San Rafael, Dirty Devil, Ram (kinda long again)

[marksjeep]

This is reminiscent of 2020, in that it all begins with a very large hit on the credit card. I spilled the beans quickly to my wife, as I have no poker face and couldn’t hide that grin if I tried. It would be a day or two until I found out which tag the State of Utah had blessed me with. My wife asked, what would my preference be? Without thinking I blurted out, “desert sheep”. No question, no doubt; desert sheep. I had applied for the San Rafael, Dirty Devil, any legal weapon hunt. It’s almost irrelevant which hunt you apply for. The odds of drawing any nonresident desert sheep tag are beyond horrendous. But somehow I beat the odds and drew the only nonresident tag for the unit, confirmed via email the following day.

E-scouting, emailing, and online research began immediately. I delved into several books about desert sheep, sheep hunting in general, and the area known as “Robbers Roost” country. This is one of the places where Butch Cassidy and his gang would hide out back in the days, hence the nickname. The unit is not too far from home and I was aware of how remote and rugged the area was, or so I thought at the time. This hunt was going to be all on foot (no mules on this one), so I started hiking a lot to prepare. We are very fortunate to have a ton of great hiking access close by, so I got out on evenings and weekends when work, farm, or kids' activities were not gobbling up my time.

Spring turned to summer, and before I knew it we had snuck up on August and I had not made it down to the unit. A break in the summer weather provided an opportunity to visit the unit with sub 100+ degree highs, so my son and I jumped in the old F150 and took off to check it out.

The unit is divided by the Dirty Devil River. Most of the time, when it’s not snowmelt runoff, it’s not much of a river. But when it rains, it pours, and the Dirty Devil goes big. The canyon formed by the river is upwards of 2,000 feet deep at the lower end of the unit. There is a “road” which crosses the river, but the reality is once you commit to hunt one side of the unit or the other, you have committed.



We explored the east side of the unit for about half a day and then drove over to the west side. I earmarked this trip to learn my way around, knowing that spotting sheep in the summer heat would be a tall task. At the end of the day, we camped at a side canyon known to have sheep and planned to just crash on cots. A few rumbles of thunder, way too close lightning, and torrential rain fast tracked a change in plans and we high-tailed it off the ridge to prevent getting lit up or stuck behind a flooded arroyo. I crashed in the bed of the truck. My son did not. I still don’t understand how he does that.

 

[marksjeep]

We continued exploring the next day, attempting to make it down to the Dirty Devil River on the only road which gets there. No dice. The “road” was an impassable mess of cobbles and flood debris. I chickened out 6 miles into a 16 mile trek. Between various arroyo crossings I had elected not to attempt, the condition of the road down to the river and the general ruggedness of the “roads”, it was at this point that I decided I was getting my jeep back in working order and would be running that for this hunt. It needed some TLC but was in surprisingly good shape for sitting the past few years. Five tires, one radiator and one fuel pump later, it was back on the road. Mostly.

The next scouting trip was a continuation of the first, albeit running solo in the jeep. I made it to the river and even spotted a lone sheep way up on a mesa. I spent the night on a trail overlooking the river. There was not a light to be seen, nor a noise to be heard. This area is remote. Desolate and remote. And peaceful.



We’re quickly into September and my scouting weekends are over. Life and kids’ activities have consumed my “free” time. I headed down on the 17th with a friend from work named Darek for the opening of the season.The hunt is known to be very difficult early in the season but I wanted more time in the unit to learn it and you just never know what you’re going to see. We spent two days hunting, saw zero sheep, but did manage to find a bit of sign and got some needed scouting completed.

 

[RyGuy]

Awesome views

 

[marksjeep]

The plan was to return the following week for a full week of scouting-hunting. The season is almost 2 months long and I planned to concentrate efforts towards the end of the season when the rut is on and odds of being successful increase accordingly. But I also wanted to get a few earlier trips in to learn the area and again, because you just never know…

I drove down on Friday (solo) and set up camp at the end of a long 2-track. The last mile was like driving across the Sahara. I headed out to glass and eventually spotted up 2 ewes and a small ram about 2 miles away. He was a smaller ram, but now I knew they were around. I spent the next 4 ½ days in this general area and glassed up a number of ewe bands, but few rams and no mature ones. I did not see another person the entire time I was there. It was time to check out the other side of the unit.

I drove out the 50-ish miles of dirt roads back to the highway and headed south once I hit pavement. About 5 miles down the road the jeep stumbled and suddenly died. I managed to limp along the shoulder to a pull-off at the county line, and got in touch with a friend via in reach, lining up a truck and trailer to rescue my butt. I tried to start the jeep a few times, but it sputtered and died any time I tried to move it. It’s run great until now, so I was pretty confused. After sitting there for an hour or so, I tried starting it again. It stumbled a few times, cleared itself out, and started running smoothly. Town is about 8 miles south of where I was so I gave it a try and made it to the gas station. I checked in with folks and decided the smarter move is probably not trekking into the canyons until I figured this nonsense out. I topped off the tank and headed for home. The jeep died 3 more times on the highway but eventually I made it home without requiring a rescue. Great.

I spent what’s left of the week troubleshooting the jeep and catching up on chores. Long story short, after ruling out a few items and changing a few others, it appeared the new fuel pump had an issue. I dropped the gas tank and pulled the pump. The tank was full of metal flakes from the new pump and confirmed the issue. I swapped it out with another new pump and buttoned everything up. Off to the rodeo.

Another week and change went by, and I headed back across southeast Utah with another full week planned to hunt. I met the same friend, Darek, that came with me opening weekend at the local gas station on Friday night and we headed into the west side of the unit, picking up where I had left off and planned to hunt when the jeep went kaput. Saturday morning arrived, and we went to the highest point around to glass. We spent about an hour glassing to the west, and he says “hey I’m gonna go over to the north a few hundred yards”. Cool, holler if you see anything. Welp, about 30 minutes later, I saw him on top of the ridge. He was frantically waving his arms to get my attention. I ran up the hill to him, “big ram”....”big ram was just standing in front of your jeep”...

While Darek was glassing he heard something and looked up, and yep, big ram standing 30-40 yards away from him in front of the parked jeep. The ram was now long gone, but we were glad to know we were in a good spot. We spent the rest of the day in that general area, not seeing anything else.

We moved camp to a different canyon on Sunday, hoping to see some sheep, and were rewarded Monday morning with a lone ewe about 2 miles out. Darek drove home Monday night and I kept hunting solo in the new canyon. There was lots of sign around, so some sheep had to be in there somewhere and we’re getting to the point in the season where the rams should have been checking out the ewes. I spent the next few days working the canyon and found ewe groups of ones and twos, but the tracks and beds indicated there should have been more. Wednesday morning I finally found them, a group of 9 ewes and 0 rams. Dang. I packed up camp later that day and drove home to Colorado. My daughter had asked to come on this hunt and she was off from school for the rest of the week. We pulled a U-turn, and we're back in the unit the following morning.

 

[marksjeep]

We spent the rest of the weekend hunting and bugged out Saturday evening to return to school and work. We were able to glass more ewes, but no rams appeared with any of them. Yet.

A couple more weeks went by, and I got a few reports from other hunters in the unit that I’d been in touch with. 2 rams had been taken so far; there were a total of 6 tags. I had the last 3 weeks of the season off from work and planned to spend all of it hunting with the exception of supply runs back to Colorado. The weather went to crap while I was at home, with 50 mph winds and blowing dust forecasted for the area, so I decided to stay at home until it cleared. True to the forecast, winds got nasty and the temperature dropped substantially. I drove down solo Sunday morning after the weather broke and had camp set by 2pm. Glassing that evening produced no sheep.

Monday started off cold and crisp. I was on my glassing spot before first light, and enjoyed some coffee while the sun came up. About an hour into glassing, a ram ran right across the opening I was watching. He was about 2 miles away, and even with a good spotter, I could not tell if he was what I was after at that distance. I decided to pick my way down through the slickrock domes to see if I could find a way into the opening. The slickrock is tricky, it all looks the same and it’s easy to get on the wrong line, ending up at a spot which is too steep to go up or down. I picked my way down and hiked to where I last saw the ram. No ram to be found, so I spent a few hours poking around. There was some fresh sign, but nothing crazy.

After a few hours, I decided it was time to see if I could find my way out. I hiked about a mile and started to head into the slickrock domes when I glassed a large dome across the canyon. Ram! He was standing on the side of the dome looking my way, but I couldn’t tell if he was on me or just scanning. He was about 800 yards out and looked decent, bigger than the one I saw that morning. He looked around and started walking my way. I got the rifle loaded and down on the bipod, hoping that maybe he would keep coming this way. There was zero cover between us, so there was really no play to make otherwise. He got to about 600 yards and disappeared behind a knoll. I waited, expecting him to pop out on the other side, which never happened. Ugh. There was a canyon hidden behind the knoll that he ducked down into. By the time I figured this out, he was long gone.

Tuesday came and went, with glassing sessions in the same general area and only ewes making appearances. It certainly seemed like the sheep were showing up more. I explored other glassing points and hiked into different areas over the next couple of days, with a few more ewes turning up here and there. I thought about switching canyons and going back where I had found the large group of ewes a few weeks ago. Maybe a ram is in there by now? I gave this spot one last morning from a different overlook, and bingo. A ram, a ewe, and a yearling were running around in the bottom. They were a little too far to really check out the ram, so I drove to a different spot and hiked into a better overlook. They’re still there when I got set up. I was able to get a pretty good look at him, and decide not to drop in after him. There’s still over 2 weeks left in the season and he had all the signs of a young ram. He was in a very huntable spot, which is kind of rare in these canyons. I knew I might regret this.

 

[marksjeep]

Distracted by the ram, I never made it back to the other canyon yesterday. I went that way Friday morning and got there a little later than I’d like, but still early enough that any sheep would be moving. Instead of sheep, I found one UTV and 3 trucks at various spots around the canyon. It looked like everyone else found the group of 9 ewes too. Another friend, Chad, was planning to head over on Saturday to come hunt with me for the following week. I planned a resupply trip on Friday afternoon back to Colorado and to meet him at my house so I packed it up and hit the road back to Colorado.

My friend Chad got to the house early on Saturday and we hit the road. I decided to head for the east side of the unit after I saw so many trucks/utv’s on the west side. We drove for what seemed like hours on dirt roads and got to the overlook where I wanted to start. There were no signs of any other hunters, just a few folks canyoneering and rappelling. We got camp set up and then glassed off the main overlook until dark. Nada, nothing moving. No sheep, no deer, no nothing. After glassing for weeks, much of it solo, and not seeing a lot of animals, you start to question your glassing skills. It’s nice to have someone along that you know has a good eye, to confirm that you’re not just glassing over the animals. But at the same time it’s pretty discouraging to have 8-ish cumulative hours behind binos that night and not turn up a single sheep between us. Sure; there’s nooks, crannies, and canyons everywhere in the viewshed, but also very little cover as far as trees and whatnot. You can see what seems like forever. Where the heck are they, I wondered? We headed back to camp and got a fire going in the stove.

 

[marksjeep]

Morning came quickly, we went to the same general overlook but a slightly different point. After glassing the area over, I decided to head over to the main overlook while Chad stayed and continued glassing from this spot. I drove ½ mile or so to the overlook and parked. Shortly after, a UTV pulled up next to me with 2 guys in full camo. It looked like I wasn’t the only hunter that didn’t like the crowd. We made introductions and chatted for a bit. They mentioned that they were glassing this area from the other side of the Dirty Devil Canyon yesterday and saw 10 rams over here. How the heck did we miss them? The other hunters went to the southern point a few hundred yards away and I sat down where I had planned. About 5 minutes later, I got a message from Chad. Ram spotted. He was way out to the west on a ridge. I glassed through my binos and found him. And then another. And then another. We regrouped.

Chad and I each got spotters up on one of the rams. He looked good, the best I had seen so far. We watched him mull around and then bed down. We grabbed our packs and hit the old pack trail into the canyon. The trail is about 2 miles to the bottom and 1500 vertical feet. We got a good look into the bottom about ¾ of the way down the trail, the ram was up and feeding. It took us another 20 minutes or so to reach the end of the trail and by then no ram to be found. We spent some time glassing everything again and again, just to be sure he had not bedded or that we hadn't glassed over him. Nothing. We picked our way around to a good glassing knob. The sheep really seemed to be concentrated at the intersection of several small canyons, which was now right in front of us. Something should come through. So, we sat and glassed and glassed and glassed. Nothing moved. We hiked back up around dark. Dang, where did that one ram go? We could see all around and there was no sign of him. These things can vanish right in front of you.

Another evening passed and morning arrived. We went to the same glassing overlook and planned to focus on where we saw sheep yesterday. I turned up one small ram on the very top, cruising. Nothing moved in the bottom. Chad saw nothing from his overlook and sent a message over, “what do you want to do?”. I replied, ”Let’s hike in”. We were not seeing them from the overlook and we were certainly not going to kill one there. Instead of sitting and glassing like we did yesterday, we planned to work around a very large mesa towards the main canyon.The map appeared to illustrate some alcoves and side canyons that may hold sheep. We began hiking.

Once into the bottom, we worked the wash until we were close to the spot the bigger ram was at yesterday. We worked up the talus slope a little, and began side-hilling our way around into the first big alcove. We glassed and glassed, nothing. There were fresh sheep tracks all over, a good sign that ewes had been moving through. We pressed on slowly, moving across the alcove and climbing the talus into the shade of the canyon wall above it. The alcoves are like gigantic amphitheaters, with stair-stepped rock outcrops and talus gradually climbing to a sandstone cliff wall extending upwards a hundred feet or three. They are open on one end and cliffed out on the other 3 sides.

 

[marksjeep]

We decided to take 5, eat a little lunch, and glass some more. I got about 2 bites into a sandwich and Chad glassed up a ram. “Shooter ram! Big ram!” The ram was directly across the alcove from us on the opposite hill, about 800 yards away just feeding. We glassed him very quickly, it was a no brainer. He’s got everything you see in a mature ram. Good mass, broomed ends, big old pot belly. He’s a mature ram and he was alone.

800 yards is a little more than I was willing to shoot so we would have to find a way across. Then the ram started feeding towards us. First slowly, then a little faster. He was moving across the alcove and towards the wash we were in just a little while ago. I moved into a position where I’m behind a large boulder and load the rifle, Chad was to my left. Chad was ranging him while I was getting the rifle set on a good rest. I had to reset it constantly as the ram was moving across. The ram kept moving, coming into about 450 yards, then stopped. He was looking right up at us. Did he see us? We were 90% covered behind this huge rock, and moved only enough to keep on him. The ram was quartering to us and I had a good rest. Chad said “Hold on. Let him come in”. And he did. The ram, staring straight at us, picked up the pace and started walking straight to us. And he was grunting at us the entire time. He was moving too fast for a shot and was straight on. Chad said “when he hits 200, I’m going to stop him.” Perfect. The ram came in on a string and hit 200 yards. Chad let out a grunt and the ram stopped instantly, perfect quartering to. I gently squeezed the trigger and the 300 Win Mag touched off. Chad exclaimed “Hit!”, and the ram began to stumble and spin in place. I shot again, and in a rush of adrenaline, sent it right over him. Chad said “let him stop again then hit him”. He stopped, I shot, the ram went down. We were both in a daze thinking did that really just happen? Holy smokes. We sat for a moment, gathered our stuff, and started down the 200 yards to the ram.

 

[BAKPAKR]

Congrats! Thanks for posting a great story.

 

[marksjeep]

The ram is everything, and then some, that I could have ever asked for. We broke the ram down and packed him out, almost 4 miles back to the jeep. In all, I spent about 21 days hunting and who knows how many days e-scouting, scouring maps, etc. We broke camp the next morning, and I took the skull to UDWR to have the horns plugged the following day. Age estimate from annuli is 8.5 years old (per UDWR). I will be sending teeth to UDWR for aging once the teeth have dried out. Many thanks to those who helped virtually and in person, and/or tolerated my obsessing over the past several months. I’ll close this out with a few more pics from the area, some of which I’ve posted in the Sunday Pics thread over the past several months. It’s an exceptionally rugged, remote, and beautiful area often passed by as folks head to Lake Powell. Thanks for coming along on this once in a lifetime adventure!

 

[Wallydeuce]

Another great story!
Congratulations on a great ram! Well done.

 

[marksjeep]

 

[CPAjeff]

What a ram and an incredible adventure!!

What do you charge for application services?!?! With all the great tags you've drawn the past few years, I'm happy to have you submit my applications for me!!

 

[kiwi hunter]

Very interesting country. Great hunt

 

[woods89]

Cool country, great ram!

 

[JLS]

Awesome story, congratulations on a great adventure.

 

[Irrelevant]

Sweet write up. And great ram, congrats!

 

[MTGomer]

Awesome story and pictures

I bet it is a little older than 8

 

[Mica Man]

Great story and thanks for sharing.

 

[Alabama]

What an awesome ram! Not just the horns either, the size of his chest and neck is impressive as well. You definitely earned him.

Congratulations.