing an old, 170 inch ram in the last hour of the last day and Cam had extensive knowledge of the whole zone.

But I wanted current info on how it had been the last couple years and what I could realistically hold out for on the November hunt. Cam told me that a low 180 score ram was possible, but unlikely. A high 170 was probably a more reasonable goal if I wanted to make sure I went home with a ram.

I really wanted a 180+ ram if I thought it was possible but didn’t want to go home without one either. I often hear the same sort of thing from my hunters, “I want a big one, and I want to make sure I get one!” Being greedy can get a guy in trouble and I knew it well. But I was also going to give myself lots of scouting, camp prep and hunting days to get it done.

This is all of course assuming that I could even judge a 170 ram from a 180?! I’m not a sheep guide, outfitter and very few people in Alberta have ever even had the chance to judge and then kill multiple 170-180+ score rams. Bases are everything in the sheep scoring game. A decently heavy, double broomed ram with 15 inch bases and 37 long will score about 172, give him 16 inch bases and he is 180, 16 1/2 and he is 184. The Boone and Crockett all time minimum score is 180. It was a milestone I was really hoping to reach and solidly beat my 1983, 175 score ram.

(Of course to be politically correct it was actually all about getting the sheep meat and score doesn’t matter, as long as he is an old ram.)

Great updates! Keep them coming!

Good stuff keep it coming!

And as far as sheep age, any 170+ score ram is almost always, 8 1/2+ yrs old in my Alberta hunting area. You need excellent feed and low predator pressure to grow big sheep at 6 or 7 yrs old like in the Montana Missouri Breaks.

Won’t say the same for a November NV Desert ram though. Skinny and poor table fare.

But Mike needs to tell us about his last Alberta ram!

Catscratch, sheep meat is absolutely delicious! Even old rams! One of my favorites, even though rare to get it…

Looking forward to the finale, Mike!

This has been one of the absolute best Bowsite Threads of all time! Thank you!!!

Reading this I've also been fully emasculated....so that's nice.

Heck, I thought this thread was over after the opening post that looked like a big one to me

Back to my August 11, 2023 solo scouting trip. From the tips and advice I had received I went for a big hike checking out the main rutting and wintering grounds. Of course there was very sheep around in the summer but it was great to get to hike a bunch of the country. I was also looking for a camp spot that I had heard about that was hidden in a high elevation patch of trees.

But I came back in October and was smart enough to take my wife to dinner at a fancy restaurant near the trailhead and spend a night at the hotel. Then we went sheep hunting the next day. The general rifle season was on so we packed a gun just in case we saw a ram that Jen could kill while we got in some more scouting.

This time we did spot a group of rams with what appeared to be a legal one but they were way up high, and just inside the provincial park, dang it! Brooke was very disappointed. She thought maybe a rifle sheep hunt would be a piece of cake compared to bowhunting them? It’s not, only a handful of sheep get killed each year in the two month long, over the counter, rifle hunt in 408. It gets relentless hunting pressure since it’s only an hour drive from the city of Calgary. The sheep learn to stay in the park, or down in the trees or high on the most rugged, inhospitable cliffs.

I was planning on coming back November 2nd to see what sheep had showed up at the start of the season. I was advised to be patient though, the best part would be the last two weeks of November when the snow and cold really piled in. I turned on the electric fence, hiked back down the mountain and hoped for the best!

So, I came back to my high country sheep camp on November 2nd and was greeted by the sight of my tent, completely flattened. A big storm had come through about October 25th, first it rained hard, then snowed about a foot of wet snow, crushing my tent. The temps also dropped to below zero F for several days. When I got to the tent it had warmed back up, but quite a bit of snow was still around. Fortunately I had minimal gear in the tent and none of the poles were broken, no fabric torn. I shovelled off the snow, popped it back up, checked it over, took it down and set up my Kifaru tent, which I had packed down the mountain and back up again, about a 2 1/2 to 3 hr one way hike with a big load. I was in business, ready to hunt for 3 days, well 2 1/2 days once I got the tent set up.

The bad part of the storm was that it had pushed rams into the hunting territory, which might seem good except that the rifle season was still on till Oct 31! I started getting pics of all the big, old rams that got killed the last few days of the season. It was exciting to see, I was happy for the hunters, I knew several of the guys but it wasn’t good for my hunt. Oh well, nothing I could do about it and there was almost certainly another 180 class ram or two that would show up, wasn’t there I hoped?

all time classic

depending on the ending..........but if i had to bet................... my money's on Mike.

And thanks bou’bound. I know you’ve written a few great stories yourself!

Slow, careful steps with trekking pole support is best in nasty terrain. You can’t be in a hurry.

I hiked further into the back country and in a big open bowl I came across a band of four solidly legal, older rams. I looked them over from about a 1/2 mile away but it was very windy and hard to get steady. I was still pretty sure none of them were really big.

I would have been thrilled to go after these rams in the Canmore bow zone nowadays but not on this hunt. I estimated that none were 180+, that was my benchmark this early in the hunt. They weren’t in an easy to get to spot either, they would have seen me coming, and would have had to hold their ground for me to get up on them. There was no ewes with them so that might not have happened. I went back to camp.

On the morning of the 4th the wind was howling, the temps were warming up and the snow was melting off so I decided to hike out and go see my wife and kids and leave the next day for my outfitting camp, a 9 hour drive up north. That ended my first week of hunting, I had low expectations for that week anyway so I was happy.

On my best day I am a pansy compared to you! Inspirational!

Thank you for sharing this.

So you're saying bighorn sheep and bowsiters have something in common.

Keep it coming. This is awesome.

I was going to ask about the eagle also but t-roy beat me to it. Pretty cool that you can do that.

Mike, great story! Thanks!!!

But seriously, what an amazing 40 year run! So many cool stories and I can wait to hear the end!

Thanks for taking the time to share all of this!

Not only is it tough to find rams in the trees, or get close to them, then there is the challenge to make sure they are legal, even when obviously Big.

Thanks for the great thread. Your story is captivating, and seeing these old stomping grounds makes me regret getting older than the average sheephunter. :)

9 hr drive, 20 min prep in parking lot and then about a 3 hour hike up the mountain, most of it in the dark. I was bringing my crucial gear up and down the mountain in case a grizzly destroyed the camp, they can be out well into November. Camp was good when I got there, it wasn’t too bad to hike up compared to the last time because the snow was melting off. This was not good for the hunting though. It would cause the sheep to disperse all over.

I would need to climb to the very top of the mountain and look down the other side, into other drainages. I didn’t know if hiking to the top in the high wind was even possible. Winds of over 100 miles an hour have been recorded at the weather station on the top. Hiking through the sketchy cliffs in wind that makes you stumble around is a risky venture.

But no new sheep would show up in the protected bowl without more snow and cold like it was supposed to be, I was getting a bit frustrated but I reminded my self that the last two weeks would be the best. The big bowl in front of me should be packed full of 150-200 sheep with dozens of rams, I couldn’t wait but I would do some searching, hiking in the meantime, Nov 10, 11 and 12. I remained hopeful, soldiered on and did my best to enjoy my solo hunting adventure.

I’ve hiked and hunted some of those areas in the 1970’s. But without Mike’s grit or success.

Mike, did you ever hunt from the Spray Lake side?

Out of curiosity, what is the reasoning as to why Alberta has determined to make a ram legal to take based on length of horn as opposed to age. It seems to me that plenty of young but genetically gifted rams would get killed and old double broomed rams would be off limits.

On my November 10 to 12 sheep hunting adventure I ran into the local outfitter Jonas Guinn and one of the lucky 408 tag holders, Cal. They had a wall tent camp flown in by helicopter. Hiking along with them was another tag holder Travis who was after a ram with his longbow! An admirable pursuit. He had hiked up in the early morning from the trailhead and ran into Jonas and crew and joined them for the hike to top of the big bowl.

We all chatted on the mountain in the wind and cold but it was great to get to find out who at least two of the other sheep hunters were. Travis said he was a just after a legal ram and Cal said he would shoot whatever Jonas told him to shoot. (Jonas runs sheep hunts in the Canmore bow zone with his dad, famed outfitter Rick Guinn so Jonas really knows his stuff, he’s an expert sheep guide.)

We finally parted ways and I made a failed attempt to the peak of Mt Allan, it was just too damn windy! None of us had seen any big rams other than the group of four I had seen the week before, which I forgot to mention. I agreed to help them fill their tags if I spotted any rams I didn’t want to kill. We traded phone numbers. My 3 day adventure ended and I hiked off the mountain and the next day after a night at home with the wife and kids I drove the 9 hours back to my lodge.

Not sure I'd have that in me year after year. Your persistence is amazing.

And I know this damn story is taking a long time but just be thankful you weren’t dragged along for the whole thing! Haha.

I knew it was probably my once in a lifetime chance for a big ram and I wasn’t going to leave anything on the table. I wanted to know I had done everything I could do get my big ole sheep!

So on Nov 16 I welcomed my new group of hunters into my lodge up north and then the next day headed back south for my 9 hour drive to the trail head. I headed up the mountain in the last hour of light on Nov 17th and made it up to camp in about 2 1/2 hours and camp was all in order. Yippee!

It was a nice, calm night so I was able to get a good nights sleep and be glassing the cliffs first thing in the morning on the 18th. At this point in November there was supposed to be tons of sheep, some guys who had done the hunt before me said they had 150-170 sheep in the main bowl with 40-50 rams. They would be just trying to figure out which was the biggest one to go after, but they would also be dealing with 2-3 feet of snow and sub zero F temps, along with high winds. I was ready for it, an Epic Adventure Hunt!

I had all of my cold weather gear ready to go, Arctic Sport Winter Muck boots I had packed up the mountain, extra socks, foot warmers, hand warmers, heavy duty face mask, Super Duper Pro Down jacket, two 0 F sleeping bags, everything!

But it definitely wasn’t that way for me. The weather was very mild for November 18th and there was only about a dozen sheep in the cliffs with the same barely legal ram from 2 weeks ago. It was finally a nice enough day though to go “bag the peak” as climbers like to say and take a look around from the top of Mt Allan at 10,000 ft elevation. It would give me a good look into some other drainages that the sheep had possibly dispersed into. At this point on the 18th I was getting concerned about my chance for success on a big ram.

On my way to the peak I ran into my longbow hunter buddy, Travis and a friend of his who I also knew, experienced sheep hunter Dan Jackson. They were scoping out a group of sheep with a good ram right below the peak. Travis said he had already got up on the ram but missed it, so the sheep spooked off into some rugged cliffs. He didn’t have his crampons on, or his trekking poles with him and it really was a sketchy area, so he backed out and they were hatching out a new plan. I took a quick look at the ram, a good one for sure, heavy but short and asked if they minded if I headed for the peak to have a look around. None of us thought it would bother the sheep so away I went and Travis committed to doing another stalk with crampons on his boots and armed with his long bow.

I got a good look around at the top and spotted three rams with some ewes way down in the valley to the north. It was too far to get to that evening and really too far to get to and back to my camp in one day. None of them looked huge but maybe big enough? A 35 inch long ram with 16 1/2 inch bases can be 180+ so it’s never good to quickly write off a sheep because he isn’t the classic full curl and 38 inches long. The rams were in some rocky, rugged terrain but I needed to find a big ram somewhere!

I was hiking back back down the mountain towards my camp in the last hour of light when my phone buzzed and I got a text, Ram down! I was super happy for him, he had busted his ass too and he did it with the added uncertainty of a longbow! Imagine a 190 ram at 50 yds and your longbow in hand, I couldn’t do it. Good for him, he earned it!!

This is beyond epic!

At twenty two years old, in 1976, I moved to Canmore from southern Ontario. It was way different then and just starting to develop into a bit more than an old coal mine town. The big cement mine plant that I worked at was fairly recent. There was still lots of old and older guys around from "the old days". A ton of fun for a guy like me to sit in the old bar in town and listen to their stories.

On summer evening, a friend of mine from work had just stepped out of the bar for some air. There was an older cowboy had just walked out with a sack of beer and he was a bit tipsy already. His name was Wampus Guint (I think) and a good story teller. There was a big wooden hydro pole right on the corner and it had lots of nails and stuff sticking out of it. Wampus had set his paper sack off beer down and had one out trying hard to rake the cap off on one the big nail heads while a young RCMP officer watched from the across the street. He was about my age and likely on his first posting.

When Wampus finally got the cap off and took a well earned drink, the officer walked quickly across the street and right up to Wampus. Drinking in public was not allowed.

The young cop stuck his hand out toward Wampus and said 'I'll take that". Wampus looked at him for about a second then reached into the sack, grabbed out a beer and thrust it toward him, while saying "To hell you will, you open your own goddam beer". When he didn't take it, Wampus just put it back in the sack and walked off. Unsure how to handle it, he just let him go. I got to know that officer a bit and he was a nice guy and likely became a pretty good cop.

There were some characters there then and I heard some great stories.

Now back to my saga. After my big Nov 18 hike I had no good rams near my camp, few sheep actually which was very unusual for this time of the year. It didn’t help that at this point with the two archery kills of Cal and Travis, several rams had been killed in my area. Was there many left, especially with the low snow levels? Some sheep could easily still be in the high elevation park area? The sheep were so, so dispersed, it was really tough to locate them.

I decided that I needed to hike off the mountain and check out those three other rams I saw way north but come in from the south end. Cam Foss gave me the details on how best to get into that area and Jonas and Dan gave me a couple of other tips on places to check along the way. On November 19 I glassed the cliffs near camp in the morning, saw few sheep, cut some more firewood and hiked out to the truck. I drove for an hour, hoofed it up the mountain for two hours round trip to check out a spot, saw no sheep, hiked out and stayed at a hotel in Canmore. I avoided the bar so I didn’t run into Wampus Guint. Haha, but I was up early the next day for a big hike up to where I saw those three rams from a distance.

I was feeling fit so off I went at a good clip with my daily gear, including emergency stuff in case I had to stay overnight, about a 30 lb pack with my bow strapped on it. It was a well marked hiking trail but a long one that took me way in, a solid 3 hour nonstop hike to get out of treeline.

Then like I said, at the 3 hour mark I cleared out of the trees and got a good view around me. I could see them climbing the peak and I headed off a different way for another hour to check out a somewhat hidden ridge line with good grass where I was told I may find some sheep. Another hour got me over there with a better view of the back bowl below the climbers peak.

There wasn’t any sheep on the nearby grassy slopes but I spotted the three rams from the day before in the back bowl and one looked pretty big. I needed a closer look though. It was early afternoon and my legs were feeling pretty beat up at this point. I had to fight through 2-3 feet of wind crusted snow in the valley and then I lost the hiking trail on a steep sided slope in the trees, fell down a couple times, slid down the slope but I headed over to the rams anyway.

After the climbers hiked out the valley bottom I watched the sheep and I could see one of the rams just standing in the small cliffs looking around. He didn’t seem too bothered by it all. I figured the rest of the sheep, 2 more rams and some ewes were just hidden in the folds of the mountain. I continued my hike towards the sheep, shaking my head in disbelief, middle of nowhere and this happens!

I still didn’t want to shoot either one but I did want to test their tolerance to me in the open bowl, the dozen ewes didn’t care about me, they barely moved away when I approached but both rams wouldn’t let me get within 100 yds. The smaller one just walked in big circles avoiding me and the big base one left, walking up higher, out of the valley bottom. It was 4 pm by this time and it was dark by 5:30. I was a long ways from the truck and needed to get going.

I turned and hoofed it for the trail head. I didn’t have much water left though and the water I had was freezing up in my bottle, not good. It took me 3 hours of fast hiking to get back to the truck and my legs started cramping at the 2 hour mark, soon after I ran out of water. It sucked but I made it and told myself to bring more damn water next time! Quit trying to do all day hikes on a quart and half.

That was the end of my third, three day hunting stint. I headed for my southern Alberta home, visited the wife and kids for one night and drove back the next day to my lodge, another 9 hour drive. I would be back the next week for the final five days of the season. I was really, really hoping for some snow and cold to push the sheep down to the big cliffy bowl at my camp on the main mountain.

My sheep outfitter buddy Andre Van Hilten was going to help me out for the last 5 days. I enjoy the solo hunting but I knew he would be a real asset on my hunt. I couldn’t wait to be back!

Back to the story. So on November 25th I once again made the 9 hour drive south from my outfitting lodge to Canmore. One night in a hotel and I was back at the trailhead meeting not just Andre but also my other buddy Marc Nyrose. He too was in the top draw pool for the 408 tag so he wanted to come along and check things out for when he draws the tag, hopefully soon.

It had snowed a few inches since I was gone so I was hopeful that some more sheep had moved into the area near my main camp. I was told that at this time the last few years there has been 150-170 sheep with 40-50 rams, all stacked up in the basin, rutting away. We hiked up the mountain in the morning of November 26th excited to hopefully see the show of sheep. It was an absolutely beautiful day, calm, sunny but a bit cold, about -14 C/6 F. We made it to the camp in an unhurried 3 hrs. We had several days ahead of us and I didn’t want to kill our legs.

I was bummed but Andre couldn’t believe how mellow they were. He’s used to hunting sheep in the Wilmore Wilderness and he said that you don’t dare skyline yourself like we were doing or they are gone! Not like these sheep, they didn’t care, but with no good rams around it didn’t matter.

We spent the afternoon hiking to the top of the bowl and having a good look around. No rams up higher either, just a few ewes. It was a truly a beautiful, calm day but disappointing for sure. We hiked back to camp, Marc thanked me for showing him around and he hiked out on his own, leaving Andre and I with some of his extra down clothes in case it got even colder. We weren’t sure we had enough and we could always leave them in camp.

That evening on the bright moonlit night in the Kifaru tent, with a wood stove keeping us warm I reached out to several of my other sheep hunter friends on advice on where else to go? Low percentage areas or anything? Lucky we had good cell service. Cam Foss told me that he had hiked into Windridge, the secondary rutting area, the day before, right after the snow storm and he had seen about 75 sheep and 3 good rams, with one that he figured was close to 170, maybe bigger.

I know I was being greedy but I really wanted something for sure bigger than 170, something close to 180 preferably and told him so. He understood and gave me a couple tips on where else to possibly look. I wouldn’t see many sheep concentrated in any other area though, I knew that. The sheep on Windridge were probably already dispersing too.

I even found out who the two other guys were that had also drawn the 408 tag. They had been day hunting Windridge for all of November off and on, the same general area where Cam had seen the sheep. I got one of the guys phone numbers and chatted to him about it. Told him I didn’t want to interfere in his hunt in that area. He said it was no problem, he hadn’t seen any good rams anyway if I was after a big one, but he admitted he wasn’t an experienced sheep hunter either. He said he had 15 days of hunting under his belt, he was worn out and ready to call it quits. One more day of hunting Windridge and he was heading home with no ram kill. He had also seen the other hunter a couple of times struggling to make it up the mountain, falling quite a few times, so probably not an experienced, fit hunter either.

It didn’t make me want to run over to Windy and check it out, maybe I should just stay put and wait for the sheep to come to me, I thought? I was camped in the Golden Ticket area. At least that’s what everyone had told me. They will be there, 100 or more sheep, right in front of your camp! They weren’t.

I decided Andre and I would do a big hike the next day, glass the cliffs at first light then hike way north, all the way to the peak of Mt Allan at 10,000 ft elevation and go further north, dropping way down the other side, really do a big search day. Andre was up for whatever. I was so glad I had him along for the hunt!

I have no idea if that’s a lot? I never watch this kind of thing. I could do it in 2 hours with a small day pack with no snow. 3 hours with a 65 lb pack in 10 inches of snow, 2/3rds of it was a steep uphill with no trail. But I’m getting to be an old man, 56 yrs old so cut me some slack if those are some wimpy numbers

We kept hiking and the wind picked up as it got dark. Andre lost his glassing butt pad and his warm winter glove in the wind. We stumbled back, through the shale slopes and cliffs to our camp arriving two hours after dark. I was a bit deflated, not knowing what the heck our next move was going to be? Stay or go…my 11th day of hunting was over, three days left to hunt.

Back to the story.

After we arrived in camp in the evening of Nov 27th I once again reached out to my sheep friends on where to look. They couldn’t believe I didn’t have the sheep and rams right in front of my camp. Jonas Guinn said last year he had about 170 sheep and 45 rams in the big bowl but 28 inches of snow had fallen in one night on top of a foot of snow and temps were hitting O F or colder.

We mulled over the suggestions and decided that we would glass the cliffs in the morning and then if nothing was there we would pull out the camp and hike back to the trailhead, get in our truck and check out some oddball spots, see if we could find sheep somewhere else.

In the morning there was certainly less snow from the sun and wind the last couple of days and there was even less sheep. There was about 40 sheep in total but all ewes, lambs and young rams, only one squeaker legal one. We packed up camp and because of all the trips up and down, bringing stuff up, we could barely fit it all in our packs to bring back down! Thank goodness I had Andre as a fellow pack mule. With our 80+ lb packs we headed off the mountain. It was hard to take down that camp and give up on what was supposed to be the best spot but I wasn’t going to sit around and hope rams came to me. You would think even with just 20+ ewes that would be enough to draw in some older rams but it wasn’t, it was very disappointing.

The day ended with nothing to go after and me losing hope. We stayed the night in Canmore and planned to get up early and glass the Spray Lakes road again in the morning and then maybe do a hike to get a long range look at the slopes of Windridge. It seemed like our best choice. We had two hunting days left. I went to bed but didn’t sleep much mulling over what the heck we should do, where should we go?!

Just before we went on the hike, I thought about Windridge some more. It of course is a well known, rutting and wintering area and some 408 archery rams have been killed there. Cam had seen about 75 sheep on Windy with three good, but not huge, rams but that was right after the small snow storm on Nov 24th. Surely the sheep had spread out to who knows where? Plus the other two hunters had been hunting Windy almost daily all month and they hadn’t found a legal ram.

Now that didn’t make sense, how could Cam have seen three older rams and them none? Another friend of mine had the 408 tag a few years ago and he said that he checked out Windy one day the last week of the season and he only saw 30 sheep and a couple small rams too though.

It all didn’t add up, screw doing a long range look, let’s just hike the whole thing in one big 10 mile, all day hiking loop, I told Andre, put it to rest as a possibility. Get a close up look at everything, then if it didn’t pan out I had a huge 12 mile hike in mind for the last day. It was going to be a do or die hike!

He got out his spotter and they were certainly two big rams, with about a dozen ewes and lambs. The one ram was only an inch past legal but broomed off heavy. The other one was a full curl beauty! Maybe not as heavy, but broomed off too and so majestically, classic full curl. He was hot on a ewe and seemed like the dominant ram, the other one was keeping his distance.

We both couldn’t believe it, after all the tromping around the country and here are two great rams in our spotter less than an hour from the trail head. We were probably the only ones checking them out too. It was very exciting!

“ 40 Year Quest for a Big One! That’ll take 40 days to tell!!! “ LOL!

Thank god November doesn’t have 31 days. I am not sure I could wait that long to find out the ending.

Looking forward to the finale, Mike!

Back to the story.

So what do you do after you finally find two big rams on the 13th day of hunting? Run up there and shoot one? Heck no!

You see if there are any bigger ones around of course. We looked way further into the valley and spotted some more sheep, Andre looked them over with a spotter and could only see a couple of non legal rams in the group but it seemed like some were hidden behind a hill. We decided that we would go check them out which would put us toward the back end of the valley and the end of the grass slopes. We would also get a look at the rocky back bowl, see if there was anything over there too. Why not? We had an afternoon to hunt and even one more day, lots of time. Then we could work our way back towards the beginning of the valley and intercept the two big rams if there was nothing bigger in this other group. The two big rams looked pretty intent on the ewes and seemed like they would stay put. Just like a whitetail if a ram can isolate a hot ewe away from other rams he will or a ewe will go into cliffs to escape harassment until she is ready. You never know where you will see more sheep.

We hiked the treed valley bottom till we got to a small, open meadow, 1000+ yards directly below the other group of sheep. Andre looked them over some more while I got my bow off my pack and shot a judo point a few times at a stump. It hits almost exactly the same spot as my broadheads at 40 yards. I was bang on and ready to go!

Andre still couldn’t see a legal ram in this group though. We would climb higher towards them, get a look at the back end of the valley and a closer look at these sheep. We hiked up through the trees and finally broke out into the open with a view of the sheep, 400 yds away.

I said to Andre, “no matter what’s in the group let’s test their tolerance to us.” Unless you can stay completely hidden there is no point in being sneaky around sheep, at any time of the year. They have such good eyesight and something hiding behind trees, sneaking around, could be a hungry cougar, wolf or grizzly bear. If you can’t stay hidden, get out in the open. Some sheep though, even just ewes can be very spooky and won’t let you get close, especially if they’ve been recently shot at or stalked up on too many times. (Two of the other rams on November 20th that I posted about on Jan 8 would not let me get within 100 yards.) Other sheep are very tolerant to people, especially if they’ve been conditioned by harmless hikers. We had seen some hikers on the top of the mountain in their bright colors, walking the ridgeline and with the almost snow free November and warmer than normal temperatures there were more non-hunting hikers and climbers out the past month than normal.

We were betting these sheep were not going to be spooky. I was really hoping I could keep my shot distance under 50 yds, hopefully under 40. I couldn’t believe that I was even thinking about actually getting a shot after almost 2 weeks of hunting, never taking my bow off my pack. We moved towards the sheep and they spotted us so we just stood there in plain sight, they didn’t seem to care so we slowly moved closer and closer. At 150 yds we could see there was two solidly legal rams in the group! But how big, big enough? We moved closer, to less than 100 yds and both rams looked good! We kept glancing back and forth at each other grinning like idiots. 100, then 80, 70, 60, they didn’t care! Andre and I got side by side to discuss the size of the two rams, an 8 1/2 yr old and a 9 1/2 yr old was Andre’s expert age evaluation, plenty old enough, at least. Incredible, we both thought and said out loud about 50 times.

Certainly keeping me from getting anything done!

Remember he knows how the movie ends why be nervous.

To prevent you from seeing a groundhog's shadow before an answer.

The sheephunter in me will just say, No. If 40 means anything to you, that is the answer.

He did post photos on Jan 9 that shows Deadman's Flats in the distance.

I've been to all the bowls and ridges shown in the photos, looking for rams. I wonder if this awesome thread and photos will blown up the area to increased hunting pressure in coming years.... Lots of hard earned and sparsely shared "secrets" have been given out. I remember spending time with a terminally ill sheep hunter, driving around these mountains, taking him here for one last look at a place he loved, one last cast in Spray. He had killed four big rams in this area, and despite literally being on his death bed, would choke and mumble while telling me exactly how and when to be where. It killed him to give out any info. :)

Walking buffalo, you have to draw the 408 tag to hunt these places in November when there is actually sheep in them. There is only 2-5 tags and I’ll gladly help those guys get a once in a lifetime archery ram. Or you can go with a rifle in September or October when there is virtually no rams, they are all back in the park, or very few at least, scattered around in odd spots. The area already has endless rifle hunting pressure from Calgary. I really don’t think I’m giving up any big secrets. It’s not like the old days were you had to figure out the trails. Now, these are all major hiking trails, very detailed out, on an app for Kananaskis country.

Amazing thread, Mike. I'm 0-3 on Bighorns in Colorado, DIY, so I'm familiar with the highs and lows (mostly lows for me). I can't wait for your final chapter.

Matt

It’s clearly the left ram standing behind the one on the right.

Might not be 180 but I would kill the one on the right in a heartbeat.

There is no shot taken and a mind bending hike/quest for an even larger ram! Or even the ol' biblical gift from God of a gigantic ram with his horns caught in a bush. At this point anything is possible!

I decided to not shoot either ram, at least not then. I really wanted to see how big the other two rams were from earlier in the day. It had been too far to get a good size comparison to these two. Andre couldn’t believe I was going to pass both of these rams up. My choice would have been the 9 1/2 year old full curl ram but he might not have actually scored as good as the other, shorter ram. The shorter ram has big bases and a more open curl, he probably scores better? But maybe the ram from earlier in the day was even bigger? This all might seem crazy greedy but I would not get another chance on sheep like this in my life. I had one more day too.

It was getting late in the afternoon and the other two rams were last seen way at the beginning of the valley near the top of the ridge. We went hiking over to them, angling upwards to get up to their last elevation. We got just over into the next valley and here comes the heavy but only about one inch past legal ram, across the slope headed our way but way up high. What the heck? Where’s he going? We thought.

Then along came more sheep, a group of ewes and the full curl, big one, taking up the rear. They were moving faster than they should, they should have been just screwing around feeding and rutting. Something must have spooked them, maybe the hikers got too close or a predator?

We needed to get out in front of them, cut them off. Andre got out his spotter and took a quick look and said the full curl was probably a better ram than the one in the pictures. We stayed hidden from the sheep and pushed ourselves to get out in front. We were both breathing hard and busting a sweat. This wasn’t part of the plan.

Thank you for taking the time Mike.

I can almost hear the release, and then thud!!!!!

It was the same group, the heavy, shorter ram was nowhere in sight but the big, full curl ram was with the group. They had mellowed out from whatever had spooked them and were feeding in the small bowl, less than 100 yds in front of us. We looked them over, they spotted us and started to get nervous. Something had been messing with them for sure. We decided that this ram was bigger than the tight full curl one, how big? Big enough. He didn’t strike me as having big bases which he would need to break 180 though, considering his horn length and mass, but I was beyond caring at this point.

I'll start with; "Are you friggin NUTS?!?!?" I'd still be laying on the mountain fondling the horns!

Thank you for taking the time Mike.

I can almost hear the release, and then thud!!!!!

You suck!

(meant in the nicest way possible)

Back to the story.

Andre range found the ram and tried to film it with his phone. At 34 yds I drew back and tried to settle my pin, I couldn’t get it steady, my 30 pin went from over his back to his belly, everywhere. I knew I needed to keep the shot back for the quartering away position. I let the bow down.

I looked at Andre and took a minute to catch my breath, the ram didn’t move. I moved a couple steps uphill to give me better clearance on the cliff below him. Andre moved up too, ranged it and said 32. I drew again, steadied my shot, felt good about my pin position and touched off my thumb button. I didn’t do a nice pull through, squeeze shot, even though Andre went into guide mode and was coaching me to do it.

The arrow hit perfect and the ram bolted off the ridge. I looked at Andre and said, “good shot right?!” He said, “yes, perfect!” I ran across the shale and Andre followed. I crested the ridgeline and the sheep lay dead just 47 yards away. We hooted, and hollered and hugged. The only time buddies should be hugging! Haha.

We did a quick video and we both went down to the ram, with Andre filming and checked him out. He was an average body size sheep, but had a split nose and a big chip out of his horn. I’m guessing it was from butting heads with the other ram that was keeping his distance and had fled the area. So hopefully he was smaller but who knows? As for score, MY ram went from 170-180 every few seconds in my head. Andre filmed and let me jibber, jabber for the camera, very cool video to get.

If you want to post your video and need help doing so, LMK and I'll do my best to help you.

Congrats Mike on a trophy of a lifetime . Can’t wait to see it this fall. Hunt

Awesome thread from start to finish!

The ram was 8 1/2 yrs old, aged by a biologist at registration. Relatively small bases at 15 0/8, 37 by 36 1/2. My gross rough score was 172 4/8, 172 net so admittedly not as big as I had hoped. But I did all I could, one more day to go, so maybe not I guess? But I’m very happy even though my 1983 ram was bigger. My 16 year old self would be happy, I beat you, old man! Haha

I guess it might take me awhile longer to finish this 40 year quest…

THANK YOU for taking us along on a truly epic adventure!

Scott

You have posted a lot of awesome pictures. The one of the guys butchering their ram on the opposite mountain is one of the coolest things I have seen in a long time. Seeing that little glimmer of light on that vast landscape is so cool!

Epic

Thank you

Great job

Learned a lot

Do you think you saw or passed stalks at rams bigger than this one , earlier in the hunt?

Great read, great pics, simply GREAT all around!

It was a very tough year. Sheep were not concentrated. I love the long grind though, I didn’t want it to end.

I always say I do these hunts because I have a bad memory. I forget how bad it was and I fondly remember the good, exciting parts. Like I said, maybe a mental illness. I’m trying to pass it on to my kids, my wife ain’t buying it, she likes the nice, daisy sniffer hikes.

THANK YOU MUCH FOR SHARING THIS!

What an amazing story.

Truly inspirational!

Congrats

Great story and pics...I'm glad you sat on this, for 40 years ;^)

Congratulations on a great hunt and beautiful ram.

A forty year effort should be worth that.

Congrats

I got the sheep registered in Cochrane with biologist Grant Chapman. We had a great conversation. He’s registered hundreds of sheep and in some areas a ram has to make a “full curl” requirement so they like to check that too to see how many will make it from other areas. I think it’s the bottom of the horn, through the middle of the nostril or the bottom of eye socket gives it some more leeway.

Full curl is an especially dumb way to manage bighorns. You could shoot my 8 yr old 172 score ram but not the 180 inch, 10 year old, 4/5 curl ram standing beside it?!

Maybe Jim and Darrin could do a thread about their sheep hunt together in one story. One of you start the thread and then you both just keep adding as you remember it. Lots of us would love another sheep tale from the past!!

It's funny reading the part of the story where you ran into Jonas, Cal and Travis as I was hunting with Jonas's guide over in 410 at the same time. I had heard the updates of how they and you (Didn't know it was you) were doing while we were chasing sheep a few miles away.

Reading your story felt like I was right back on the mountain, minus the death hikes...

Thanks again for sharing it with us, great reading and pictures!

Big congrats to Travis!!