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Thread: Two of a Kind, Northern BC Hunt

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Jul 2015
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    46

    Two of a Kind, Northern BC Hunt

    Two of a Kind, Northern BC Sheep Hunt

    June 22, 2020 - The world has been in turmoil for the last 3 months due to Covid 19. The majority of the population has been restricted to staying either at home for months on end or staying away from those they normally spend time with. For those that like to spend time in the great outdoors we can’t help but look forward to times when we can travel out or around our province unhindered by the social distancing/pandemic lifestyle. For now I think back over the last few years hunts I’ve had a chance to experience and relive the stories in my mind. I have been most fortunate to enjoy many days in the wilderness and spend that time with the people that mean the most to me as well as the opportunity to harvest a few great animals along the way. So for now I will have to be happy with recounting my Northern BC Stone sheep hunt of 2019.

    August 2019 found myself planning yet another wild getaway into the North. This year I planned on hunting with my cousin, Kinley as we are both young and eager to hike further then most and willing to do things some may find just too uncomfortable. As we prepped our equipment over July and August we couldn’t help but notice that BC was hammering the August sheep hunting crowd with winter-like storms and bad weather. We were nervous about what September would be like as we did not plan to leave until Sept 10. Fortunately, the weather smartened up and the highways were good on our departure from FSJ up the highway and into the mountains.

    Fast forward 1 long travel day had us hanging our extra gear high in a tree and taking off with our spike camp for the next few days to see if we could locate some sheep. We seemed to have timed the elk rut just perfectly as there were bulls bugling all around us at almost all times of the day. We journeyed a full day up to our target mountain and began glassing. It took only a few minutes to discover a band or rams feeding on a grassy hillside a few kms from our spotting location. With one look of the spotting scope we knew that they were good rams but at that distance we were unable to age anything. The only downside to this was that the sheep were over 1.5-2 mountain ranges away from us and we would need to weasel our way over to them somehow. But on the brightside, we had rams spotted on day 2 and the rest of the trip to see if we could get close. We decided to take the day and get as close to the rams as we could from the mountain we were on, so a few hours hike later found us a km closer to the sheep with a much better spotting angle. We took some pictures and tried to age some rams but it was still difficult due to the extended range. We had packed food for about 5 days and still had another 15 days of food back at base camp so the plan was to hike back to base, pick up at least 7 full days of food and start the trek over to the rams. We thought about going down the far side of the mountain and trying to take a short cut to the rams but we would have to walk through kms of a terribly nasty burn and ford a small river to get there, as opposed to taking an ‘easier’ route that would just be longer. The next day we packed up our camp and headed back to base to get everything we needed for the long haul. On the return trip we saw a few good 6 point bull elk one of which we bumped several times moving down the mountain. Nothing tests your will solely to sheep hunt like seeing a 320” bull Elk standing broadside at 150 yards for minutes on end, screaming as you sit in the grass eating your trail mix at lunchtime. The plan was to hunt sheep for the first week to 10 days and then try to get an elk. So if this fella was still around later he may be in trouble.

    Stone Rams
    Big 6 point Bull Elk


    That evening we had traveled the many kms with our full packs to the base of the mountains that the rams were on. It was getting dark so we set up camp and listened to the elk bugle all night long. We even had a small 6 point come right into our camp and continue to bark at us for about an hour. It rained that night and by morning continued to mist so our last pull up the drainage on the ram mountains was a wet one. However, once we reached the top the sun came out around lunchtime just as we were setting up our spotting scopes and again within minutes we located the band of rams. We believed these to be the same rams and from a much closer distance there were 2 that looked really good. We set up a small camp in a patch of timber but took our sleeping bags and some food as we were going to try and make a play on the rams tonight, or at least try and get proper age on them. A few hours later and we set up a small siltarp with our sleeping bags underneath as we knew we would not be making it back to the tent tonight. Just behind the tarp we had a good vantage to see the rams from about 900-1100 yards, the closest we've been to them yet. We saw one large, low slung and tipped out ram who we thought was in the 7-8 age range and the other one was a tighter curl, super heavy ram with one horn broomed and one tip still intact. We watched them feed as the sun went down then made our way back to the tarp for the night.

    Siltarp Tenting

    Stone Rams speckled on the hillside

    We thought the broomed ram looked to be older than the tipped ram and as both myself and Kinley have taken rams we were looking for something either fairly special or fairly old. However we came this far and those rams still needed to be aged up close and without wind vibrating our scopes so the next morning we hiked up the ridge to get above the sheep. An uneventful hike had us sitting on top of the mountain looking at the weather rolling in from the south. Black clouds as far as you could see, and then the rain started... We set up the tarp and decided to wait it out. After watching a small banana ram feed by our tarp at 10 yards without giving us a second thought the rain seemed to get heavier and heavier without any inclination it was going to stop. We decided the best thing to do was to go back down the mountain to our tent to try and keep dry and warm. When we got back to our tent the rain was thundering down and we set up the tarp under a few big trees just to keep the rain off of us as we put up the tent. Now I consider myself to be a fairly competent outdoorsman as well as my cousin. We have both been raised doing this type of thing and over the years we have all heard stories of people dying in the cold because they could not start a fire. “That would never happen to me” I have thought in the past, or “with a good lighter you should be able to get some kind of fire going”.... FALSE! The last few hours of pouring rain had saturated everything in the small mostly alpine basin we were camped in so bad that even with a plethora of good fire starter, nothing would light and we found ourselves getting more and more soaked. We decided to put our things under the tarp and crawl into our sleeping bags like the wet rats we felt like. It was only about 6 pm but felt later as it was so dark and stormy, so with nothing left to do we went to sleep.



    Last edited by Romain; 07-09-2020 at 06:42 AM.

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  3. #2
    Join Date
    Feb 2006
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    9,113

    Re: Two of a Kind, Northern BC Hunt

    Good start on a promising story!! Thanks
    "When you judge another you don't define them, you define yourself."

  4. #3
    Join Date
    May 2019
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    Valemount
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    Re: Two of a Kind, Northern BC Hunt

    Good memories

  5. #4
    Join Date
    Jul 2020
    Location
    Ft st john bc
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    114

    Re: Two of a Kind, Northern BC Hunt

    Very nice story I'm just starting to get into sheep hunting this year myself I'm also looking at horseback options and flying in the hard part is trying to find people to go hunting with

  6. #5
    Join Date
    Jul 2015
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    46

    Re: Two of a Kind, Northern BC Hunt

    I woke up during the night to find that the tent was touching my face. With a slight jiggle of the tent I heard a THUMP as the snow slid off the tent and it sprung back up to its original height. “Crap! Now it's dumping snow,” Kinley said. About 6 hours later and many tent bumps to shed the snow found us peaking our heads out into a winter wonderland. The snow didn't stop all day long and we discovered our siltarp had collapsed under the snow load covering ALL of our gear. Fortunately we were relatively warm even though the moisture was making everything we have damp. We spent the day in a small 3 man tent which was now crushed into the size of a 1 man tent wondering whether the snow was ever going to quit as it was well over 2 feet deep which was starting to worry us.

    2 Days of snow


    The next day when we woke up it looked as though things had passed. You could see the sun and the clouds had all disappeared, it looked like we were going to live. As the sun came up we spread our gear out to dry in the morning rays and dug all our gear out from the snow. At this time probably 99% of people would have been grateful for the trip they have had and went back down to their basecamp. But seeing that it was such a beautiful day and that we had another 5 days of food we decided to hike all our gear to the tip top of the ridge and make a camp where we first were when the rain started. We thought it would be much easier to hunt the rams from that location. So 5 hours later had us way up the mountain through waist deep snow drifts and setting up camp on top. Fortunately most of the snow on top gets blown away so it actually seemed nicer up top, but there was still the occasional 3-4 foot drift. We hunted the mountain for the next 3 days without seeing ANY trace of the rams we had watched just days earlier. We wondered whether the heavy snow had pushed them into the timber or possibly to another range.

    The last day on the mountain had us again checking all the drainages as stealthily as possible but to no avail. There were no sheep and we were ready to go back to basecamp for some real food and drink. On our way back to pack up our tent we had written off the thought of seeing anything as we had covered the mountain so meticulously over the last few days so we were walking the ridgetop and not being nearly as quiet as we were before. All we wanted was to get off the mountain. Approaching a sharp spine Kinley stops and turns around to tell me something as we catch our breath. As he turns and begins to speak I see his eyes suddenly turn to the size of dinner plates and he immediately drops into the snow whispering “RAMS RIGHT THERE!”. We both dropped into the snow to see a band of rams only 200 yards below us on an open slope of windswept grass. The same slope we glassed multiple times every day and walked past about 8 different occasions. We readied the guns and put up the spotting scope. 2 good rams out of the bunch looked to be the ones we originally saw. First big tipped ram was absolutely spectacular. With a low deep curl that spiralled out from his head and enormous bases we knew he had everything for a high scoring ram but the spotter showed him to be either 7 or 8 years old. There was a good chance he was of legal age but it was hard to say for 100% sure so we turned our attention to the broomed off ram beside him. He had one heavy broomed side and one side that came right up to his nose. From the angle we were unable to say whether it bridged his nose or not but we were confident that he was a legal 8 year old ram. As stated before, we have both taken good rams in the past so we were really looking for something special to both of us. Our goal was to shoot a ram 10 or older so with much deliberation we decided to let this ram continue to feed with his pals on the slope in hopes of him getting a couple more rings for a later date. They looked so good on that mountain. We packed our scopes and rifles up and continued back to the tent. It’s a strange feeling leaving something like that on the mountain after all the work and expense one incurs to get there but on the hike back to the tent I think we both felt happier to leave them feeding peacefully then if we had taken the big broomer. It was too late to head home now so we went to bed and would be trailing out tomorrow. We felt good to have found our rams even though we didn't bring one home but that's sheep hunting.

    2 Big rams feeding

    The next day we packed up and left sheep heaven for the long pack to base. By early afternoon we were in the valley bottom and virtually no snow remained there. As we approached camp, maybe only 3 kms away Kinley stopped for a quick break to have a breather and a swig of water. I pulled off my pack and as I sat with my bottle I looked up on the mountain above us with the binos. All of a sudden I saw a sheep feeding in a small patch of green. With a quick comment to Kinley we had the swaro out and zoomed in. A band of 8 rams all sitting there in the sun and one looked quite massive! The time was about 3 pm and we thought it was about 2-3 hours to the rams location with it staying light until around 7:30-8 pm. So we dumped all our unnecessary equipment out of our packs and raced up the mountain after the rams to get a better look. Two hours later we were peaking over the edge of a grassy ridge onto the band of rams. All 8 rams were bedded in the afternoon sun as we set up the spotter. The oldest ram of the bunch was bedded quartering away and between the sun and the wind we could seem to get a good enough view to determine whether he was old enough despite the fact he was heavily broomed on both sides. After watching them for 30-45 mins we decided we needed to get slightly closer to age him so we belly crawled up from 500 to 300 yards where we again set to work on aging him. He was more difficult than most as he was full of false annuli from his year 3 mark all the way to the hairline. Another 45 mins later and he finally got up to stretch giving us some proper side views and we knew he was old. A couple mins later found me set up behind the scope with the video camera rolling and Kinley as the spotter. One shot rang out and the ram went down immediately. He slid down the hill 20 yards into a nice green grass patch with some snow that we could use for cleaning, a perfect spot if there was ever one. We walked down to the ram and I finally got to put my hands on the old double broomer that I was after. I was fortunate enough to shoot my dream ram (Recounted on HBC as “The Stone Zone, a Northern BC Story) just a few years earlier and he was a perfect specimen of a pretty lamb tipped sheep with wide flaring horns so all I was looking for now was an old warrior double broomed ram to accompany him on the wall. I got exactly what I was looking for in this ram. He was truly beautiful. About an hour and a half later we were packed up with head, hide and meat and headed down the mountain, by now in the light of our headlamps. Fast forward 4.5 hours and we rolled into our basecamp around 1 am where we set up the Kifaru sawtooth, got a fire started, cooked some sheep tenderloins and had a Scotch to celebrate.

    As they lay
    Double Broomer
    Coming Out Heavy





  7. #6
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
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    Haney,BC and anywhere you can hunt in BC out of the rain !
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    8,649

    Re: Two of a Kind, Northern BC Hunt

    Awesome story and pictures, Congrats on an amazing Ram, one thing about hunting Stone Sheep you never seem to know what your going to get for weather as it changes daily and fast !

    Thanks for taking us along on your hunt.
    WF
    7mm PRC soon to be the most popular cartridge in North America

  8. #7
    Join Date
    Nov 2003
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    Prince Rupert Again, Formerly Fort Nelson
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    2,035

    Re: Two of a Kind, Northern BC Hunt

    Wow great hunt! One to test your fortitude with a reward in the end!!
    "Dy'in ain't much of a livin' boy"

    "There is NO Keyser Soze"!!!!!!

    "Do cow moose have white inside their ears"?!!!!!

  9. #8
    Join Date
    Sep 2016
    Location
    PG
    Posts
    61

    Re: Two of a Kind, Northern BC Hunt

    Great story, nice ram, awesome adventure. Nice work!

  10. #9
    Join Date
    Mar 2004
    Location
    N. Okanagan
    Posts
    14,182

    Re: Two of a Kind, Northern BC Hunt

    WOW
    Never say whoa in the middle of a mud hole

  11. #10
    Join Date
    Oct 2011
    Location
    Tent city Victoria
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    3,562

    Re: Two of a Kind, Northern BC Hunt

    Awesome! I love stone sheep, this was an awesome adventure!

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