bigwhiteys
06-21-2009, 12:01 PM
After some hounding on my part Willy finally agreed to supply me with a story to go along with some of his pictures.
This story has been told in much shorter form on here before.
OCTOBER 19th; The date of the best and worst of my sheep hunting memories.
http://www.bchuntingblog.com/mypics/trail1.jpg
It was late October 1973; we had 2 sheep camps out in the area one lead by me the other by my father. Snow had been building for three days straight, my crew and I didn't care. My hunter’s tags were filled and cancelled. We had 37 head of pack horses, 4 hunters and our gear to move out to the main lodge before we could go home to our families for the winter.
The crew and I had packed our string that morning in blinding snow at one of our high sheep camps 2 days travel from the main lodge. It was a wet miserable move, arriving at the half way point campsite at dark. We unpacked and got the cook tent up and a fire going, so my aunt Diana could start coffee and dinner, the hunter and guide tents came next, all were up in record time, while the wrangler turned the horses loose to graze. This was a task the crew and I had completed many times, since the third week of June, when we first trailed out of the lodge that year.
Diana yelled "come and get it" from the kitchen and everyone congregated in the 16×16 pyramid tent for coffee, sheep steaks and all the trimmings.
Part way through supper the horse's that were now out grazing started to whinee. A few moments later we had another 30+ horse pack string at the hitching rail as my father had arrived with his operation. Boy was he glad to see tents up and coffee on. My mother was doing the cooking for him and immediately went to the cook tent to start another meal with my aunt.
http://www.bchuntingblog.com/mypics/camp1.jpg
The hunters they had with them were a disgruntled bunch as between the 4 of them they had 1 ram, 2 caribou and a goat they had just shot a couple of days earlier. They had already consumed the sheep and caribou meat and had been living off of the tuff old billy for 2 days. Needless to say these guys thought they had died and gone to heaven, riding up to a warm camp and sheep steaks.
Dinner was full of stories covering the past 18 days since the hunt had started. My father had found very few sheep in the area's he hunted and had made the move to lower ground, hoping he could fill his sheep tags with 3 days of season left. Now that he had caught up with me it changed to I had 3 days to fill his hunters along with Donny and Denny Russell, two brothers that were part of my crew and he volunteered to take my camp into the ranch, thanks Dad.
Little did I know but those 3 days would start me on a sheep hunt that would span three sheep seasons of wet, sore feet and tired legs....
Read The Rest Of The Story... (http://bchuntingblog.com/2009/06/a-stone-sheep-hunting-tale/)
Carl
This story has been told in much shorter form on here before.
OCTOBER 19th; The date of the best and worst of my sheep hunting memories.
http://www.bchuntingblog.com/mypics/trail1.jpg
It was late October 1973; we had 2 sheep camps out in the area one lead by me the other by my father. Snow had been building for three days straight, my crew and I didn't care. My hunter’s tags were filled and cancelled. We had 37 head of pack horses, 4 hunters and our gear to move out to the main lodge before we could go home to our families for the winter.
The crew and I had packed our string that morning in blinding snow at one of our high sheep camps 2 days travel from the main lodge. It was a wet miserable move, arriving at the half way point campsite at dark. We unpacked and got the cook tent up and a fire going, so my aunt Diana could start coffee and dinner, the hunter and guide tents came next, all were up in record time, while the wrangler turned the horses loose to graze. This was a task the crew and I had completed many times, since the third week of June, when we first trailed out of the lodge that year.
Diana yelled "come and get it" from the kitchen and everyone congregated in the 16×16 pyramid tent for coffee, sheep steaks and all the trimmings.
Part way through supper the horse's that were now out grazing started to whinee. A few moments later we had another 30+ horse pack string at the hitching rail as my father had arrived with his operation. Boy was he glad to see tents up and coffee on. My mother was doing the cooking for him and immediately went to the cook tent to start another meal with my aunt.
http://www.bchuntingblog.com/mypics/camp1.jpg
The hunters they had with them were a disgruntled bunch as between the 4 of them they had 1 ram, 2 caribou and a goat they had just shot a couple of days earlier. They had already consumed the sheep and caribou meat and had been living off of the tuff old billy for 2 days. Needless to say these guys thought they had died and gone to heaven, riding up to a warm camp and sheep steaks.
Dinner was full of stories covering the past 18 days since the hunt had started. My father had found very few sheep in the area's he hunted and had made the move to lower ground, hoping he could fill his sheep tags with 3 days of season left. Now that he had caught up with me it changed to I had 3 days to fill his hunters along with Donny and Denny Russell, two brothers that were part of my crew and he volunteered to take my camp into the ranch, thanks Dad.
Little did I know but those 3 days would start me on a sheep hunt that would span three sheep seasons of wet, sore feet and tired legs....
Read The Rest Of The Story... (http://bchuntingblog.com/2009/06/a-stone-sheep-hunting-tale/)
Carl