One Heck Of A Ride

173 China’s High Mountain Blues book’s Tibetan gazelle category at the time.) Before continuing on our hunt, the guides laid a carpet on the ground and we ate our lunch. I was surprised to see it was quite warm in our protected valley. A couple of hours and 1,500 feet higher on the mountain I saw my first Chinese blue sheep. There were at least sixty of them, maybe more, and the rams were moving back and forth, mingling with the ewes and lambs on the rocky hillside 350 yards away. Despite their name, I could see that these sheep were more brownish than blue or even blue-gray. Lad was up first, and I videotaped him getting ready to shoot before I picked up my binocular and saw and heard his bullet strike a fine ram near the rear of the herd. After more videotaping we found another herd that afternoon, and this one had “only” thirty five to forty sheep. It was impossible to count them, and because both sexes had horns it was extremely difficult to select a good trophy. I wanted to get closer but there was no way to do so. With the help of two guides and our interpreter, I finally picked out a ram. He staggered at my first shot and went straight down when I shot him again. His horns were not as good as I’d thought they would be when I shot him but I had my first Chinese blue sheep. Before our guides packed it back to our camp, I spent a few minutes examining my handsome animal. A dark stripe separated its blue-tinged coat from its white underparts. The backs of its legs were white, but their fronts and its chest were black. Its horns grew upwards and out from its head before curving backwards. Lad and I returned to camp well after dark that first day. The doctor greeted us, but had to listen to our heartbeats with his ever-present stethoscope before pronouncing us fit to sit down to dinner. Although we hadn’t given a thought about taking a second sheep when we booked this hunt with Bob Kern, Lad and I decided we’d spend the remaining days of our hunt trying to find larger rams. We left at first light with our guides, interpreters and Billy Richey, riding our ponies toward the highest mountain in sight. Billy hadn’t taken a gazelle yet and as we were approaching the summit one of the guides spotted a herd more than a mile away. Lad and Billy, and a guide and an interpreter left us and went after them. I’d been having trouble with my .30-.378 so before Lad rode off I asked if I could borrow his rifle, just in case we found a good sheep. Meanwhile, my two guides and I sat down with our binoculars and glassed for sheep. Six rams were above us, but all were about the same size as the ram I’d killed. Across a big canyon with a rocky ridge behind him was a sheep with spectacular horns. The guides and I began the stalk by working around the head of the canyon and crossing a rockslide. When we stopped about halfway to him to see if he had moved, we got another look at his horns from a different angle and a background of snow. Those horns looked even larger than before. We had almost reached where I planned to shoot when one of the ewes with the big ram saw us and the entire herd spooked and ran over the ridge and out of sight. The big ram made a fatal mistake, though. I had convinced myself that I’d never see him again when he suddenly appeared on the skyline. He had come back to see what had spooked his ewes, I suppose, but whatever the reason I shot quickly with Lad’s Browning semi-auto .300 Winchester Magnum. My first shot raked him without breaking a bone, and he turned and ran straight toward me. My next shot was a frontal shot into the center of his chest that dropped him like a sack of salt. My guides got to him long before I did and were sitting on a rock and smoking as they waited for me. I was having trouble breathing