Catching up and looking forward

Keeping on top of relevant post, blogging and sharing the stories of all the adventures we go on is not my strong suite... Going on the adventures, now that is a different story! My last post was on the tip of the hunting season last fall; where did the rest of the fall, winter and now spring go? This was a question I had to think of for a while. I did not draw any tags in 2013, but that dang sure doesn't mean I didn't go hunting!

As a hunter, especially in a state where tags are largely based on luck of the draw, its easy to feel bummed out and defeated. Looking back at the last 6 years, I have had only three big game tags in Arizona and one in Utah (albeit they were pretty dang good tags!). Plenty of hunters would love to have been as fortunate as I have in drawing tags. But where I feel the most fortunate is when I look back at all the hunts I have gotten to go on. I love being the guy with the tag, but  also I love being the guy with out the tag. Some of the best memories I have, were on hunts were I was just there to help!

This last fall was one for the books. I got to go on a ton of great adventures with a ton of great people. I know I tend to dwell on this subject but I really feel passionate about the reason I love hunting. I love matching wits with the biggest oldest bull on the mountain but just as much, I love sharing that chase and adventures with people who matter to me.  Before I proceed with my next photo dump from the second part of the 2013 hunts I was on, I have a challenge for you all. Don't be the guy who sulks in your bonus point count but rather go out of your way to help a friend on a hunt. Make it your priority to go on that hunt. Its easy when you are the tag holder to take off work and put your life of hold. Try putting that same level of excitement in to someone ease's adventures. You won't regret it.

 Now here is a real challenge, get your mother in-law to try hunting!

Weston's first elk. We got the whole dang family down that canyon to help with the packout!

 This is what a man looks like after he has just found the ram he has been chasing his whole life.

Draw results are just around the corner for the 2014 elk and antelope season in Arizona. I'm not holding my breath for tags that I might (not) draw, but I am waiting for all the phone calls from really excited friends who drew the tag of their dreams.

Things are hoppin' around here!

Well it has certainly been an exciting August so far. Obviously most importantly, Leah and I just celebrated our first year of marriage! ( well our official dinner date will be tomorrow). The Fall hunt tags are out in the mail, I got to go Salmon and Steelhead fishing in Portland this last weekend with Dave, Dan, Dugan and Clint (Steff was around also). This coming weekend Leah and I are Paso bound and then the much anticipated Archery Deer season opener the following weekend. I had a birthday some where in there and we have a few other social activities also on the calendar. Its just that time of year where you have no other choice than make it all fit or sit around and mope because you didn't make the effort. We're making it fit.
That little detail I mentioned above about the Fall tags being out is a big one in our house again this year because my dad finally drew an Arizona Desert Bighorn Sheep tag after 45-ish years of applying! We are thinking about making this sheep hunting deal an annual event!
I just thought I would make a quick post with  a few pics from our awesome adventures in Oregon. I am very excited for the fall, I have good feelings about how awesome it will be.
Stay tuned for more as we dive in, head first.

 35 lb. Fish and a 15 lb. rod and line! 

 Clint and Travis with the stud Chinook- http://www.fishhuntersguideservice.com/

 Big fish, awesome friends and a Canyon Cooler, what else to you need?

 Got to love these two

 Dan getting ready to loose an awesome Steelhead

Shinanagans in sheep camp

My good friend, Clay, was one of the lucky tag holders for Desert Bighorn Sheep this year in Southern Arizona, and I mean REALLY southern. I was able to sneak away last week, and and I arrived in camp on Thursday. Having had my own sheep tag this year, Leah and Weston's deer hunt, getting married and all the other reasons to take time off work;  I was only able to stay down there with Clay for 3 days until Sunday.

After 4 hours of highway driving and a little over an hour of dirt road I made it to camp to meet the motley group of guys who would be hunting to find Clay the Borego Grande of his dreams. And let me tell you, what a group, a group I won't soon forget and a group of guys who I hope to be friends with the rest of my life. Sitting around the campfire in the evenings with these guys will make you go to bed with hurting ribs from laughing so hard.

Clay has been down there for 12 days now and he is in marathon mode. Hunting in a unit that has two open roads, neither of which get you any closer than 2 miles from the edge of any sheep country, he has his work cut out. They have to put on a lot of miles every day and still stop and glass an endless amount of country. He went 5 days before the season with out spotting sheep and was a little down on himself. However, when we all went out in full force on opening day we found sheep and continued to find sheep all three days this weekend. And not just sheep, but RAMS, too! Unfortunately they were lesser rams that hadn't quite reached maturity. It was a huge boost for our confidence, and  confirmed our ability to find them if they are there. With the remoteness of the area, cell signal is weak and spotty but Clay has been calling his wife via satellite phone and giving her the updates to pass along to his cheering crew here at home.

James (his dad) Matt (his good friend) and I, all had to leave on Monday so it's just Clay and Jason and then Justin came in just as we were leaving. Clay's friend Pav is going to be coming back down sometime this week to continue the adventures with them. I can't wait to post some pics of what he finds next, but in the mean time here is the last several days documented in pictures. Enjoy!

First light of opening morning! 

Me, Clay and Jason

Me, Matt, El Cazador (the hunter), James and Jason

"Lets jog to those mountains, I think I saw a sheep"

 Bring out the big guns, we found Rams!

Glassing in the Cholla shade.

Matt glassing at dusk.

These guys (Jason and Clay) are animals, mountain climbing animals!

Lions, tigers and sexy panthers oh my!

The track of the Borego that we are looking for!

 Not quite big enough to shoot but great to see. (click the pics to make them big)

Once in a lifetime for sure

My fiance, Leah, and I were in full swing of planning the last touches on our wedding and we were still unpacking and moving in to our new home when I was tasked with the biggest distraction ever. I had drawn THE Desert Big Horn Sheep TAG for units 9 and 10 in Cataract Canyon!

Everyone immediately starts telling me what and impossible task I have a head of me... Though I still think they were talking about the hunt, the real impossible task was staying focused and excited for my wedding and working on our house like I had promised my bride! She is a trooper, and the number one reason that it even had a chance at being a successful hunt is due to her 100% support and willingness to put other things aside so we could make this hunt happen.

The funny thing is that most of those people telling me about how hard this hunt is really didn't have a clue what they were talking about, they were just passing on hear-say. The truth about this canyon is: there isn't but a hand full of people who truly know its ins and outs and understand its enormity. I did my best to utilize my resources and track down those people, learn and listen and become one who knew it intimately. This tag is one that scares people away and in truth, it should. When people say, "oh, those sheep are just up there in Cataract" most likely they have no grasp on how big and expansive that canyon is. It is a beautiful, harsh and awesome place, with huge amounts of history, hidden places, and no shortage of huge cliffs. There have been hunters, great hunters, who hunt harder than me at that, who have spent the entire hunt in this unit without even a glance at a sheep let alone a mature ram. After I started doing my research and talking to people I realized how lucky I was that I had seen sheep several different times in years past.

Knowing just how big and awesome this canyon is, I realized I needed to start learning more of it.  Leah and Weston (my brother in-law) and of course our dog, Kona, made our first scouting trip up there the weekend before we were leaving for California for our wedding, I walked out to a spot on the canyon and sat down, looked at Leah and said, "holy crap, I'm screwed!"

She promptly reminded me that I hadn't drawn this tag on accident, this was the tag that I wanted and I had been on a mission to hunt bighorns in Cataract long before I drew this tag.

The following week was the best of my life. We had an awesome wedding and we were able to spend a few extra days there with our families and just relaxing. We had already made plans to honeymoon in January so the weekend we returned home she said she would let go of the reins and I could scout and hunt to my hearts desire. In between everything else going on I fit in a few weeks worth of  days of hard glassing and it wasn't until 2 weeks before the season when my dad came with me on a Saturday scouting adventure that he glassed up a mature ram and 8 ewes! This ram was then referred to as the WIDE ram. He was definitely on the shooter list.
Mind you, I am not a pro sheep scorer, but I knew that when I saw a ram that I would be happy with, I wouldn't care what he scored. After all, this isn't 24B or 22, this is unit 10!

Now just a note about an other hurtle of this hunt - this little thing called the Havasupai Reservation. The canyon winds and meanders while the reservation boundary zigs and zags along straight survey lines, and of course has no markings denoting state land from reservation, it is very hard to know where the reservation is or isn't. The Wide ram was too close for comfort to that line. But he never left the back of my mind.

I took the next week off from driving all the way out there to scout to instead go elk hunting with a few friends and get my mind off of it. We had a great time on the elk hunt and I got to be part of several bull hunts with some great friends. Those are stories for a different time. 

My hunt is different than most Desert Bighorn hunts in Arizona because it starts in October, and goes through December. The department made this change after they realized that the sheep go farther down in to the canyon and the reservation as the weather gets colder. October 1 was on a Monday, my work had given me the go-a-head to switch my schedule so that I could work long days in order to have long weekends. That Thursday was to be my first day of being a sheep hunter instead of just a sheep hoper! 

My dad and I made a good first day hunt but didn't turn up any sheep or even any fresh sign where I had seen some sign in my many scouting trips. We had a good Monsoon season and the sheep could be anywhere and have all the feed and water they wanted. My aunt, Sara, (my dad's sister who I have hunted with since I could hunt) came out to camp that night and we sat around the map looking at what our plan was for Friday. With all of my scouting I had laid eyes on just about all of the hunt-able part of the canyon except one side canyon. I decided that is where we needed to go, I  needed to see and know every part of the canyon. There weren't any roads that led to the edge so it was a hike to both sides. Dad and Sara took the west side and I took the east side. I no more than got out there and started glassing before I heard rocks rolling. I instantly got nervous and excited and giddy. It didn't take Sara and Dad very long to come back and say "Sam, the sheep are RIGHT below you" 

This little cheese-ball drawing doesn't really give the full picture but you get the idea. The sheep were in the bottom of the canyon and before I could get a shot off, they bedded right at the base of the bottom cliff they were literally under and over hang 1500+ ft below me. We decided to wait them out. About 9 hours later, dad said he thought they would be there in the morning and we hiked out in the dark back to the trucks. That was the longest night of my life!

Leah and my friend Chad drove out to camp that night to hunt with us the rest of the weekend, the more eyes the better! Thank goodness too, because the extra company and Leah being there kept me calm-ish.

By day break we were back on both sides of the canyon, Leah, Sara and Dad on the west and Chad and I on the east. It seemed like eternity before we glassed the band of sheep up feeding and rutting around out in the open in the bottom mid-morning. Chad and I got set up to shoot where I could see the ram and he could call shots for me.

I shot at 558 yards straight down at a 70 degree angle. I knew to aim low, but not low enough. I shot clean over his back....twice. They didn't spook very badly, but they went underneath me again and bedded down out of my sight.

We decided at this point it would just be easier to go across the canyon and shoot from my Dad's vantage point. After a few hours of hiking and driving and more hiking we were set up for another shot from where the rest of my family was across the canyon. 684 yards at 45 degrees and I still shot high! but hit close enough to make him run a little ways. We quickly relocated up canyon a 100 ft and found him again. 640 yards... Shot....HIT! I made one more follow up shot for a quick clean kill. He was down!

That is a bit of an ironic statement, he was WAY WAY WAY down.... in the bottom of the canyon. We were well prepared with repelling gear and the know-how to get down there but that last cliff was just too big. No way any of our ropes would make it, even if we tied them together! I made some calls to a few friends in Flagstaff and with no hesitation they were on their way. I knew of a way in to the canyon several miles upstream and we decided that even though it was long, it was the safest and fastest way to get to him.

 The ram is under the big rock in the center of this picture.

At 4:00 pm, four extremely good friends followed me into the canyon. We hiked hard and fast until about 9pm when I knew we had to be really near to where the ram was. We stopped for a break and heard rocks rolling, the rest of the band of sheep ran past us in the dark no more than 80 yards away, it was cool. We sprawled out in this massive boulder field and began to look. I told all the guys that he was next to a big flat boulder on the right side... yeah right! there were big boulders EVERYWHERE! At 10:00 pm exactly Kyle started whooping and hollering! RAM DOWN RAM FOUND!!!

A few pictures and high fives and an hour later we were packed  up and hiking again with a totally boned out ram, the head and cape and still plenty of water to get us back. We hiked most of the night and decided to take a nap for an hour at about 3:30 am. It was cold and we had none of the comforts of camping but it felt good and was much needed. At first light we were looking at our final ascent on the 1500 ft wall in front of us. A slow steady climb on the old indian trail brought us to the top at 8:30 am, we had walked about 20 miles round trip. Dad , Sara and Leah were waiting at the top and excited to see us. We had done it. An unlikely crew of family and great friends had managed to hunt, find, shoot and recover an awesome ram out of Cataract Canyon.

I am going to just pile the rest of the pictures here below in no particular order.
I want to thank my Dad, my wonderful wife, Leah, my aunt Sara for all your help during and leading up to the hunt. Chad, Mav, Chris and Kyle, you guys are some bad dudes! I owe you big time.. just not if you draw the unit 10 sheep tag, then I'm out!

I know I have a ton of other people to thank for their help and advise leading up to this hunt. Hope you know who you all are.