The morning of day 4 was a disaster. We kept running into locked gates on public land and impassible roads. We eventually found a way to get somewhat close to where we wanted to be, but never got to the area we left the sheep, were several steep rocky canyons and miles away, and, not to mention, hours behind schedule. We glassed up a few ewes and lambs on our way to where we had left the rams. As we finally got to where we last saw the group, it was well past noon and hours of glassing and hiking the adjacent canyons turned nothing up. At this point, it was well over 80 degrees, we were all out of water, and were dog-tired from the past four days of getting destroyed by the jagged rocks and mountains. As a last ditch effort, we found a hidden smaller side canyon that deserved a closer look. Amazingly, we found a group of 7 rams that I'm almost certain were the original group sans the 2 ewes. They were bedded on a cliff with each ram looking a different direction. It was uncanny how well they were set up detect danger. As I attempted to make a stalk, they just randomly decided get up and walked over a cliff face and out of our lives. Just walking, without being spooked, they could cover more ground over steep nasty terrain than you could ever imagine. We made one last attempt to catch up to them but could never turn them up. With empty water bottles and discouraged spirits, we made the final trek to the truck. We got there right at dark and found we had a flat tire and one slowly leaking tire. We threw on the spare in the dark on uneven rocky ground, and drove out praying that the other tire were hold up. This essentially ended the hunt for us, as it was just way too unsafe to continue hunting out in the middle of nowhere being on the brink of ending up completely stranded. We met some really nice folks in a little city of Dell City, TX that helped us fill our leaking tire.
Things I learned:
- Bring at least 2 spare tires and a pump can be very helpful
- Bring way more spare fuel and water than you think you need.
- We consistently found the sheep in the shady, north-facing cliffs. Once we figured this out, they seemed to start popping up out of nowhere.
- Super fun but very, very exhausting hunt, both mentally and physically
Can't wait to draw this tag again. If anyone ever has questions about chasing these guys, I'd be happy to point them in the right direction.