I've also hunted Montana with my Dad, and a good friend that drew.
Those hunts, we waited until later in the season, and did essentially no scouting prior to the season. In fact, we never hunted in either case until November, even though the season started Sept. 15.
My buddies tag, he just showed up and we started hunting. About 3 days in, we found a good group of rams and he as able to take a 10.5 year old ram, 40" on each horn, that qualified for the awards book, at 179 and change net. There was another ram with this one, that was an absolute dinosaur. It was a tough choice between the two. The other ram was killed the next year, and it was 14.5 years old, heavily broomed, and just squeaked into the record book at 180 and change. Wish I would have taken pictures of the other ram, it was a cool sheep.
My buddy (on the left), with his Montana ram.
My Dad's hunt was a bit different. I went up a week early and scouted for him, since he was still working. Again, that was the most fun for me, just getting to look over a bunch of rams. I found about 40-50 rams that were 3/4 curl or better, maybe 5-6 that were record book heads.
I took a TON of photos of sheep, and when Dad got off work, I showed him all the pictures I'd taken. It was a tough call on the top 5, but he liked the looks of this one, better than the rest:
It took a day to find this one again, as I hadn't kept real close track of him, too busy looking for more rams. We watched the ram until dark. The next morning we hiked into where he was, and found him in a hell of a snowstorm. Actually, got pretty lucky, as they had not moved more than a few hundred yards from the night before.
Dad shot it at about 90 yards or so, turned out being over 40 on the long side, 8.5 years old, and officially scored 183 3/8 net.
Again, the most fun for me on all the hunts was the scouting.