One Heck Of A Ride

62 Sheep from one side of the Fraser River are considered Rocky Mountain bighorns, while sheep on the other side are classified as California bighorns North American Sheep the time, other California and Rocky Mountain bighorn hunts were selling for up to three times more than the $6,000.00 this outfitter charged. With my sheep hunt over so soon, Ken arranged for me to hunt a mountain goat on a nearby Indian reservation. After three days of hunting, we finally located a nice billy and a nanny in rugged, steep terrain. To reach a place where I could shoot the billy, we had to circle the mountain and approach it from above. When we reached where I planned to shoot from, a goat was feeding in the same spot where we had last seen the billy. “Shoot it,” Ken said after taking a quick look with his binocular. My shot sent the animal sliding downhill until it got wedged in the cliff’s face. We had to crawl and scratch our way down the side of the mountain to retrieve it. “It’s a nanny,” Ken said as he approached the animal. I was disappointed, of course, but what had happened was the billy and the nanny had changed places on the mountainside while we that evening. Carrying my own rifle and wearing my own clothes and boots, we left early and drove to where Ken had been seeing a herd of sheep with a big ram regularly. At first light, we found a group of sheep the instant we peeked into the canyon but his ram wasn’t with them. There was another mature ram, though. “That’s a good one on the far right, just above that ewe,” Ken said when he found it in his binocular. I wasn’t excited about shooting Ken’s No. 2 ram the first hour of the hunt, but the more I watched that sheep the more I liked him. “Okay,” I finally said, and found a place to shoot from. The sheep hadn’t seen us stalking them and were feeding quietly about 175 yards below us. When the ram turned broadside and dropped his head to nibble on something, I shot and he dropped in his tracks. While we were deciding the best way to get to my ram, Ken pointed to the Fraser River in the distance. According to the SCI Record Books, any sheep found east of the river is considered to be a Rocky Mountain bighorn. Sheep taken on our side of the river are California bighorns, he said. My ram was an SCI bronze medal animal that scored 155 3/8 SCI, ranking him near the bottom of the record book. Although there might have been a larger ram somewhere nearby, I was happy with him. This was the easiest and shortest sheep hunt I have ever done. It also was a bargain. At Author with his California Bighorn Sheep