One Heck Of A Ride

59 North American Sheep two young men would be my temporary guides. After Lynn flew the two men and me to the cabin, I passed my time waiting for Max to arrive by hiking and glassing for game. Thinking there might be more game on the other side of the river, I crossed it with water nearly up to the tops of my hip boots. Despite the bromide about grass being greener on the other side, I saw no sheep, caribou or moose across the river. It was late afternoon when I returned to camp. Max arrived with the horses after my temporary guides had prepared our dinner. The plan called for Max and me to ride back to the main lodge three or four days away, hunting along the way. Max and I saddled up and got an early start the next morning. Not long after we were on the trail, we spotted a big bull moose with good antlers. After tying up our horses, we went after it on foot and I shot it. After packing its meat, cape and antlers back to the cabin where Lynn could retrieve everything, Max and I took the horses and set up a spike camp where he thought we might find a caribou. We spent a couple of days there before I shot a caribou bull near our tent. While we were skinning the animal, Lynn flew over and circled us. He told me later that from the air he could see I’d taken a good bull. That same night, Max and I were awakened during the night by the sound of something chewing on something nearby. “It’s probably the horses,” Max said, as I fell back to sleep. We awoke to learn it had drizzled during the night and that a grizzly bear had fed on my caribou’s gut pile. We saw the bear as we were riding out, but we could only watch it. Lynn had warned me that because I’d killed a brown bear two years earlier I had to wait another year before I could legally kill another brown/ grizzly bear in Alaska. The next day, we watched another bear digging for grubs not far from where we set up another spike camp – a long way from the caribou’s gut pile -- to hunt sheep. We saw no rams I wanted, though. We reached the main lodge the next day and spent the night in one of the cabins after leaving the meat, head and cape of my caribou with Lynn. The next morning, Max and I rode off again, heading to Alaskan Range’s higher mountains for Dall sheep. Only two days remained in my hunt, and we saw no legal rams that first day. The next day, my last day, Max spotted a full- curl ram on top of a mountain and put together a good stalk for us. It was mid-afternoon before we got to the animal and I was able to take him. He was a handsome ram with, as Max had said, beautiful full-curl horns. It was nearly dark when we reached the lodge with the ram, my second Dall sheep. Lynn Castle and his wife were pleasant, hard- working people and I enjoyed hunting with their outfit. Their lodge (it had taken Lynn fifteen years to build it because of the weather and the fact that absolutely everything that went into building it Alaskan Baron Ground Caribou