Alaska - From the Midwest to the Far Northwest: August 2015

Well Joint Commission came at a horrible time (my hospital's accrediting body)... the end of July. They come without warning, although we knew they would come at some point this summer. Unfortunately, they waited until the fishing was hot and hunting was about to start, meaning I couldn't do much or plan anything until they came and most post-visit work was done.

On Aug 1, I decided that I would be able to get in a quick 7 day sheep hunt over the opening season dates. My boss thankfully granted my leave, and a buddy was up for the last second adventure.

We decided to try a new area that I have never hunted or scouted. This isn't how I normally hunt, as I must always be prepared and know what to expect when hunting, however, my work schedule this year did not allow that. Since I didn't scout this area prior, I was not sure what to expect. Regardless, hunting an unknown area is better than not hunting at all!

Day 1 (2 days before opening day)

We loaded up the ATVs and headed to our hunt area. The weather was beautiful and we couldn't get to our spot faster! It was an uneventful drive there. Once we arrived, we quickly unloaded the machines and headed up the 20 mile trail. The trail was in excellent condition since there was little to no rain for the past week. On the way in, we spooked a ptarmigan... only after he ran about 500 yards right next to the machine. We saw couple other hunters on the trail, but they were likely looking for caribou and sheep. Toward the end of the trail, we spotted a beautiful red fox running as fast as he could to get away from us... no worries tho... we weren't predator hunting.

We arrived at the end of the trail and swapped our riding clothes for hiking clothes. We secured the machines, wedged rocks under the tires, and took off toward across the vast tundra toward our valley.

As we hiked toward our desired valley, we caught a glimpse of our first "white". They were so far away at first that we couldn't tell if they were rams of ewes, but as we got closer, we could tell at least two of them had horns :) When we got withing spotting scope range, we could tell one was a very young ram, one was about 3 years old with a half curl, and the other was close to being legal at 7/8 curl. Bummer! But that's ok... it was good to see some rams so early in the hunt and hike.

We didn't hike too much that day since we got a late start and had to hike up hill the whole time. Over the course of that hike we saw a million marmots and double digit caribou. The crazy part about the caribou is that they were all HIGHER than the sheep typically are. I'm talking, completely on top of the tallest mountains. These animals are crazy, but they overheat fast and hate bugs. Solution = thinking/ acting like a mountain goat.

Toward the end of the Day 1 hike, we traversed up and over a ridge. In the other valley there were two more (seperate) rams. Both were also sublegal, but again it was good to know that we were in descent sheep country. When descending the ridge to our potential camping spot for the night, I lost my footing and fell fairly hard on the rocks. Of all the things to fall on, of course, my rifle was it. At the time, I was scared I jarred the scope and the gun wouldn't shoot straight when I needed it to (that was stuck in the back of my head the entire trip).

We found a nice spot near a small pond to camp for the night. Little did we know that we wouldn't move from this spot for a while.

Day 2 (1 day before opening day)

RAIN!!!! It rained all day :( because of this, we didn't do any hiking or anything outside the tent. The day consisted of a lot of sleeping and being crammed in a small tent. This is when I found out that my hunting buddy snores! He was on the receiving end of many rib punches through out the hunt.

During the endless rain, we realized the tent fly was not set up correctly. As a result, water was finding it's way under the tent and was slowly seeping its way into our tent. A few of our items got a little wet, but nothing a good tent fly adjusting and ShawnWow wicking can't fix.

It was pretty boring being stuck in that tent all day. I decided to make a deck of card out of journal paper. With those cards I played many games of solitaire. It was a good time passer because the cards were so small and flimsy it took a substantial amount of time just to move one card.

Day 2 ended as it started, with rain and bad weather preventing us from doing anything.

Day 3 (Opening day)

This day was a repeat of Day 2, more bad weather! The wind picked up and was bending the tent enough that the side walls and poles were caving in and touching us at times. It wasn't the worst weather that tent has endured, but it definitely wasn't huntable.

When we took a peak out of the tent, we could see new snow in the mountains from the "rain" yesterday. Throughout the day, we could also tell the snow was accumulating more from that day's weather too.

I put the cards to good use again by playing a countless amount of solitaire. We also tried to play cribbage, which we successfully did, but it took forever... and unfortunately I lost.

Day 3 ended as it started, with rain and bad weather preventing us from doing anything.

Day 4

The 4AM alarm sounded and it was still raining. I set the alarm to 5AM and by that time, the rain had stopped. TIME TO HUNT!!!! As we were packing up and starting our hunt, it started to lightly snow on us. At least is wasn't rain!By mid day, the skies cleared and the weather turned warm and sunny.

This day we planned to hike up and over multiple passes, and look down many different valleys. We were hoping to find some sheep to watch and possibly study, however, that didn't really happen. Of all the valleys we towered over and gazed down (I'm estimating about 10 or so), only one contained sheep. That one valley only held 5 sheep, all of which were rams; two solo and one group of three. We watched these rams for a little while. We quickly decided that the group of three rams were all sublegal, and they were hanging out in some nasty terrain. It took us a little while to determined that the two solo rams were also sublegal (one was far away and one was close, but just barely sublegal). We decided to mosey along and try to find other sheep, but we weren't able to locate any that day.

In our many up and over traverses, we realized that we may have chosen a path for this hunt that is too rocky and above typical sheep terrain. We soon got used to walking on and through boulder field after boulder field. It wasn't too bad except when you have to ascend or descend steep terrain on large rocks. That's when we discovered rock-alanches (an avalanche of rocks). Trust me... these ARE NOT FUN! After being caught in a couple of these, we quickly learned which rock types were most prone to this... and avoided them at all costs.

In addition to the 5 rams, we only spotted 1 caribou and 3 ptarmigan on this day.

Day 5

This was another planned day of hiking up and over many mountains and passing through multiple valleys. The original plan was to end the day on the other side of a river after we shot down through a specific valley, setting us up for a return path back to the ATVs through the mountains. Well, a potential monster ram can change plans in a hurry!

The day stared out beautiful, and it eventually got rather hot out. We hiked many miles through the mountains without seeing a single sheep. This was very disappointing and perplexing as the terrain we were looking at and gazing down on was extremely nice sheep terrain, it just didn't have any sheep in it! We did see a couple carribou in the morning and a few more ptarmigan, but we weren't there to hunt those!

We final get to the head of the valley we were going to descend to cross the river, and low and behold, we spot a white object far in the distance. A quick glance from the spotting scope and we could tell it was a ram. The ram appeared to be a monster because even tho it was 5 miles a way (way out of the way mind you), it looked like it had the body size of a dairy cow. At that point, we had a quick talk about our hunting plans and what we would do. We didn't know for a fact that this ram was legal, and if we attempted to get close enough to it to tell, we would be going for broke and committing the rest of our hunt on this one ram. If it wasn't legal, we would not be able to retrace our steps and get back on course (we would be so far out of the way that we would have to make a bee line straight back to the ATVs). If it was legal, we would have a miserably long hike back to the ATVs (approximately 3 days worth) ahead of us.

Big risks result in big rewards, so we decided to take the gamble. Unfortunately, The first two miles between us and the ram was a boulder field from hell. Picture the ocean with 100 foot waves, but those waves are unstable rocks that ranged from the size of basketballs to large dogs. That is what we had to traverse. It took us close to 3 hours just to cross this. Thank goodness the rocks weren't wet because that would have made this part of the hike impossible. After our 3 hour hike across the boulder field from hell, it was nice to see real ground again. We took a long rest to study the ram closer, and to fill up our hydration bladders. Now only 3 miles away, we could tell the ram was going to be boarder line legal. We had to get closer! Unfortunately, the ram was lying at the very peak of mountain pass and could see everything on the mountain side that we needed to climb.

It was at this point the ram stood up, and slowly strolled over the other side of the mountain and disappeared. This was our chance. He didn't see us or know we were there, so him walking on the other side of the mountain meant that we would not be far at all once we got to the top. This meant that we had to cover the last three miles and a thousand feet in elevation as fast as possible.

We planned out route and hurried as fast as we could. My long legs make climbing inclines easier so I was pulling ahead of my buddy. I got to within 300 yards just below where the ram was last seen and I look back toward the direction I came (but through some rocks) and I see the ram. I immediately dropped to the ground. Where I was, I was in the ram's view easily for the last 10 minutes... and I had NO IDEA. But somehow, the ram was bedded down in such a way that his head was turned completely away from my direction and never saw me during that time. Ironically, at that exact moment, the ram looked all around him at the surroundings. Luckily, I was not hiking at that time and hiding behind a small rock.

The ram's position made it very difficult for my hunting buddy to catch up. I finally signaled to him to stop hiking. He was literally within 100 yards directly below the ram, but he could not tell due to the cliff peak and rocks between the two. I myself was in a very bad position, glued against the side of the mountain, unable to move for fear of being spotted. We stayed put for quite some time until the ram decided to get up and move a little. At this point, I flashed a series of hand gestures to my hunting partner (which were unclear and confusing). I watched the ram and had my buddy move and manuever according to where the ram was moving. Over the course of the next hour, we somehow both made it 300 yards to the left of the ram, behind a cliff of rocks, without being spotted. I still can't believe we weren't seen!

Now that we got so close, we were in perfect position to determine if it was a legal ram or not. While we were waiting for the perfect angle to make this determination, the skies opened up and it started to snow on us. It was kind of peaceful, but it was rather cold. Well, the ram finally presented the perfect angle to determine legality. We took a gamble on this ram.... and lost ( It was not quite full curl and we only counted 7 rings (rams must have 8 growth rings or have a full 360 curl horn to be legal). We then took this opportunity to watch and study the ram. After watching the ram for a while, we decided to stand up and spook it off. He ran away startled and we never saw him again.

We were then faced with a the big decision on where we needed to hike to next. We couldn't go back the way we came and down our originally intended valley because that would put us back in boulder-ville. We had two options, 1) descend a couple slopes steeper than anything we we have hiked yet, or 2) take a 14 mile detour and avoid the up and over/ steep issues. We chose option 1.

The steep descents weren't as bad as we originally thought. I found my snowboarding and skiing skills useful during these descents because often the rocks and dirt would give out from under our feet and we would have to "slide" down the face while staying on our feet. It was actually kind of fun, but I'm not sure others would think the same if they weren't used to shifting their balance appropriately.

We ended up traversing a couple more mountains without seeing any more sign of sheep. As we got closer to night time, depression started setting is. We began to realize that because of our choice to pursue that ram, we were no faced with a 2-day, straight hike out in non-sheep terrain. We hit the hay wishing the ram we went all out on would have been legal.

Day 6

We got up again an hour before sunrise and it was another beautiful day. We decided to swap our dirty clothes out (and man did these stink) and put on fresh clothes. Unfortunately, this is when I discovered that I forgot to pack an extra pair of socks. I have no idea how I forgot that, but it's a good thing I didn't soak my feet and really needed them!

Today's plan was to follow the valley stream down to where it meets up with a river and parallel the river out and back toward the ATVs as far possible. As we headed down the valley, the mountains on the other side of the river began to appear more clearly. To my surprise, so did many white dots! At closer glance through the spotting scope, a group of 16 sheep (all lambs and ewes) were grazing on the mountain facing toward the river. Again, a little depression sank in because this group of sheep was less than a mile from our originally intended path we would have taken prior to diverting toward the sub-legal ram the day prior.

We continued our hike down the valley a came across a group of 9 caribou on the other side of the valley creek. There were no large bulls in the group, and most looked like cows and calves. To my surprise, one cow was wearing a bright orange collar. This is the first caribou I have seen wearing a collar before. (We later saw 3 separate solo caribou as well).

We were almost toward the bottom of the valley where the creek and river meet up when we spotted a grizzly bear. The bear was feeding on blue berries at the confluence of the creek and river... directly in our intended path. Hunting for grizzlies was legal in this area and my hunting buddy was previously talking about shooting one had the opportunity presented itself. Well, the opportunity presented itself, however, he chose not to pursue the grizzly because of how far away we were at the time. Instead, we shot pictures of it and watched it stuff itself with the blue fruit of the tundra. We kept an eye on him as we got closer to where our paths would cross. He spotted us about 300 hundred yards away, pondered over what he saw, and then high tailed it out of site as fast as he could. That was the last we saw of the bear.

One of our pet peeves up here is people that litter (especially glass). Hunters that litter REALLY irritate me because they are the ones that are supposed to have the utmost respect for nature. I tell you this because we came across an old horse camp where multiple pop and tin cans were thrown out after the contents were consumed. Normally I would pack these out to throw away, but I could not afford an extra weight at that time. (I later picked up glass beer bottles on the ATV trail on the way out)

Once on the river bed, the hiking was fairly easy due to the many caribou trails all over. Regardless... hiking was along the river was a B****! I say this because it was hot, there was no breeze, and the white socks were out! White socks are the worst!! They are small biting flies that seem to hunt in packs and LOVE flying in your mouth and down your throat while you are hiking. Their bites don't seem too bad at first, but MAN they itch like crazy afterwards. I can't type anymore about them because it irritates me thinking about them.

The hike was rather uneventful once we got on the river. We found three really nice caribou sheds, but again, we could not afford the added weight that far away. Toward the end of the hike set up camp above a large lake. To our surprise, there was a cabin on this lake. It turns out this small cabin is actually a forestry cabin occasionally used for various land maintenance activities.

We settled down for the night searching for sheep across the river on the far mountains. We ended up spotting 5 rams... out of reach due to remaining hunting time :(

Day 7

The plan for this day was to hike as fast as possible, get back to the ATVs, and return home before it got too late. We woke up and immediately noticed an extremely large bull caribou nearby. He was in no hurry to go anywhere so we watched him as ate breakfast and tore down camp. On our hike toward the ATVs, we came across two descent caribou sheds. When we encountered the first one, we only had 6 miles left to hike, so I opted to carry it out. The second shed was a full rack and skull. My hunting buddy didn't want to carry the extra weight, so again, I opted to pack it out too. That made the rest of my hike pretty miserable (not to mention MORE white socks)!

We finally made it back to the ATVs, hot, exhausted, and empty handed. We quickly downed the powerades and snacks that were waiting for us. We then swapped our hiking clothes for our riding clothes, packed everything up, secured our gear to the ATVs, and began our ride out.

On our way out, we came across 13 rock ptarmigan hanging out on the ATV trail. They moved to side so we wouldn't run them over and we kept riding toward the truck. Interestingly, we passed a side by side that was looking for caribou, and as it turns out, the hunters were coworkers of my hunting partner. We stopped and chatted for a bit and then headed our own ways.

The trail got fairly rough and dirty near a beaver pond. It was at that exact moment that I was getting thrown around that I remember that my helmet was not on my head! I quickly realized that I forgot my helmet back where we parked the ATVs during our hunt. Reflecting on how I could possibly forget that, I remembered that in order to keep it dry, I put it under the ATV. When we went to leave, I backed out and didn't notice it since it was camouflaged and blended in. I contemplated leaving the helmet, but again, I hate littering and that helmet wasn't cheap. I decided to back track and retrieve the helmet. It was about 5 miles away at this point, and going 10-15 miles per hour in this rough terrain meant that this would be a timely set back. I gave my truck keys to my hunting buddy and we split up.

On my way back to retrieve the helmet, I passed the same group of 13 ptarmigan. I thought to myself, if these birds are here when I return, I am going to try and harvest one with a rock. Well I finally made it back to where my helmet was supposed to be, and I almost overlooked it again because of how well it blended in to the ground. I picked up my helmet, strapped it on, and then headed back (again) to toward the truck. On my solo return to the truck, I passed those same individuals we talked to earlier, except they were further in the trail this time. Soon after passing them, I came across the group of ptarmigan again. Sticking true to my work, I parked the ATV and collected a handful of baseball sized rocks. The birds would not fly, but they continued to run from me walking towards them, staying about 50 feet from me at all times.Seeing that I couldn't get any closer, I decided to unload my rocks. I didn't get close to hitting a single one of them. I then gathered another handful of rocks. Again, I wasn't getting close to hitting any of them. Frustrated, I stopped walking toward them and let them slowly increase their distance. I had one rock left and thought I would give one more hard toss in their direction. To my surprise, I nailed one in the lower abdomen! White feathers poofed and a couple birds took flight. The bird I hit was now flopping on the ground and semi limping away. I quickly ran to it to catch it when all of a sudden it remembered that it had wings and started flying. At this moment, my heart sank thinking that it was injured and would fly out of sight and reach. BUT, to my surprise it was only flying for about 5 seconds when all of a sudden it dropped like a bag of rocks. I quickly ran over to where it dropped, located it, and noticed it was already dead! I somehow pulled off the most ancient strategy of harvesting meat... throwing a stone. As a funny bonus, I later found out that my hunting partner's friends were all watching me through their binoculars for the whole thing.

The rest of the ATV ride out was uneventful. I got back to the truck to find my hunting partner already there anxiously waiting for me. While we were loading everything up, we spotted 6 different moose from our camping spot. Too bad it wasn't moose season. We made quick work of loading everything up and headed for home.

Overall, it was a good hunt. I have been unsuccessful more times than I have been successful, and that's what makes harvesting a big game animal even more fulfilling, especially sheep. I learned a lot about that hunt area and my potential, future mountain hunting partner. It wasn't a wasted trip by any means as I would have easily liked to do that exact same hike without a gun in my hand. The real bonus here was not seeing a single other sheep hunter... but then again, there weren't many rams to compete over that would result in seeing other hunters. But with that said, I will likely not hunt that area again.

First traversed peak of the first day

Valley view

Looking up into a valley that we would soon be hiking towards

Pack off break

Finally able to hike again after what seemed like forever staying coped up in the tent; this is looking back down a valley we just walked up

A valley from a saddle we just crossed

Another valley from a saddle we just crossed

Debris from a receding glacier

A view from higher above

These rocks were CRAZY; I'm no geologist, but if I was, I'm guessing this formation would have kept me busy

A zoomed out view

A 7/8 curl ram who didn't care how close we got him

More crazy rock formations

Zoomed in

This is a good picture of these rock formations that shows the pillar like structure that forms them. I knew Danielle would find then extremely interesting because they resemble the shelf ice we walk on at the river. The river ice forms these exact same shapes and in the spring during thaw, you can separate the ice pillars individually as you crush the ice. I can't help but think this rock formation was created in a somewhat similar fashion to how the river shelf ice if made.

There was a beautiful and large bed of moss and stream that braided and flowed over it at the top of a mountain; we joked that it could be the fountain of youth due to the remote location and how oddly it stuck out

Here is one of those rock formation pillars; I put my hand on it to show the size and circumference of one of the pillars

Oh joy... rocks to walk over

Another valley from a saddle we crossed

Twin peaks

Rock Ptarmigan

Glacier waterfall

Our destination for the next couple hours

Up and over again

More rocks in our path

HUGE and old glacial debris ridge

The valley in the very center of this picture (where the sunshine is hitting) is where we saw "the ram." This is the spot where we saw him and made our fateful decision to pursue.