So you want to hunt sheep? Part 5 – Finding Sheep

Kyle Sinclair-Smith

Finding legal rams in Alberta is not a hard task at all. On pretty much any day of the week, you can drive through Banff, Jasper, Highway 1A outside Canmore, Highway 40 or down to Waterton and find exceptionally large rams standing on the highway. Finding legal rams in a legal hunting area, in a legal season is a whole different story. When I started becoming interested in hunting sheep, I started talking to my friends about sheep and sheep hunting. I feel very fortunate to have some friends that have killed some exceptional sheep over the years and they have had repeated success. I also have enough respect for my friends that I have never once asked them where they shot a ram, where I should go hunt rams, or if they knew where a legal ram was. The other reason I didn’t ask them is because I really wanted to do this on my own. I had put in the work to get in a condition that I could get to where sheep live, I felt that I also needed to put in the work to go and actually find the sheep. But the issue remained that I still only really knew that sheep lived in the mountains and I needed more knowledge than that if I was going to find rams. At this time I started asking my friends questions like: How often do sheep water? Do they prefer cliffs, grassy slopes, or treed areas? Do they bed up high and come low to feed or the opposite? In the early season, if I find ewes, should I move on or will the rams be close? All of this is very important information when you start looking for areas that look “Rammy” and I felt that none of these questions were stepping over the line with my friends. My one friend told me early on some very good advice that I found quite comical. He said “you’re more likely to get naked pictures of a sheep hunter’s wife than his sheep hunting locations”, “If a sheep hunter tells you to go somewhere, go the opposite direction”, and “You have two ears and one mouth, use them in that proportion”. This last piece of advice really stuck with me. While on this journey, I found that you will learn a great deal of information if you are willing to listen. Every time I was around sheep hunters I was always keenly listening. I wasn’t listening for names of ranges, mountains or creeks; I was focused in on the finer details. I listened for things like wind direction, stalking from the top or bottom, or when they would say they found the rams high in the cliffs or bedded on the grassy slopes. I gathered all this information and stored it in my memory bank, every last word. So now, where do I go to look for rams? The first decision I wanted to solidify is what zone I was going to focus on. There are a number of zones within an hour drive of where I live so I had no shortage of selection. With today’s digital age, I was able to look up past harvest reports along with government aerial surveys to help me make my decision. Once I had my zone selected I took to Google Earth to do some digital scouting. While I was doing some research, I found a file that someone made for Google Earth on the Alberta Outdoorsmen Forum. When you downloaded this file and opened it in Google Earth, it would outline any WMU that you turned on right on the satellite image. This was very helpful for me as I didn’t have to guess when I was doing my digital scouting. I know for certain that at some point I was going to have to put boots on the ground but at least this digital scouting would help me focus in on two or three areas for me to initially explore. I starting looking for remote areas that had grass, alpine creeks, and a good escape route. This was the starting criteria for my digital scouting. Along the way, I also found the hiking blogs and social media pages were a great source for e-scouting. It turns out that they are excited about what they find on their hikes and are proud to show pictures of their unique encounters of the majestic Bighorn Sheep; trust me, I was not complaining. After about two weeks of looking at harvest data, sheep counts, and Google Earth, I had narrowed it down to three areas that I was going to hike into. The nice part about these three areas were they could all be day hiked. One of them would be a long day, but none the less, it would be a day hike. At this point, there was nothing left but to put boots on the ground. Just like everything, while I was making plans life happened. Two of my scouting trips got pushed aside due to other obligations. I didn’t focus on this being a problem as it would just get me down. I turned all my energy to the remaining time I had, adapted my plan, and hit the mountains. Due to my time constraints, I had to adjust my plan from three areas down to two. The first scouting trip into a new area was planned for Aug 24th. The night before I packed my bag, double checked my gear, and made sure I had everything I needed. The most important thing I do before any trip is go over with my wife where I will be. We go over where I am parking my truck, where I am hiking to, my planned path, and the time she can expect to hear from me. I plan on buying a Garmin InReach but at the time I did not have one. Gear is expensive and there were some key items that I had to buy so I could make these trips possible. Although an InReach is a valuable safety item, I just didn’t have the means to purchase it so I made due with pre planning. Not only that, I didn’t know if I would even like sheep hunting. I was really enjoying the training, and the couple of hikes I had made but I still didn’t know if I was going to be a sheep hunter. Every sheep hunter I have talked to speaks of the sheep hunting bug. From the way they described it to me, after your first sheep hunt one of two things will happen, you will never hunt the mountains again, or the mountains will consume every aspect of your life. At this point I didn’t know where I would land so I didn’t want to spend thousands of dollars in gear that would only be used sheep hunting. 

I made it to the trail head just as first light was breaking the eastern horizon. By the time I got geared up, there was enough light that I felt comfortable navigating my way using my planned landmarks. I was doing it, I was heading into a new area to go and find sheep that I would hunt in a little over a weeks’ time. At the start I had a big pace and I forced myself to slow down, I didn’t want to burn myself out before I got into the steep stuff. An hour and a half into the hike I took a turn and headed up. My pace was good, I was feeling good, and the weight was carrying great. Up until this point I had only stopped to check my GPS and check my waypoints. Now that I was in the steep stuff, the breaks were more frequent. I attacked the mountain in little chunks, very little chunks. I broke it down into bursts. I would tell myself that I had to take 100 steps before I got a break, or that I had to walk to a specific tree before I got to rest. This was a key mental game that really worked for me. It made the mountain more manageable; I wasn’t climbing the mountain, I was climbing stages. Oddly enough, this made the time go by a lot faster. About ¾ the way up I decided to drop my pack and have a snack. While I was crushing a Cliff bar, I heard rocks falling. I quickly turned around and had twelve rams walking a cliff ledge up above me; that put my heart into over drive. I wasn’t even hunting and I had ram fever. 

The Banana Head Rams

After setting up the scope, I could tell that they were all banana heads with the biggest being a half curl. None the less, I had found rams. I took some pictures with my Phone Skope, packed up and moved on to find their daddy or uncle. Once I got above the tree line, I found a sheltered area from the wind and dropped my pack. My plan was to spend a couple of hours here glassing and then move on if I didn’t find anything. After glassing for about an hour I had only turned up three ewes and 3 lambs. I decided to take a short walk to check out a cliff band that I’d been eyeing up all day, it was only about 80 yards from where I had been glassing. As I walked up to the cliff edge, I made a rookie mistake; I walked right up to the edge and looked over. BAM, 100 yards below me is two rams and they are much bigger than the once I seen earlier. I quickly dropped down and picked up my binos. Right away I could tell that these rams were what I was looking for. I snuck back to my spotting location and grabbed all my gear and headed back to the cliff edge above where the rams were bedded. I noticed that just 20 yards down from where I initially spotted the rams was a bluff of 4 foot high spruce trees. This would be the perfect place to watch the rams and not get picked off by them again. I walked within 5 yards of the edge, dropped my pack, and then crawled into the bluff with my spotter. This was the perfect spot, I was completely concealed, out of the wind, and laying comfortable watching the rams. After watching the rams for about ten minutes it was easy to see that they were a good two inches from being legal. Slightly deflating from when I initially found them, it was still a cool Experience. I decided I didn’t pack my DSLR up the mountain for nothing and this was a great opportunity for capture some pictures.

The first picture. Look in the very top right of the frame.

While I was reviewing one of my pictures, my eye caught something different. On the far right edge of the ram, tucked into the shadows, was one horn. I dropped my camera and picked up my binos right away to locate this third ram, and it was easy to see that he was even bigger than the other two that I was initially watching.

The picture re-framed to capture all three rams

Que ram fever. Once I had a good reference on his location, I moved my spotter over and began watching him. The first time he turned his head sideways, there was no guessing if he was legal or not. This was exciting, I was lying here about 100 yards from three rams, one of which was legal without question. I just laid there in awe watching him, I was absolutely infatuated with him. I took pictures, took video, and studied his every move. I timed how long he would bed for before he stood to stretch, how much sun he would tolerate before he moved, how he would lay in relation to the wind, I took notes on everything. This was the single moment that I knew I would forever hunt sheep. I had been bitten by the sheep bug and I hadn’t even hunted them. It was nothing less than magical laying there high in the alpine watching this beautiful animal. What seemed like minutes was actually hours. My alarm went off on my phone and I knew I had to pack up and head down so I could get back on my agreed upon time. Initially I thought going down would be easier and faster than going up. I was partially right, it was faster but it was not easier. As I descended I was carless and reckless. I was going too fast and my feet were jamming into the ground hard. It wasn’t long until my knees hurt and I had blisters on top of my toes from jarring into the toe of my boots. This was a hard lesson learnt in safe and controlled descents, I do blame my peers for this as no one ever talks about going down.

Back at home I was eager to share my experience with my close friends. I trust them fully so I shared pictures, locations, and we talked strategy. I attacked them with every question I had about how to actually hunt this ram if the season was open. They were just as excited as me going over mock stalk strategy and possible exit routes if I blew it. The best information that I took away was Leukotape. At the time I had no idea what it was but I was told to go order some off Amazon and pack it with me at all times. My friends defiantly undersold the capabilities of this product and I highly suggest everyone buys some. If you feel hot spots coming on your feet, rubbing, or sore spots, put this magical adhesive fabric on your feet and you will not get blisters. At this point I had one more hike planned before opening day into a different spot and then it was game time.