Hi All,
This is the first thread that I have started. I was challenged by someone to write or post a story earlier, so here goes. I am not sure how to deal with pictures, but here is a story about my father and I on a sheep hunt. Here goes nothing...
We crept up on the windswept ridge, cold wind in our face, the temperature below zero, as the foot of snow could attest to. My father and I, the title of mentor and protégé now reversed. He was now in my element, my mountains, my footsteps. For myself the build-up of tension, nerves and drive had settled on my shoulders heavier than I had had in longer than I could remember. We were looking at a band of Stones rams, with one that was 11 years old. It was my time to give back. To give back to the man who gave to me all those years. My father is a real hunter. He was taught by his father in the jungles of South America, Paraguay. He was well versed in the art of killing. His shots were accurate and true. His skills were honed. As I lay there in the snow, belly to the ground and my core shaking with excitement and cold, I knew that it would be a tough shot. At just over 400 yards, I hadn’t seen my dad practice at this distance before. He was the kind of guy who would go to the range once a year and shoot between two to three shots at 200 yards. That was it. Every bullet was sacred to him. This was the result of growing up in a country that handed you nothing except starvation and thirst. A hard life, no doubt, but a rich life, regardless.
I lay there, counting the age rings, and waited for the turn of the head to determine twice legal status. All the while, my father lay there motionless; calmly breathing. With his bi-pod down and the sheep in his scope, he watched his quarry; waiting for his guide to confirm what he already knew. I laid there, eyes wide open and the spotting scope fogging up with my breath. I needed to calm down; I’ve been here before. But with my dad here, everything was heightened in me. More intense, more nerves, more hope, more disappointment. Time would tell what today would bring. And then he turned…
So this hunt started off a few months back. I walked into my parent’s house and announced that I was taking my father hunting; for a stone sheep. “What else is there to hunt at your spot?” is what he asked me in reply. Ummmm… what?! Seriously?! I couldn’t believe what I was hearing! Why would you want to hunt the goats or elk or caribou that call these mountains home, when you could hunt big heavy stones?! I told him to buy a couple of other tags if that would make him more happy, but we were gonna kill a sheep. He is a meat hunter. He hunted out of necessity in the jungle. But he did understand the lure of the trophy. He was well accomplished in some of the other species that BC calls home. So he agreed and I took care of the plans.
Late September had us in at our remote location and we hiked/spiked our camp in. We packed for 7 days of spiking, with another 7 days of food at our base camp. We hiked in far, and slept on the side of the hill on day one. Day two had us hiking into a mountain fold where we saw some rams feed into the night before. On our way up the draw, Dad pointed out some caribou. He looked them over and said, “Hey son, that one bull is big. I think he is legal!” I confirmed it with my spotter, and continued my way up the draw. We were, after all, sheep hunting! We hiked a bit higher and Dad said, “son, that is a really pretty bull!” I agreed, and kept pushing my way up to where I knew those rams would be. The next rest spot, I heard my dad say again, “man, that bull is gorgeous”! That’s when something inside me broke. I thought about what he was saying; what he was wanting. I asked him, “Dad, are you wanting to go back down this mountain to shoot that caribou?!” Yes, was his response. But there is a band of rams within 30 minutes of us, and I’m pretty sure that one is a shooter, I responded. He said,”Son, I want that caribou. That is when my plan snapped and I realized what this trip was supposed to be about; about my dad. I smiled at him and said to him, “Dad, if you want that caribou bull more than a stone sheep, let’s go get the bull”! To my chagrin, he said “let’s go”.
45 minutes later, we were 75 yards away from that big caribou bull. I turned on the video camera and said to my dad to take him with a shot through the lungs. The gun went boom, the bull went down, and my dad looked at me and said, “one in the neck, so the meat wont be wasted”. Yup, that is my father. Looking back now, I really do appreciate his ethics, but when you’ve got that much caribou to pack out from that far back, it is hard to at the time.
So after taking care of the caribou, we set up camp and had a good night’s rest. The next day, we set off in search of the band of rams we saw earlier in the trip. It took an extra day to locate them, but once they were found, the chase was on…
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Re: 2010 Stone sheep hunt: a son with his father
Originally Posted by eatram
