Originally Posted by
bighornbob
Knowing where to start is the issue for most learned sports. Take golf for example, most people don’t wake up one day and go “Im going to start playing golf today”, go buy clubs and book a round of 18 holes that same day and shooting close to par. There is a natural progression that will most likely take place, watching golf on TV, buying books on golf, hanging out with other golfers, starting on the putting green etc etc.
No real difference in sheep hunting, watch the shows, read the books, talk to other sheep hunters, start on the putting green, go look for sheep in the summer, go in the winter etc etc. Like golf one would not expect shooting a good round the first year of golf. No different in sheep hunting. Sure it might happen where a rookie hunter goes out and shoots a ram the first trip without any firsthand knowledge but its tough. If its not feasible to scout for sheep, there are a lot of resources on the net that can give you a good starting point. Govt reports list creek names and some have maps of sheep distributions, sheep numbers etc. The BC record book lists kill locations. Some of these are pretty general like “Muskwa river” but others put the exact creek down. Spend some weeks looking into the names and looking for them on topo maps, do some detective work. Next go to google earth and look for the creeks and lakes etc. See what the mountains look like, how far are they from the lakes etc and think how far would most people be willing to walk. Even doing all this homework might get you the right lake to land at but it might take two or three trips to narrow down the valley the sheep like to hang out in.
The problem with a lot of new sheep hunters is they think just because they book a $1000 flight into some lake they should be successful their first year. No golfer who buys clubs the first year expects to shoot a good round that same year. So why would sheep hunting be any different. Personally I have talked to guys who don’t want to put the effort, time or money into a sheep hunt unless there is a real good chance of them being successful. Even when I have offered to put X’s on the map that would get them into sheep, the chance of rain or summer smoke or other hunters already there have kept them from going.
New sheep hunters have to learn that even with the best gear in the world, X’s on maps etc your odds of killing a sheep might only be 20%. Its still a needle in a haystack for the most part. Are you alright with this stat and the low chance of success?
There is a good reason that old saying is so true “The first ram you kill will probably be born the year you start sheep hunting.” That means its probably going to take you 7-8 years of sheep hunting before you kill a ram. Not sure who coined this term but they did it to be honest about the hardships of sheep hunting not to keep new hunters out of the mountains.
BHB
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Originally Posted by BiG Boar
