I’M GOING SHEEP HUNTING

Remember that last word, hunting.

BY CRAIG BODDINGTON

Just the other day, I was in camp, being roasted for my 70th birthday. With far greater eloquence than I can muster, old friend Conrad Evarts described me as “Pathologically optimistic, dangerously masochistic.” Not funny, Conny Bear, much too close to home. Absolutely guilty as charged…of having at least two key traits essential to be a sheep hunter.

BY CRAIG BODDINGTON

MIND OVER MATTER: THE MOUNTAIN DOESN’T MIND…AND YOU DON’T MATTER.

PAIN IS GOOD. EXTREME PAIN IS EXTREMELY GOOD. PAIN IS WEAKNESS LEAVING THE BODY.

Cleaner mud to sleep in. Conrad (Conny Bear) gave me a T-shirt with another of my favorites: YOU DON’T HAVE TO PRACTICE TO BE MISERABLE

As a side business, we’ve considered a line of T-Shirts containing some of Boddington’s Mountain Messages:

Some will note that I’ve borrowed these from long service in the Marines, but that’s okay. Most good Marines would love hunting sheep.

As my cameraman of many years (and up many mountains) Conny Bear fixed the obvious philosophical contradiction with the caveat: “Boddington’s Big Lie.” Unstated, unnecessary to state: Yes, you must practice often to be properly miserable, and if you’re a sheep hunter (or a Marine), you will love it.

In order to go sheep hunting, it’s essential to know, absolutely, deep down in your gut, that you will take the grand ram of your dreams. Doesn’t matter that common sense and all statistics fly against you. You will beat the mountain, and the odds, and you will win. You must also know, and dread with secret relish, that it’s going to hurt.

From first day to last, you must keep the faith. The big ram is there, somewhere over the next ridge, mandatory, because, absent that belief, there’s simply no way you could drive yourself over one more crest. This is not a camping trip, nor nature hike, and certainly not a timed event. You can, and must, go at your own pace, but that big ram is a tangible goal. You know he is there. You’ll see him if you can just top out one more time.

Wonderfully, being pathological optimists, it doesn’t really matter that he might not be there. We keep glassing, until the last hour of the last day. And, with our masochistic bent, it matters much less that our feet are blistered, our legs aching, our backs hurting, our shoulders rubbed raw from pack straps. The pain will pass. Enduring it, privately enjoying it (if we must admit), is just part of being a sheep hunter. It’s not essential to be crazy, but if you are, it helps a lot.

Sheep hunting is not for everyone. Admission: It is impossible to hunt the mountains without some measure of ego, some machismo, that says to the mountain: “I am the one who will beat you…and find the rams you are hiding.” Many good hunters never take that measure; others try it once and say “never again.” None of us are blessed to challenge the mountains – or the sheep who dwell there – all the time. Doesn’t matter. You will know if mountain madness has stricken. You will long to do it again, whenever you can.

The first ascent will tell you if this is for you. If you hunger for the burn in legs and lungs, and long for the cool breeze and vista from the top, then you are lost. Doesn’t matter if you can only do it once, or if you are blessed to do it many times. You will hunger for it forever, and you, God help you, are a sheep hunter.

Against All Odds

As I’ve written, and as is true, the wild sheep is not a superior animal. He is not as wary as any deer, although this may be a matter of remote habitat vice intellect. Interpret as you may, his habitat is his fortress. To conquer the ram, you must beat his mountain. This creates special challenges that plains and forest hunters do not encounter. Mountains must be climbed. Some are steeper than others, but physical effort is a given.

Excepting impossible ascents (and recoveries), effort is just the first hurdle. Part and parcel to mountains are fickle weather. Clouds come and go, obscuring glassing. Snow and ice come and go, making simple climbs deadly…and needed country inaccessible. In the mountains, weather is the great enemy, but that’s still just part of the problem. We are not looking for a sheep. We’re looking for a ram. Not just any ram. I won’t put a number or an age. That’s personal, and depends on which sheep, and where we are hunting, but we are usually looking for grown-up rams. They comprise a small part of any population, and must meet the “legal ram” criteria where we are hunting. So, from the outset, we’re looking for a small needle in a big haystack.

Being optimists, we go in knowing we will find that needle. Being masochists, we like that it’s going to hurt. There is, however, an unfortunate reality that we manage to avoid until the last sunset on the last day. We don’t like to talk about it, and in the now-exactly 50 years I’ve written about this stuff, it’s a subject that almost no editor has ever allowed me to address. I’m not certain you really want to hear this, but it must be faced. To my thinking, better sooner than later.

You may not be aware of this, but Wild Sheep’s Editor Keith Balfourd is a very good editor. When I query an article, I don’t get just a yes or no. I get a carefully considered reply, always with snippets that create a better piece than I could have crafted on my own.

When I proposed this story to Keith, I expected immediate rejection, as I’ve received dozens of times on the subject. The response started with, “What, you mean all sheep hunts aren’t successful?”

THE MOUNTAIN DOESN’T MIND

The mountain doesn’t care one whit how long you’ve applied for the blessed permit, or how much you’ve paid for the opportunity. Or whether you could easily afford it, or scrimped for years for this one opportunity. The mountain doesn’t mind, and you don’t matter.

Once on the mountain, things are fairly democratic, because the sheep don’t mind, either. Chances are greatly improved if you’ve trained hard and well, and can get up the hill at reasonable pace…and with a bit to spare for the next hill, and the one after that. Odds are also improved if you know your rifle (or bow), have practiced hard and well, and can take advantage of that one opportunity. Which, by the way, is really all you can ask for…and you may not get that one chance.

Competent help also matters. Whether in Alaska, Canada, or the Lower 48, whether resident or nonresident (where legal), the hunter who secures a permit and goes it alone is in for a magic experience, but one-on-one against the mountain, one set of eyes and optics, is a massive undertaking, and the odds are long.

Recently, I was in camp with a gent who’d drawn a tough California desert sheep tag. He packed in his own camp, including multiple loads of water. Hunting alone, he stayed at it three weeks. He saw sheep, including legal rams, but never a ram he wanted to hang a tag on. It was, and may remain, his one and only sheep hunt, but he did it his way, with no regrets. He is a sheep hunter…and may well be a better sheep hunter than most of us.

I love the experience of mountain hunting and, although I don’t do it as much as I once did, I relish hunting alone. However, I must admit that I’m more results-oriented. After waiting years to draw a tag, unless it’s in your back yard, my advice has always been to find a competent outfitter. Of course, as nonresidents in Alaska, Canada, or Mexico, licensed operators are mandatory, and most hunts elsewhere in the world are guided.

Admittedly, the experience is not as pure, but even the great African hunter Frederick Selous hired local guides when he hunted in North America and Asia Minor. A competent outfitter simplifies logistics, and an experienced guide who knows the area increases chances for success. There’s also the safety factor. Regardless of how experienced one is, hunting in the mountains alone is just a plain bad idea. My old friend and long-time compadre at Petersen’s HUNTING, Bob Robb, moved to Alaska after he left the magazine. As a resident, he could hunt sheep alone and often did…until a rock rolled off a ledge above him and smashed an ankle. His bones would still be there if a passing Fed-Ex plane hadn’t picked up the signal from his SOS device.

There is another interesting dynamic with draw-tags in the Lower

48. As hunter numbers increase, the odds don’t get better. Drawing a tag is a big deal, and there’s a new generation of sheep hunters, anxious to spare the experience through glassing and scouting. This was just getting started when I drew my Arizona tag in 2008. Not understanding this new situation, I had hired an outfitter and rejected several offers of assistance. It’s been a long time since Ray Collingwood confronted Greenpeacers on a horse trail in his Spatsizi area. Today, draw a tag and the people (and their optics) will come. Buddy Joe Bishop’s neighbor and mutual friend Ray Salvatori drew one of Colorado’s first desert sheep permits. Hunting alone, he was at his wits end locating sheep until a passing UPS driver flagged him down and told him where he’d just seen a band of rams.

Help is good, but areas vary, and outfitters differ in competence and effort. Caveat emptor: Let the buyer beware, and do as much homework as humanly possible. Much as I hate to say it, the playing field isn’t always level. Auction tags and hunts do much for conservation and put a lot of sheep on the mountain. Clearly this is good, but does anyone really think the holder of a five-figure auction permit hasn’t stacked the

deck…just a bit?

Weather And Movement

Still, you don’t matter to the mountain…or to the sheep. They may treat you kindly, or may throw everything they’ve got at you. Just off active duty in 1978, I did a brief stint as a booking agent. I learned two things: First, I’m a rotten salesman. Second, I hated being responsible for other hunters’ dreams. I booked a guy into Yukon for a Dall’s sheep. It started to snow on his first day, kept snowing…he never left his tent. No more than the outfitter, I couldn’t control the weather, but I felt terrible. Bad enough that, when I met this guy at the Harrisburg show 30 years later, I remembered instantly. I started to apologize and he started laughing.

It wasn’t so funny in 1980, but such things happen. Truth is, I’ve been pretty lucky. My line of work hasn’t afforded me the luxury of buying auction tags or, in many cases, hunting the best areas. I’ve offset this by being satisfied with nice, mature rams. Meaning: I didn’t pass them and keep looking for monsters. I’ve taken some nice rams, few giants, and for sure I will never join the “700 Club.” In the plus column, I’ve been mostly blessed with good health and have stayed in shape. Also, as a gunwriter, you could sort of say that I shoot for a living, so I’m always shooting and thus always practicing. Put these together: I’ve been able to hunt hard, and have usually made the shot. As a result, most of my mountain hunts have been successful.

However, despite good planning and preparation, and hard hunting, you don’t always get a chance. When I was young I bombed out hunting bighorns in Montana’s “unlimited permit” areas. That was expected; those truly are “needle-in-a-haystack” hunts, wonderful experience, but small odds for success.

In about 1990 I failed on a Stone’s sheep hunt in B.C.’s Skeena Mountains. An outfitter friend of mine had just bought the territory and, as it turned out, had little knowledge of the area. Long, tough hunt, just couldn’t find any sheep. On the last day we glassed a band of rams at impossible distance, miles of steep devil’s club ridges between us, no trails. And that was that.

Sometimes that’s the way of it: The ram you seek isn’t there or, if he is, you can’t find him. Most commonly, especially up North, and occasionally in the big mountains in Central Asia, weather is the biggest risk and greatest enemy. Not because of the misery factor. Remember, sheep hunters expect to be miserable and secretly enjoy it…especially if we come right in the end. Rather, in mountains weather creates safety issues, blocks access and, perhaps above all, restricts the visibility essential to hunting mountain game.

In 2015, Donna’s first North American sheep hunt, my umpteenth, but my first attempt for a long-coveted Brooks Range ram.

We dropped into base camp on a sandbar on the Chandalar River, greeted by eager and enthusiastic guides. We set up the spotting scopes on a fine, sunny afternoon, and in minutes were glassing a band of rams, far up near the distant skyline. At least two seemed unquestionably legal, tips well over the bridge of the nose which, in Alaska, defines legal and pretty well describes a potential shooter.

After a time, the rams spooked, and I picked up a wolverine in the brush right below them. Magic! They trooped into a cut and vanished. No problem; we’d find them the next day. Long way up, but the ascent didn’t look all that bad. We slept in, took our time organizing, and started up the next morning, clouds forming, sunshine still patchy. The farther up, the lower the ceiling got. We made camp on a bench three-quarters to the top, cold wind blowing, followed by freezing rain. We saw sheep from there, ewes with sub-legal rams. We never saw that band of rams again, but we also never again saw the skyline. Rain, sleet, snow, hail, low scudding clouds. Days in backpack tents, out of Mountain House, down to base camp for resupply, back up through deepening snow. Ewes and lambs low, no rams, tops obscured. Just keep trying, hope for a break… which may not happen. On this

Above: Donna Boddington, headed out on her August ’22 Stone’s sheep hunt with Fire Mountain, horses all “pretty packed” and ready to go. Nice weather that day, but it didn’t last… hunt, we got no breaks.

Below: Craig and Donna Boddington, hunting desert bighorn on Carmen Island on the Sea of Cortez. Thanks to excellent management in recent years, Mexico now offers North America’s most successful sheep hunting…and no longer the most expensive.

Over the years, I’ve made some nice shots. I’m no athlete, but I’ve expended supreme effort on sheep mountains. At the end, when I climbed out of the SuperCub, the outfitter paid me the greatest compliment of my career: “How can you possibly be so cheerful?”

Disappointed, sure. Anxious to get a hot shower, you bet. Also, happy to have enjoyed a tough sojourn in magnificent country. Wife Donna is a tough hunter, prepared to push herself beyond her limits. Unlike me, I would not describe her as a lucky hunter. Took her an unusual three tries to get her Rocky Mountain goat. Not surprising that her first Dall sheep hunt failed. She went back to the Brooks in 2019 with Dave Leonard’s Mountain Monarchs and took a fine ram…on the sixth day of a tough backpack hunt. Luck-wise, she has her moments: In early ’21, she took an ancient, heavy-horned desert ram on Carmen Island. Late that same year, she beat all odds and took a bighorn in a Montana “unlimited” area. Not a big ram, but clearly legal which, in the unlimited zones, defines magnificence.

In August of ’22 she went to northern B.C. for Stone sheep, her last ram for a “FNAWS,” hunting with the great young folks at Fire Mountain, hunt delayed two years because of COVID. Me, the pathological optimist, figured she’d be home in a few days with a nice ram. She, more cautious: “See you when I see you.”

She’d worked out like a maniac for months, practiced her shooting more than usual. I guess she’d used up her quota of mountain magic for a little while. The mountain didn’t mind and she didn’t matter. Constant rain, high winds pushing rams down into black timber. 13 tough days, sprained ankle, blisters to the bone. Tried to the end, but not a legal ram spotted.

In sheep mountains, as in all hunting, “hunting” is the operative word. Regardless of cost, effort, and scarcity of opportunity, there are no guarantees. I’d like to think I’d have handled it as well as she did. High praise for the outfit and her (young, female, ridiculously tough) guide. Nothing for it but to smile and take pride in tough days spent on the mountain. Start saving pennies again, and hope to be granted time for another try. Just part of being a real sheep hunter. WS