Not having any tags in my pocket other than OTC here in Indiana, I headed to Idaho the end of September to help a friend, we'll call him BOY, try to get a California Bighorn. Many are probably aware, that the last 6 years has been great for BOY in terms of drawing and filling once in a lifetime tags. In fact, he's drawn all 4 species of OIL tags in Idaho since 2006! I have been lucky, or unlucky depending on one's outlook, to be with him and help out when he shot his mountain goat and Rocky Moutain bighorn. I wasn't able to make it on the Shiras hunt as I was in the process of moving my family 1/2 way across the country in the wrong direction... So, I was excited to be able to get the opportunity to give him a hand again. FWIW, if successful, this hunt would mean that BOY had harvested every species of big game the state of Idaho allows hunters to take!
Back to the important part. BOY picked me up from the airport around noon and we took the long way to sheep camp as sage grouse was in season and I love to hunt and eat (yes, I like to eat them) sage grouse. It took a couple of stops, but we finally ran into a covey of male sage grouse with each of us filling our 1 bird/day limit.
From there we headed on to sheep camp, which was uber plush in my limited experience of sheep camps. This hunt is much different than hunting the Middle Fork country like we did for the first sheep. Much of the country is more atypical of that for pronghorns, but then it drops off into two spectacular canyons!
We scouted for a couple of days, locating a few different rams that BOY had found earlier this summer, but also looking into some new country to try to turn up something bigger. Here's the band BOY kept tabs on this summer and that we the two days we looked for them.
Not having found anything larger in the 6 scouting trips and the 3 days we and others helping were there looking, we headed out on the second day of the season to try to put one on the ground. The rams were found and we watched them awhile as the fed into a better position for a sneak. I don't think we could have planned it better as the rams fed out onto a slope that we could watch as Mark and another friend slipped in above them. As he fell...
With the pack "animals"...
Without...
A big congrats to BOY and thank you for inviting me on this. It was a great time.
Back to the important part. BOY picked me up from the airport around noon and we took the long way to sheep camp as sage grouse was in season and I love to hunt and eat (yes, I like to eat them) sage grouse. It took a couple of stops, but we finally ran into a covey of male sage grouse with each of us filling our 1 bird/day limit.
From there we headed on to sheep camp, which was uber plush in my limited experience of sheep camps. This hunt is much different than hunting the Middle Fork country like we did for the first sheep. Much of the country is more atypical of that for pronghorns, but then it drops off into two spectacular canyons!
We scouted for a couple of days, locating a few different rams that BOY had found earlier this summer, but also looking into some new country to try to turn up something bigger. Here's the band BOY kept tabs on this summer and that we the two days we looked for them.
Not having found anything larger in the 6 scouting trips and the 3 days we and others helping were there looking, we headed out on the second day of the season to try to put one on the ground. The rams were found and we watched them awhile as the fed into a better position for a sneak. I don't think we could have planned it better as the rams fed out onto a slope that we could watch as Mark and another friend slipped in above them. As he fell...
With the pack "animals"...
Without...
A big congrats to BOY and thank you for inviting me on this. It was a great time.
