Salmon River Rams SATP ARTICLE
I
first became obsessed with bighorn sheep when I was a young boy. Every year my family would pack up our camper and head west from our Iowa home to the Rocky Mountains for a vacation. When I was about ten years old we found ourselves in Yellowstone, hiking up to the summit of Mount Washburn. I was ahead of the rest of my family, trucking up the hill. A noise caught my attention, and I lifted my head and a few yards away stood a mature bighorn ram. I ran down the mountain and yelled, “Dad! Dad! Bighorn sheep! Thousands of them!” I dragged my dad up the mountain to the rise and there stood, well, not thousands, but three bighorn rams. I was hooked. After moving to Idaho in my late twenties I began putting in for bighorn sheep draws in several states, only to en-
dure nineteen years of “sorry” letters. I was preparing to put in for the Idaho draw in 2016 when my fourteen-year-old son, Logan, said, “Dad, I want to put in for sheep this year.” I decided to put us in together for the draw, figuring maybe Logan’s new blood would buoy my chances. Still, there are only four tags available in the unit I put us in for, and I knew the odds of being drawn for two of them were very slim. A couple of months later I received a message from one of my friends that he had drawn an Idaho mountain goat tag. I congratulated him and then remembered the sheep draw. I punched in my number on the Fish and Game website, closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and hit “enter.” I slowly opened my eyes and was met with “Congratulations!” I was in disbe-
