The final day is here. When you draw such a tag you never envision it taking the entire 10 day season to find a good ram. This is my 12th trip up a mountain in as many days and my butt is dragging. One heel is held together with camo duct tape and the opposite knee is kept in the game by fortification with a brace. The brace eats a bigger hole out of the back of the knee every day.
Matt and I hit the Hot Rocks before light again and while we wait for the light to come up we speculate on what we have done wrong. When we could finally glass, low and behold the band of 50 sheep we had left there at last light were still there, no twister rams but at least there was some decoys. We worked around the Rocks and scoped Slaughter, nothing there anywhere. Well that made the decision easy anyway and we went up Hot Rocks. Unbelievably minutes after we climbed up and then back down to our watching point a ewe took offence to a young rams attentions and headed up the hill at us. We were astounded to watch every ram (5) in the band turn and follow. The rest is history when this 8 1/2 year old the biggest in the group crossed out of the mine and stopped to stare at us.
I want to thank Pat Garret for coming along for 3 days, the camaraderie picked up our spirits when they were flagging. Matt my son and camera man deserves special thanks for his grit and determination and sticking it out to the bitter end with the old man no matter the outcome. I told you Matt if nothing else we would have a helluva story and I kept my promise not to part out the old body on the mountain!
5 comments:
Congrats Rich.
By the sounds of it you and the others worked your asses off. I have been following your hunt for the past 5 days and was starting to get a little worried for you. I am glad it paid off. Can't wait to see some footage on TV in the future.
Dan
Wow, you took that one to the end.....congrats!
Thanks guys, pure blind luck got me the tag and that is what killed the ram. He was the biggest ram we saw off the mine and I'm glad it finally happened. That 3200 ft of elevation up to Slaughter everyday gets old!
All the same even though there wasn't a gagger in sight you always worry about pulling the trigger without using the remaining 5 or 6 hours in the day...
Wow, Congrats. Its been great following your adventures on the blog!
Glad you enjoyed it! It isn't often that we have Internet available to update every night. Some nights it was all I could do to stay awake long enough to post!
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