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[C Bow]

Shines I did hunt the unlimited this year but it was with a heavy heart. I went in Thursday 9/13 but had to come out Tuesday 9/18 as my dad was in Hospice and I needed to get home. I had the best hunt of my life while I was there the weather was great and I covered a lot of country saw no sheep but learned so much about my physical condition.I walked 15 miles out on Tuesday in 8 hrs and got picked up at trail head and given a ride to my truck went got a room for 7hrs then drove 31 hrs straight back home. I got home Thursday 9/20 by 6pm it was my dads birthday. My dad always wanted to see me get a Sheep but it was never possible until the last few years. I was hoping it would be his birthday present. My dad lost his battle with bone cancer at 5:34 pm Saturday 9/22/18 It has been a tough year lost my lab 1/27/18 of 15 years and now lost dad he was 82 years young. I was with him when he passed and I was very blessed to have him as a father Thanks for checking on me and maybe next year.

 

[mtmuley]

C Bow, my condolences and prayers. Losing your father is tough. Been there too early myself. mtmuley

 

[C Bow]

Thanks Mtmuley

 

[MTGomer]

I’ll put the basics of our hunt on here.

First, I’ll say the weather, unlike previous years was fantastic. A little rain the second day and a little snow and fog for one day later in the hunt.

My buddy Isaac and I headed in first thing in the morning, 3 days before season. We hiked about 14 miles that first day getting to a vantage point to glass until opener. We discovered no sheep from this point.
After a few days we relocated, to begin methodically checking off drainages and glassing huge expanses of terrain for a few days at a time. We dropped off our perch 2500 feet, crossed a drainage then climbed 4000+ feet. That was an arduous day. Season was upon us and we spent the next several days looking over promising terrain, but found no sheep.
Moved camp across a basin, which opened us up to a lot more glassing opportunity. We spent 3 or 4 days glassing around this location without any rams. We did see a ewe and a lamb
From this location, We made another big push to the other side of another large drainage, where we could look back at some of the terrain we’d just been on, from a different angle, as well as look at new country.
From here, we looked into a few more basins over the next few days, then bushwhacked to a trail and out to a trailhead. In total we spent 11 days coving about 40 miles. We saw 22 goats, 2 sheep, 2 black bears, a moose, some deer, , surprisingly 2 elk, a pine Martin and had a fox killing pikas outside out tent in the fog.

The good pics taken by Isaac,bad ones with my phone.

 

[MTGomer]

 

[MTGomer]

 

[MTGomer]

Gear successes of the hunt include the new Stone Glacier tent, the Stone Glacier Sky 6900 backpack. Also a Kifaru sheep tarp, for shade and wind deflection when glassing, and a place to hang out under in the rain. Good glass makes the long days easier on the eyes. Tikka T3. If you must have a rifle you don’t use accompany you with all your gear- might as well make it a light one.
On the downside, Schnees Granite boots, unfortunately did not do well at all- leaking like crazy and a broken eyelet on day two made one foot a little tough to stay tight. Also, AGC bono harness; I love the design but can not get the damn thing to stay tight.

 

[C Bow]

Gomer if I ever grow up I want to be half the man you are. I always enjoy your pictures and your stories. You are so deserving of a unlimited Ram. It will happen I know it will happen and I can not wait to see pictures and hear the story.

 

[BigHornRam]

Thanks for the pics and run down gomer. That will help get me though till next year! Sorry to hear about your dad Coy. Glad you got out to Montana again this year though. Heres to next year for all the unlimited sheep hunters reading this.

 

[C Bow]

Thanks EYJONAS and BigHornRam

 

[publichunter1]

This has to be one of my favorite threads of all time! The stories, images, and the thought of chasing big horns up there is just great. Congrats to theat on what seems to be an almost impossible feat.

 

[Redside]

Gear successes of the hunt include the new Stone Glacier tent, the Stone Glacier Sky 6900 backpack. Also a Kifaru sheep tarp, for shade and wind deflection when glassing, and a place to hang out under in the rain. Good glass makes the long days easier on the eyes. Tikka T3. If you must have a rifle you don’t use accompany you with all your gear- might as well make it a light one.
On the downside, Schnees Granite boots, unfortunately did not do well at all- leaking like crazy and a broken eyelet on day two made one foot a little tough to stay tight. Also, AGC bono harness; I love the design but can not get the damn thing to stay tight.

I had the same problem with the AGC, finally noticed the side buckle was put on backwards from factory and why it wouldn't stay tight. It is much better now. Take a close look how they are threaded thru there. Great story, that takes some serious mental power to stick with it for 11 days and only two sheep!

 

[Tradewind]

I had the same problem with the AGC, finally noticed the side buckle was put on backwards from factory and why it wouldn't stay tight. It is much better now."

Ah, thanks Redside. i was having the same trouble. Will check it out tonight

 

[rustneversleeps]

Love the pics and your outlook Gomer, thanks for bringing us with you to the clouds. Sorry about your father and dog C Bow, both such tough things to go through.

 

[MTGomer]

I will check that out on the binocular harness. Thank you.

 

[Cav1]

Unlimited #300


I solo scouted and hunted District #300 up Tom Miner Basin for most of the September 1-10[SUP]th[/SUP] season there, going northwest of the road rather than joining the circus along the Park boundary. I did come down out of the hills twice to take a day off, rejuvenate and eat like a starving bear. I took in a food cache on my last scouting trip and packed as light as humanly possible. It would have been too light if it had been colder but we were blessed with good weather that allowed me to just sleep out under the stars. I managed to waddle around up in the high country pretty well for a fat guy over fifty with a long list of injuries, but the furthest I went in one day was only four miles and the distance was more often only one or two. I had tried to get in condition with mountain hikes all summer but should have tried much harder. Some of the country kicked my butt physically but I still had a ball.

Quite a few years, pounds and miles have passed since I last spent much time above timberline. With the cool, clear air, high viewpoints and seemingly endless vistas it’s kind of magical up there. Even crusty old Elmer Keith felt it and waxed poetic about the high country.

“Have you ever seen a mature bighorn ram silhouetted on the sky line of his rugged domain? If so, then you know that no word picture can ever quite do him justice. Ranging at or above timberline, no other animal so typifies, or is so symbolic of, the rugged grandeur of the lofty snow-covered peaks, beautiful glacier-fed lakes and alpine meadows of the Rocky Mountain chain. Some of the wildest, roughest and most beautiful country that God ever made.”

I put in many hours of glassing with Swarovski binos and spotting scope but still only saw four other hunters off in the distance the entire trip. Good optics including a spotter are essential. I actually glassed sheep virtually every morning and/or evening, finding them anywhere from the timber way down below the cliffs to the very tops of the peaks and ridges. Of course, every last one of them was a ewe, lamb or juvenile; I never did see a mature ram the whole time. So now I know where not to go. Didn't get any good pics of game since I couldn't use my digital camera in conjunction with the optics. Otherwise it only has 6x actual magnification...everything above that (up to 48x) it just plays with the pixels.

Mostly below me there were tons of wapiti full in the rut everywhere I went, including a 5-point and his harem way the hell up on South Twin Peak just below the communication site at about 10,000 feet one morning. One night with a good moon I slept atop a knife ridge and had bulls bugling away on either side of me most of the night. I saw some mountain goats most days as well, from loners up to one bunch of nine, but I only saw one or two stray mulies per day up that high. The only grizzly I saw was better than two miles away and at least 2,000 feet below me on Rock Creek. I never even saw any fresh grizzly sign up high; they all seemed to be down low in the main creek bottoms going after the berries and chokecherries. I still stuck with all the Bear Aware practices to avoid meeting one. Other than learning the country much better and finding out where the rams were not, I did recall some old and/or re-learn a few new mountain hunting lessons.

1. A Forest Service road listed as a “Dirt Road Suitable For Passenger Cars” actually requires a high-clearance, armored and fully-tracked “passenger car” along the lines of an M113 Armored Personnel Carrier. I bottomed out my F-150’s work duty suspension and hit the frame on more than one occasion and I’m pretty sure I was throwing up a good bow wave with my bumper in one particular mudhole. I used the granny low side of the transmission both up and downhill just to keep my pace down to a slow enough crawl that I didn’t rattle the fillings out of my teeth bouncing over the rocks and ruts. A saw and a tow chain came in handy on a couple of particularly big blow-downs blocking the road after a strong thunderstorm went through the area just prior to season.
2. Good boots are priceless: They were rather heavy, since they say one pound on the foot equals four pounds in the pack, but I did good with some seemingly indestructible all-leather Austrian Army surplus mountain troop (Gebirgsjaeger) boots.
3. Slow and Steady. I learned a long time ago to sidehill back and forth up steep slopes and to proceed slowly and with short steps, just so long as you keep on putting one foot in front of the other. And it’s often better to take the long way around the head of a drainage following the contour lines than lose and regain all that altitude dropping down to cross it. Once you gain the top of a ridge stay with it as long as you can.
4. Walking stick(s)/Trekking Pole(s): I don’t know how I managed to ever get along without these for the first forty years. I think they reduce fatigue a great deal simply by helping you keep your balance. And my wife used hers as a dandy bipod when she filled her ewe tag over by Anaconda about ten years back.
5. Never miss a chance to fill your water bottles whenever you come across any water source. They are few and far between up high and it kind of sucks if you have to drop down and give up more than a thousand feet of elevation just to get water. It can be a real balancing act when it comes to carrying enough water without adding too much weight. I wound up lugging a gallon in three containers…that’s 8 pounds worth of H2O in case you were wondering. I carry an old folding handle USGI canteen cup, too; it comes in handy for dipping out of tiny rivulets too small to submerge a water bottle in. I brought powdered Gatorade mix and drank one quart of that for every two quarts of water. On one scouting trip I got water from a big snowbank tucked into a hollow high on a north-facing slope…ten days later while I was hunting it was all gone. On another scout I filled water bottles directly from a beautiful tiny spring in a small meadow at the edge of the whitebark pines; a week later, it was one big muddy reeking elk wallow that plugged my filter.

Never miss a chance to get water.

It’s colder than you think. On average, you lose 3-5 degrees of air temperature for every thousand feet in elevation gain. In very dry air, and we often have extremely low humidity in August and September, the temperature can drop as much as one degree for every 150 feet of elevation gain. When you get up to elevations approaching 10,000 feet, on a bright, sunny day the air temperature in the sun versus the air temperature in the shade can vary by as much as forty degrees. The clear air up high undergoes both rapid heating and cooling; as soon as the sun dips down behind a peak to the west, one immediately feels the heat loss. Winds are common in the mountains as well, adding the effect of wind chill. I always carry a Gore-Tex jacket in my fanny pack. When you stop hiking and start glassing on some high point, the wind may get to you quickly. In such cases I don the Gore-Tex mainly as a windproof layer as well as a shell to hold in body heat. In some cases, if it’s warm and you’ve worked up a good sweat hiking in, it’s worth the effort to strip down and change into a fresh, dry base layer. I usually use Under Armor as a base layer. Despite the very good weather, on some exposed points in the evenings I had to add a vest, stocking cap and wool gloves.

Sunscreen and chapstick are two other good items to have, and maybe a hat with a broad brim. I live at 5,500 feet and am out in the sun all summer and I still got some sunburn on my face and arms.

Pack light; freeze at night.


I have to put back in a drawing for a limited bighorn district next year or lose all those valuable bonus points which have yet to do me any good but I plan on doing the #300 unlimited again in 2020, the Good Lord willing and the creek don’t rise. I will, however, be doing many, many more pre-season conditioning hikes prior to the next go-round. The better shape you’re in, the more you’ll enjoy it.

 

[Gunflint]

Great write up Cav1!

 

[MTGomer]

Good write up and x2 on the chapstick/sunscreen.
I didn’t intentionally bring chapstick but discovered I had some on my bino harness. Thank God.
The wind, sun and low humidity will crack your lips until they bleed, and even with my far greater than 1/1024 native ancestry, the back of neck and ears will burn at that elevation until I look like a molting lizard.

 

[TheJason]

Good write up and x2 on the chapstick/sunscreen.
I didn’t intentionally bring chapstick but discovered I had some on my bino harness. Thank God.

Two of the most unmentioned necessities there are for alpine hunting, IMO.

 

[BigHornRam]

Great run down Cav. +1 on never miss a chance to get water. Like the "pack light, freeze at night" line as well!