Old Timer Quest

n 2017, I set a personal goal to harvest an old ram. A very old ram. This goal took me on a rollercoaster ride of emotions and on a five-year quest. If only I could resist the temptations that would haunt me. I just knew I’d see some monster rams and have a hard time walking away. I’ve hunted the Talkeetna Mountains for most of my life, a place that produces very good horn growth, even though, in my opinion, it has harsher winter climates than most of the other mountain ranges sheep inhabit. And it is not uncommon to find long rams six to seven years old. Every year I found myself leaving the familiar drainages I had been successful in previous years with a similar feeling. It is not an easy thing to locate a legal ram and leave them on the mountain, let alone do so on multiple occasions. The time off work and away from family, not to mention the expense to chase sheep, plays such a big role in how we measure success. I was determined not to let that sway me from my goal. The winters were the toughest, as that is when most sheep hunters begin to dream about the next hunting season. I questioned my intent, pondering if it was realistic. I fought with my inner self, knowing I very easily could have had three or four more nice rams on the wall had I not set this difficult goal for myself. Many people suggested, “The years of letting sheep grow old are over.” But I continued to respectfully disagree. In 2021 I reached out to an old friend who happened to have a guiding operation in an area where the climate was favourable to produce old rams. We discussed my goal and he immediately invited me to come up and hunt his area. The logistics alone make the area one of the hardest to access in Alaska, and I soon found myself flying into a high alpine strip well above 6000 feet in elevation. I would spend the next 10 days scaling glacial rock and carrying a heavy pack in hopes of fulfilling my goal of finding an old ram. As most sheep hunts go, locating the ram was the easy part. It’s the waiting that is the true test. Sitting in the snow, rain and fog for five days under a tarp or tucked away in the tent before the ram gave a playable hand was, without doubt, the longest I’ve ever waited on an animal to move. You could argue this ram had 17 years of knowing what kept him safe, and as most old timers of this world he was in absolutely no hurry to go far. Ultimately, as an old sheep guide once told me, “Give a ram three days and he’ll make a mistake.” Although it took a bit longer, that statement held true. Fast forward to the flight home from my 2021 sheep hunt. After five long years of trying, I was carrying with me what would soon be revealed as one of the oldest Thinhorn sheep ever harvested in North America. It is near-impossible to describe how it feels when everything comes together on a sheep hunt, let alone the sense of achievement I felt in setting this goal and seeing it through.