Arizona Nelsoni Ram Saga

Sneaker · 2026-05-30T18:58:00-0600

I was lucky enough to draw a rare year-long desert sheep tag for all the Nelsoni or Nelson sheep units in Arizona. To make it even sweeter, I live in the middle of these units and just 30 minutes from the nearest sheep. It ended up being about a 6 month hunt. The population of sheep in these units is significantly down compared to 10 years ago, but with proximity and time on my side, and the help of Exclusive Pursuit Outfitters, it was all that I could have hoped for. I won’t go into all the specific stories and stalks, but I put in a lot of days, probably over 160 miles of hiking, and really love being in the desert sheep wilderness of Mohave County. On a 14 mile hike day, trying to refind a ram, I fell and broke some ribs in a deep canyon by myself 5 miles from the rig. That sidelined me for quite a while, along with really worrying the wife haha.

With Exclusive Pursuit’s excellent help, guidance and knowledge, I killed the biggest and oldest ram we saw. Photo story to follow in the following posts of 50 or so photos. A lot of them are fuzzy and far away etc but I’ll share what I have.