Tomahawk
Well-known member
Gila & Sheep
No, I didn’t draw a tag for a Bighorn in the Gila, but something almost as rare. I cashed in a lifetime of sub-par luck this spring and somehow drew a late archery elk tag for the Gila and a Bighorn tag in Montana!
Summer weekends were spent hiking and glassing for sheep, and weeknights were filled with online scouting and marking up maps of SW New Mexico. Here’s a few pics of the best ram I could turn up in this unit. I’m sure there’s a bigger one out there, but after many weekends of long, hot days behind the glass I never found him:
Gila:
The trip to New Mexico along the length of the Rockies was almost as exciting as the hunt itself. I had always wanted to see the iconic hunting meccas of the Medicine Bow & Rout National Forests, the Grand Mesa, thousands of antelope in the sage of SW Wyoming and, arguably, the most famous of them all, Jerry’s Donuts in Rawlins.
My buddy and I pulled into a Gila National Forest campsite in our elk unit, late at night, a couple days before the opener. I hopped out of the truck, and before I could even turn on my headlamp, a bull screamed at us from the edge of the campground. Soon two others were bugling back, and we were right in the middle of it all! With a brilliant Milky Way overhead, constant bugles and a chorus of coyotes, it was a pretty great night to sit out late and soak it all in.
We spent the next 10 days chasing bulls. I badly wanted to kill one in the postcard-worthy open Ponderosa stands:
But I had to re-learn that the elk really don’t care where I want them to be, even in the premium units. After spending too many days in the Ponderosas, it was clear the elk were mostly hanging out in the thicker juniper flats:
We saw plenty of elk and heard enough bugles that they almost lost their novelty. We both caught a few bad breaks, and I invented a couple new and evermore creative ways to screw up on 320ish bulls. I got to pass on a few small bulls like this one in a wallow:
Most of the elk weren’t quite as eager to rush to a call as we’d hoped, except one lonely 6 point that we inadvertently called into our camp by slamming a pickup door and clearing branches. And catching up to the ever-moving herds in the juniper was not working much better. In hindsight, I didn’t adapt my tactics fast enough, and by the time I figured out that sitting wallows and water was truly effective, the season was ending. No elk for me.
Sheep:
Back in Montana it was time for more sheep. Found these just outside the unit boundary:
And these inside my unit, but no shooters here:
Any ideas what caused the goiter on this young ram's face?
After 3 weekends of exploring new sheep country, I decided I was done looking and was ready to cash out on the ram I had found earlier in the summer. I knew right where he’d been living, but before I arrived, he’d left, as they transitioned towards rutting/winter range. I looked for two days but couldn’t find him. Now I was back to square one and spent the next week trying to figure out where he would have gone. I put together an ambitious list of possible spots to check, and on day 13 of my hunt, I glassed up his band of rams in the first place I checked, just over 5 miles from their summer range. I was pretty excited when he finally lifted his head allowing me a good view of his familiar, slightly broomed horns with distinctive chip.
My wife was along for the day taking photos, and we spent most of it crawling through nearly invisible cactus to close the distance. I was being pretty picky about the shot I’d take; it needed to be close and broadside. Eventually, that’s exactly what I got:
The .284HT and Accubond did their jobs as expected, and I had my ram!
No, I didn’t draw a tag for a Bighorn in the Gila, but something almost as rare. I cashed in a lifetime of sub-par luck this spring and somehow drew a late archery elk tag for the Gila and a Bighorn tag in Montana!
Summer weekends were spent hiking and glassing for sheep, and weeknights were filled with online scouting and marking up maps of SW New Mexico. Here’s a few pics of the best ram I could turn up in this unit. I’m sure there’s a bigger one out there, but after many weekends of long, hot days behind the glass I never found him:
Gila:
The trip to New Mexico along the length of the Rockies was almost as exciting as the hunt itself. I had always wanted to see the iconic hunting meccas of the Medicine Bow & Rout National Forests, the Grand Mesa, thousands of antelope in the sage of SW Wyoming and, arguably, the most famous of them all, Jerry’s Donuts in Rawlins.
My buddy and I pulled into a Gila National Forest campsite in our elk unit, late at night, a couple days before the opener. I hopped out of the truck, and before I could even turn on my headlamp, a bull screamed at us from the edge of the campground. Soon two others were bugling back, and we were right in the middle of it all! With a brilliant Milky Way overhead, constant bugles and a chorus of coyotes, it was a pretty great night to sit out late and soak it all in.
We spent the next 10 days chasing bulls. I badly wanted to kill one in the postcard-worthy open Ponderosa stands:
But I had to re-learn that the elk really don’t care where I want them to be, even in the premium units. After spending too many days in the Ponderosas, it was clear the elk were mostly hanging out in the thicker juniper flats:
We saw plenty of elk and heard enough bugles that they almost lost their novelty. We both caught a few bad breaks, and I invented a couple new and evermore creative ways to screw up on 320ish bulls. I got to pass on a few small bulls like this one in a wallow:
Most of the elk weren’t quite as eager to rush to a call as we’d hoped, except one lonely 6 point that we inadvertently called into our camp by slamming a pickup door and clearing branches. And catching up to the ever-moving herds in the juniper was not working much better. In hindsight, I didn’t adapt my tactics fast enough, and by the time I figured out that sitting wallows and water was truly effective, the season was ending. No elk for me.
Sheep:
Back in Montana it was time for more sheep. Found these just outside the unit boundary:
And these inside my unit, but no shooters here:
Any ideas what caused the goiter on this young ram's face?
After 3 weekends of exploring new sheep country, I decided I was done looking and was ready to cash out on the ram I had found earlier in the summer. I knew right where he’d been living, but before I arrived, he’d left, as they transitioned towards rutting/winter range. I looked for two days but couldn’t find him. Now I was back to square one and spent the next week trying to figure out where he would have gone. I put together an ambitious list of possible spots to check, and on day 13 of my hunt, I glassed up his band of rams in the first place I checked, just over 5 miles from their summer range. I was pretty excited when he finally lifted his head allowing me a good view of his familiar, slightly broomed horns with distinctive chip.
My wife was along for the day taking photos, and we spent most of it crawling through nearly invisible cactus to close the distance. I was being pretty picky about the shot I’d take; it needed to be close and broadside. Eventually, that’s exactly what I got:
The .284HT and Accubond did their jobs as expected, and I had my ram!
