I know this is an old thread but . . . how did this hunt turn out?
Congrats to
@lonedave! Great pic!
I'm a bit embarrassed to say, I tagged out, with a rifle, at 25 yards.
I have lots of great excuses hunt was 13 hours one way, I had just moved from where I drew the tag to Idaho, only had 4 days to hunt, was borrowing a buddies truck, there was lots of rain and the sheep were staying really high that year away from the guzzlers that are normally really easy to hunt, etc....
I actually hit the brakes and did a U turn leaving Idaho to get my bow, thought better of it and did another U turn heading to Nevada. It was a good learning lesson of deciding what I want out of the experience and picking the weapon that will give me that. Next time I would have brought the bow, but I think as a newer traditional archer it still seemed undoable.
I was having a really hard time finding sheep, as were the other hunters. This unit is generally sheep road hunting. An acquaintance offered me a spot to check and it was great info, I headed out for that evening. I'm formally a rock climber and guide and spotted sheep on a fairly solitary mountain in the Mojave desert about an hour before dark. It wasn't super far, maybe a mile of arroyo/drainages, and a couple hundred feet up, but it was a really broken up ledgy limestone mountain. I had a perfect wind in my face the whole time, minus a couple swirls down low. I used the arroyos to my advantage but really started booking it. My buddy stayed back and watched me the sheep with the glass.
I got close to where I thought they were and was stemming up a 12' corner of so , imagine a 90 degree open book of rock and I have one leg and one arm pushing up either side. I was wearing approach shoes, that are like a tennis shoe with some stickier rubber for hiking in to climb. I stopped at a good spot to stand with hands and my chest sticking over the top of the corner. I was gingerly setting my rifle in a bush to mantle over (climbing out of a swimming pool), when a ewe came exploding out from under the rock in front of me. She was laying down about 1' in front and 2' below me. If I had been faster I could have grabbed her leg.
I mantled over, grabbed the rifle and chambered a round. She came around a big boulder at 25 yards and I stopped her with a GRRRR sound. She watched me as I off hand saw nothing but hair at 4x, found a spot and probably hammered more than squeezed the trigger. I think it would have been a perfect bow set up. My buddy said he was going crazy that I didn't look back for directions and he was watching us both through a 60x spotter.
After I shot, there were sheep everywhere, many giving me multiple long options to assess what they were and could have gotten shots at 20-60 yards. She went 20 yards or so. I was amazed how small she was when I went to pull her off the edge of a ledge and drag her to a flat spot, like moving a dog. Super fun hunt, chasing animals in the cliffs as a climber is a really unbeatable experience. I'm putting in for mountain goat as my draw option now in Idaho, and I want to try with my llamas and a stick bow.
This picture is looking back on the place I came from.