How do you justify sheep hunting?

[northernmadman]

One of, if not the only benefit to living in the NWT is the hunting, I can purchase a Dall tag over the counter each year along with moose and caribou. Filling the freezer comes first so priority on the moose, but I am working on the fitness level so I am able to fill the tag this fall. Getting there can be expensive, but a far cry from 30k for a hunt. Just travel costs from Yellowknife to Norman Wells and out on a chopper will be under 5k If you want to do a dedicated sheep hunt.
Once gear is purchased, my fall hunt costs me less than 4K each year, mainly in fuel prices for my truck. I have seen shooter rams each year, they are just not high on the list with the crew I hunt with.

 

[buffybr]

I was lucky enough to have lived where I do now within 100 miles of all of Montana's Unlimited sheep units, and back in the early '80s when you could buy an Unlimited sheep tag for $25 any time before the season opened.

My only regret is that I didn't take my sheep hunting seriously enough and I only hunted the opening weekend of each year. But I did shoot 4 rams...3 of my own, and another that I passed up, then another hunter wounded him, and I finished him for her. My total cost for each hunt was the $25 tag and a tank of gas for my PU.

Then in 1999 I kind of let the word out that I would be interested in a Canadian Dall ram hunt, and an outfitter that I knew when he lived in Bozeman called me one day and said another outfitter had a Dall cancellation for $7,500 that included options for Mountain Caribou , wolf, and wolverine tags. I made that hunt happen and for less that $11,000 I came home with a great Dall ram, a good Mountain Caribou in the velvet, and a Wolverine.

Then 2 years later, my Canadian outfitter friend called me again about a cancellation Stone sheep hunt for $11,000. But at that time I was in the middle of a very nasty divorce that took 2 years and $100K for me to come out of it with my house and many of my posessions (including my house) that I had owned 10 or more years before I had even met her.

Now, I'm still single, don't have any debts, and I actually have the money that a Stone and Desert sheep hunt would cost, but I can't justify to myself paying more for a hunt that my house cost, and now at 78 I'm not sure that I can still climb to the tops of the sheep mountains.

 

[TheGrayRider]

“Only two things we will regret on the deathbed, that we are little loved and little travelled.” Mark Twain.​

 

[Houseminer]

For me the wild meat is just better. And if I I’ve the time I hunt them.