One Heck Of A Ride
57 remained of that day swapping stories in that box, and getting to know each other better. INSERT WP CHPT 05-03, 05-07 North American Sheep Author with sheep guide Jim Frazier Box that served as base camp for author’s first sheep hunt. We hunted from the box for several days and although we saw rams, all were either too far away to stalk late in the day or their horns were not of legal size. One morning, as I was using the spotting scope to glass across a wide canyon, I saw something that left me amazed at how well wild sheep get around in the roughest mountains. Three young rams were on a sharp pinnacle of granite that went almost straight up for twenty feet or so when one of the sheep jumped flatfooted across nothing but air to the next pinnacle. The second ram had no trouble following him, but the third didn’t make it all the way and was hanging by the hooves of his front legs until he finally scrambled up to join the others. It really was quite a sight! After a couple of days of hunting from the box, we decided to take our one-man tents and sleeping bags and set up a spike camp about halfway to where we had been seeing sheep. When we woke up the next morning, it was to a world of white. At least six inches of new snow covered everything. At least six inches of snow fell overnight at the hunters’ spike camp. Bob and I had agreed he could take the first good ram we found, and when we found a suitable candidate that morning, I set up the spotting scope to spot for him. “He’s definitely legal,” Jimsaid after watching the ram for a couple of minutes. Bob fired almost immediately, and Jim and I both heard him groan. “Did I hit him?” Bob asked. “It was a solid hit, and he’s down,” I said with my eye still on the scope. I didn’t see the gash Bob’s scope had opened up above his eye until I looked at him. The blood had blurred his vision, but a Band-Aid and a butterfly strip from my pack
Made with FlippingBook
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NjI2MjY=