The "Not so glamorous side of Sheep Hunting"

[Molon Labe]

Welcome to mountain hunting in AK. One thing is for certain, you endured some hardships, lived to tell about it, and know that you can do it again if you have to. Who knows, maybe your next sheep hunt you'll be wishing that you had brought some sunscreen.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I brought 2oz of sunscreen...carried out 2oz. Haha.
Think that, first aid kit and kill kit were the only non used ounces. Plus a little bit of food.
But very happy to not need first aid kit.

 

[kaboku68]

WordPress.comclick on the pdf on Wrangell Mt. Hunt report. It was also a hell of a trip and a close but no cigar type trip.


We struggle. We endure. We work to overcome. This last hunt was one of those. For people who don’t know me I am 49 year old high school teacher in Fairbanks Alaska who gets one good hunt(School starts Aug 10) each year. I have to make it count. Now, I will hunt moose with my bow in the FMA and make a quick run up the Dalton for caribou in October but for the most part I get one good hunt per year. That is what I deal with and its ok. I have a couple more years of teaching and I will be able to hunt more than 200 days a year so its ok.

My son who is 24 years old and working was going to accompany me on a Sheep and Goat hunt into the South Wrangells had to cancel a week before it was time to go. I ended up going solo. Now I have done this before. I have successfully even packed a goat 23 miles from the high glacier to the Chitina River. This might not seem much to many of the people on here but the glacier I hunt on is one of the nastiest pieces of terrain on the earth. I had many different pieces of equipment fail but I do have some pictures and will include them.

My pilot was Gary Green who is a legend and reality star. I would be his last transported flight into the back country. Gary is an exceptional pilot but soon as we took off strange stuff started happening. The door latch to the Cessna 180 broke and the door was flapping between McCarthy and the glacier he was dropping me off on. We had a hard landing on his strip and I was off on my own. I found 7 goats above the strip including one good Billy who was separate from the other goats. I tried to get up to a position on the mountain face about 1200 yards from where the goats were and to camp there for the next day when one of the younger kids must have seen me and spooked the big Billy to the back side of the ridge. The younger goats returned to their pasture but the big Billy was gone.

I decided to go down the glacier to the creek which was about 2 miles down from the strip. The lateral moraine is about 300 feet above the main glacier and has an almost vertical cliff. I was looking to see if there was another way off of the lateral moraine and I decided to do a looksee. This generally means that I dump my pack and rifle and go ahead onto a drumlin to get a view of the side of the lateral moraine. I was about 150 yards from my rifle and I was heading back to it when a 7.5 ft. grizzly stepped up onto the drumlin. He was about 25 feet from me. The bear locked right on me- he didn’t mock charge or take off- and shifted back to get a good position for a rush. Instead of charging he started moving towards me the same way a cat approaches a mouse when the mouse is backed into a corner. So here I was, backed between a 300ft vertical moraine and a locked-on aggressive grizzly who was between me and my rifle. A billion things flashed through my mind but I thought what was the scariest thing I could thinking up. I jumped up and shouted, “ Hillary F)&(in Clinton Bit@#%” and moved toward the bear with my arms elevated. This took the bear by surprise and he stopped and shifted still in position to jump me. I had an opening and backed along the edge of the moraine and the bear followed me step by step eyes locked on mine. However, I slowly walked back to where my rifle was. I shot without trying to kill him and lowered the rifle on his head. This worked. The grizzly took off and I was out of one of the most scary situations in my life. I made my way off of the lateral moraine and camped on one of the medial moraines in the middle of the glacier.



The next morning, I could legally hunt and I returned to the creek and found two very old large billies that I would estimate would be about 9.75 to 10 inches were on one of the high ridges. It took me about four hours to climb up into a good position to make a clean kill. I got up to where I was about 250 yards to the goats. But I had a problem. The goats were on a ridge that were about 1300 ft. above a Moulin that opened to under the glacier. If I shot them on that ridge there would be about 80-90 % chance of them falling into that hole in the glacier. I camped up next to that ridge and found the goats there the next day. They would not budge off of that ridge. Finally, one of them noticed me and they both climbed straight up a chute and were into bad country that was impossible to follow them to. I decided that my wife wanted me to get a sheep more than a goat anyway so I would head down to the lower elevations where there were sheep.

I crossed the glacier which was about 4 miles and found 3 immature rams (3-5 year old rams ) in the bottom part of one of the side canyons. Two cubs flew by me further up the canyon and I decided that I would probably have a better shot at finding a ram further down the glacier. My camera’s batteries were depleted so I couldn’t get pictures of the rams or some of the other events until I had a sunny day and recharged them using my nomad seven.

I started go up each of the hanging valleys and found a great place up at about 4500 feet of the third hanging valley. I backed down to 4000 feet and set up camp next to a creek and took a pack and my rifle up to the top of the valley and the backside of the ridge. I found three other immature rams and one was arguable legal. The bigger ram was about 6.5 years old but was not quite full curl but was broken on one side and not quite full curl. I thought another ram might be up that ridge just eating a little beyond the other sheep so I waited… It started snowing and blowing and I decided that I need to go back down the mountain to bivouac at my camp. I stowed my food bags- 1) dehydrated and 1) meat and ready to eat foods like powerbars about 100 ft from my tent. That night, while I slept, a four year old young boar grizzly walked through my camp through the snow and put his nose up against my tent. He then proceeded to take the meat bag and headed down beyond the snowline. I found the remains of the dry bag about 1 mile from my camp. I decided that I would bail from that valley and head down the glacier another two miles. It dried out and I got my camera working again.

It was when I was going down the glacier that I saw a man in the distance. He looked like my father but younger and taller. He stayed by an area until I was about 400 yards away and then disappeared. I found from this the most wonderful camp that I noted was the camp of the gods. I spent the rest of the day charging batteries, fixing gear and drying out my stuff. Down on food I ended up killing three spruce hens with my rifle by clipping off their heads. I spread some of his ashes at this wonderful place. He will be there as long as time.


I went up the red rock creek and found a band of ewes and lambs but I also found a broomed old feller who was 10 years old. I could see him with my Zeiss spotter at 1500 yards. He was sleeping while the ewes and lambs were bouncing around him. He just didn’t care. This was strange to me. I ended up sneaking up the valley using the side of the draw for cover. I got to about 700 yards to the ram and to get to him I would have to climb up a scree sheep slide that was about 300 feet high. I worked to climb up to about 90 ft and it got steep enough that I would start sliding down. I worked for about 2 hours with my rifle on my back and my walking poles trying to get up the slide. I couldn’t get higher than 130 ft without sliding back. I felt that the crux of the climb would be about 180ft and if I got up there and made a misstep that I would slide down to the bottom. I decided to retreat to the bottom where I camped and would return the next day. The ram was in the same location and I tried to go up a different ridge so I could come out behind the ram. I was over the ridge and coming down the back when two ewes shot out of cover and the entire band of sheep took over off the mountain.

At this point, I decided to head out to the pick up point. Gary had showed where he wanted to pick me up on the way in and I headed to where I thought it was. I camped with a fire and waited for him to come the next day.
Gary’s strip wasn’t where I thought it was. He told me to go down the slide to the Chitina River. I went down there and couldn’t find him. I texted him again and he said that I needed to go .75 miles SW to a dry lake. I went where he directed me and ran into a sow and cub grizzly. Mama whoofed and took off into the brush. I backtracked to the river and set up camp for the night.

The next morning I headed towards new coordinates through a series of deadfalls and found a large drygras field. There I saw Gary almost get hit by a yellow and blue cub twice. I later learned that Gary didn’t even know that they were there. I got the exact cords of the strip and found it. I got picked up and dropped off in McCarthy.

My wife was waiting and we headed back to Fairbanks where I was due to teach the next day. At 4:15 AM on September 11th I had a calf moose run across the road at mile 215 and I hit him going 55mph. I steered towards his butt and he was instantly killed. We had to wait until 8am for the wrecker and trooper. Everything worked out alright and the suv will be ready in October.

I guess the moral of this story is that while I had great success hunting by myself in the past is that when you are in that type of country Alaska can hand your Azz back to you. I have some pictures including some of the goats – they are little white blobs- but I don’t have pictures of the rams. It was quite the adventure. I will think twice about going in the mountains by myself.
I can say that I was successful at finding one place of many that my father might find peace. Sometimes trips are more about the journey than the trophy at the end. In the end, I logged 45 miles of glacial country over 8 days. I am not the best photographer or photojournalist but I tried and survived.

 

[adventure907]

Great write up Thomas....sounds like it was a great trip with all the trials and tribulations that make an Alaskan hunt memorable.