In early 2010, I booked a Rocky Mountain Bighorn hunt in B.C. with Sitka Athlete Dustin Roe. I spent the next year and a half dreaming of the hunt, and when the fall of 2011 rolled around, it was time to board the plane for Cranbrook.
The weather had been warm and dry in my home of Lovelock, Nevada. I am a registered guide with Mountain Man Outfitters, the business my brother owns in Winnemucca, Nevada. I enjoy guiding, but my true passion is hunting in Alaska and Canada, and my favorite game is Wild Sheep.
When my wife Jamie and I stepped off of the plane in Cranbrook, the chill of the northern fall air immediately commanded our attention. Coming from the desert, it was a shock to our senses, as it always is on our trips up north.
At Dustin’s house, we went through the packs to weed out any unnecessary items, keeping only the essentials for relative comfort and survival. We would be trekking through the Kootenay Mountains, so we wanted to be light and fast for when sheep appeared.
From the truck, we fought through tangled timber and underbrush, twining our way up toward the towering peaks of sheep country. Dustin, Shawn, Jamie and I pushed our endurance to the limit. A light drizzle pattered down on us for a couple of hours, so we donned the Stormfronts. They were good to have, though we ended up not needing them for rest of the hunt. We reached our first night's camp before the sun set, and as soon as the Hillebergs were secured, we started glassing the surrounding ridges and basins. The first day ended without incident, or sheep.
After a few days of dogged glassing, it happened. Five mature rams. Two of them great, and one unbelievable old warrior. They were miles away, but we could tell this was the band we'd been hoping to find. We mapped out a course, packed up camp and moved out.
A day later, we came to where they seemed to have been and tried to relocate them. Easier said than done, as the view was pierced by sheer cliffs, rock spires, and slopes filled with timber so thick it could hide a battleship. But with patience, experience, and some exceptional glassing skills on the part of Dustin and Shawn, one of the larger rams appeared. He was only 400 yards away, at least fifty yards deep into the timber, lying motionless in the shadows where his left horn resembled a massive, twisting pine branch.
The old ram had everything I dreamed of: mass, length, and the unmistakable look of BIG. He mixed in with the other sheep as they fed closer to our position, never giving me an opportunity for a shot. We were three hundred yards up the slope on an outcropping overlooking their feeding area. They fed so far under us that they went out of sight, and moments later, they fed back out into view.
Dustin did the math for the shot. 304 yards, 52 degree downward angle. For my 7mm he told me to hold at 190 yards. I settled the crosshairs of the Swarovski scope behind his shoulder and gently squeezed. The shot thundered out across the valley, and then took eons to thunder back. The ram was hit, the shot was lethal, but he stood strong. I followed up with a second shot, and he went down.
This all happened so quickly that I can't recall much of what was said or done. All I remember was after the second shot, a calm rolled over me as I realized we'd pulled it off. But the sky was growing dark, and treacherous cliffs kept us from getting down to the ram that night.
We sat by the fire for a while, measuring the ram and retelling the story of the hunt. The measurements were not important, just icing on the cake that he was well into the record book. As I sat and listened to my wife and friends talk about the adventure, I remember feeling overwhelmingly proud of each of them. I was so appreciative to have these wonderful people give it their all so that I could have the chance of fulfilling a dream.
Photos courtesy Jamie Jurad and Dustin Roe.