Alaska Range Dall Sheep: My First Sheep Hunt

I had a terrific first ever Dall Sheep hunt in unit 19C on the Alaska Range and have compiled a bunch of pictures and a long string of text. Sorry it is long winded but if you would just rather skip through and look at the photos feel free as they will go along and tell the story well enough I think.

The Dall Sheep Hunt 2014
I have hunted Alaska twice previously with my best friend for gigantic Yukon moose. The trips were amazing, wild and something that I will cherish forever. However this trip will be my first adventure to the tops of mountains looking for the majestic Dall Sheep. I did not sleep for three nights prior to leaving and it was all that I dreamed it would be...

I booked the hunt with an outfitter with a well known operation hunting in unit 19C in the Alaska Mountain Range. The location is approximately an hour East SouthEast from McGrath by plane landing in a wide pass between massive mountains along the Dillenger River. When the weather is clear and you are up in the mountains you can see Mount McKinley in the Denali Park.
I left from Atlanta, GA on 7August2014 with a 48 pound duffle bag, 48 pound hard rifle case and a medium sized backpack. Getting through security and on the plane was straightforward and easy enough although I did get long looks and multiple inquiries from travelers wondering if I was some sort of Special Forces due to my matching and technical camo attire. Apparently Core4Element gear in Mountain Mimicry confuses humans as well as animals.
I made a serious packing error when I realized my charging cable for my iPhone was in my checked luggage and the fully charged portable battery unit did me no good. The phone died when I hit the ground in Seattle but lucky for me there were lots of travelers going to Beijing and one was kind enough to let me borrow a charging cable for 10 minutes. The second flight got me to Anchorage, AK and we touched down at 11:20pm local time. I tried calling around for a cheap hotel but they were all booked and none were cheap. No luck; That's fine I just slept on the floor and by 2am I realize that there are quite a few other crazy hunters also wandering around looking for a comfortable spot out of the way to catch some Zzzzzs. The hard floor was tolerable however the annoying intercom system that runs all night announcing the current time every thirty minutes was almost too much to bear. I caught myself speaking along with the announcement each time it would go off all night long. Sunset was around 11:00pm and the sun was up about 6:00am 'which will give me lots of daylight to hunt' I thought to myself!

Next morning I caught a cab to IHOP which opened at 6am and I was the first one to knock on the locked door. After a good breakfast I hiked the little way in to Cabelas to buy my tags. Next time it would be easier to get the tags online in advance but this gave me something to do while I was waiting for my next flight to leave Anchorage. The Cabelas store I think is new in Anchorage and has only been open a few months. I bought tags for Dall Sheep, Caribou, and Wolf. It turns out that the unit I was hunting did not require a wolf tag in order to shoot a wolf but I was unaware and was ok with the additional $30.00 donation to Alaska Wildlife.
The Penn Air flight was interesting as it operates literally out of the basement of Anchorage International Airport. There is no security or screening at all. Just check your bags and then walk out either "gate" A or B. Both doors open onto the tarmac with a Saab twin turbo prop airplane waiting for you with the ladder extended. Hop aboard with all the other guys in camo, grab the free foam ear plugs from the flight attendant and find a seat. The plane got us all safely to McGrath airport, bar and grill, and laundromat. Scratch that they do not have a laundromat in McGrath. All kidding aside the facilities in McGrath are spartan and I was told that the entire town went bankrupt at one point and is making a really good comeback. You deboard the plane and wait on the opposite side of the ten foot high fence for your luggage to be delivered to you. It comes via a homemade wooden crate carried by a big fork lift. All the hunters help themselves wildly to the collection of large duffle bags and hard sided rifle cases. It is as if you and everyone else can't get your hands on the gear fast enough to make sure that it has made it all the way out here to nowhere.
My next pilot is a really nice guy named Barney. He is young and looks moderately fit with medium length straight brown hair and a tatoo on his forarm. He wears a ball cap and is missing a tooth when he smiles but agrees to take me and an ER doctor named Stephan from Virginia to camp first! That is great news we get to leave right now and split the cost of the charter flight! There are a total of 5 hunters that he is taking out to various hunting camps. Barney advises all the hunters to leave the hard and bulky rifle cases with him in his storage area and just put your rifle in soft cases if you have them to make more room in the plane. This will facilitate getting in and out with sufficient space if there is more gear that he needs to carry now or when he is getting you and animals out later. He has a Cessna and taxis the thing across the runway like a go kart with no care of the lines drawn on the tarmac. We had a very stiff headwind the entire flight to base camp and several times the pilot laughed that he couldn't remember ever flying so slow. He pointed out the Iditarod Trail as we flew over it. We saw black bears and moose while flying in to camp. The landing into camp was pretty hard with several stiff jolts and the pilot laughed when we got on the ground "wow we made it... are you ok?"

Base camp is amazing! Ten times better than I thought the camp would be and it promises to be much better next year! The first thing that I notice is the pair of planes sitting in camp. One is a tricked out Super Cub with monster 35" tundra tires and the other plane is a Maul M7 on tundra tires as well.






Over to the side 30 feet off the runway is a new saw mill with four guys running it as I hit the ground. A big stack of fresh felled trees are waiting to be converted into lumber for buildings that are being constructed.


Next is a brand new Polaris Ranger side by side. It is here for the hunters who have too much wear and tear on their ticker or did not find time to get into sheep shape. The Polaris has less than three hours and three miles on the clock and it is already broken! Must be some kind of factory defect as the front differential grenaded when it got here. The Anchorage Polaris dealer was scrambling looking for a replacement diff but apparently they are such a fragile part they are backordered and unavailable. How embarrassing for Polaris! The owner of the operation is super disappointed in the failure of the key piece of machinery right out of the gate. I was told that it and several other large items were flown in before the hunt on a special cargo plane that looks like a miniature C130 cargo plane. The guide says that he wished he bought a Honda side by side instead of the brand new broken Polaris. They are busy doing surgery on the Polaris. They have driven it up boards onto old Jeep tires and are trying to wedge cut logs under the frame to act as jackstands. The entire rig looks unstable as hell with too many guys giving orders and I am positive that someone will lose a body part when it comes crashing down. It resembles a frantic Nascar pitstop in the Alaska bush as the shiny new parts are torn off the Polaris.

Discarded off behind the broken Polaris is an old Jeep CJ missing its rear axle but no one seems to try and get it running. There is a bright yellow eight wheel tank machine that they use to drag trees around and pull stumps out of the ground. This is not an Argo but instead an industrial sounding and looking machine which would likely flatten an Argo into a plastic disk. I heard someone say that some military used to use these machines in combat and I could see that.

This is the door of the Maul plane piloted by Bob Graham. It is fitting as he is a pretty awesome and crabby old dude. He is straight to business and serious about his hunting and an amazing guide.

Camp is made up of about 5 canvas wall tents. The cook tent is under constant upgrades and makes huge changes in my short 2 weeks with new walls, roof, and shelves inside. There is a quiet generator that runs on and off when they need light or the internet. Oh yes... I did just type internet! They have a satellite dish out by the runway that outfits camp with WiFi and internet connection. A link to the outside world which I was amazed to see. There are two tiny canvas covered shacks. One is the crapper and the other is a shower stall.
All of the new guys in camp get out and shoot rifles to confirm zero along the runway.

I share a large wall tent the one furthest out from the cook tent with two other hunters. The ER doctor from Virginia and another fellow named Mark who is a retired taxidermist from Colorado with a brain tumor and is blind in one eye. He is not after sheep but instead wants to tag a black bear and or a caribou. He is super nice and I enjoy talking with him immensely. He is into falconry at home and talks a lot about various raptors, several types that I have not heard of before. Everyone in my tent wants to turn in early. I do as well since I slept on the floor a little bit last night in the Anchorage Airport. All the other guys are in the cook tent watching a DVD on the flat screen but the sun is set and I am exhausted.
Today is 9August. Tomorrow is opening day of sheep season! Time to get out and go hunt! I wake up invigorated and ready to get a plan mobilized and hit the ground. I am ready for the guide to pair me with someone and fly us out of camp and somewhere good where sheep have been spotted! Let's make this happen! All of the hunters in camp are feeling the same itch I can tell. The master guide is still feeling out his clients I think and working on a plan in his head. There are a lot of hunters in camp. I fear too many... There is only two planes in camp and the other plane seems to be moving supplies to and from Wasilla as much or more than hunters which in not good. Slowly hunters and guides are paired up and sent out to remote areas. There are two young friends from British Columbia, Chase and Waylan who are accomplished sheep hunters. They have each taken several stone sheep and are starting on a epic Bighorn Sheep hunt as soon as they finish this Dall Sheep hunt when they return home. They have booked this hunt as a 2 on 1 and are paired with an excellent guide. They are pretty serious hunters and Waylan is dressed head to toe in Kuiu gear. Chase has lots of Kuiu as well and I am shocked to see the Kuiu Zamberlan Pamir boots as I understand them to be very stiff and hardcore mountaineering boots. Perhaps more than what would be ideal for this hunt? (Both of the BC guys got sheep I was told but I did not get to see them as they were gone by the time I got back to base camp.)
Spirits of the remaining hunters are crushed as the master guide selects someone and flies out of camp to a hunting location... time is of the essence. Eventually I hear through the grapevine that I will be paired with a young guide who is not yet in camp. Ah what?! I was hoping that I would have a super experienced badass guide who has been here already on the ground in camp scouting rams and drainages for the past month or more! Joey my guide lands about 30 minutes after I heard mention of him. He is bright eyed and full of energy and reminds me very much of the young guide Grant that I was paired with last year on my elk hunt in New Mexico. Joey is eleven years younger than me and is a medevac pilot who lives in Fairbanks and guided for this outfitter last year. He just recently got back from a trip to the Florida Keys catching lobster with his family and girlfriend which is really ironic because I also catch lobster almost every summer off of Marathon island in the Florida Keys. We hit it off right away and he wants to organize our packs and see what gear we both have for the hunt. All of our crap gets spread out across the floor of the wall tent and I think Mark has as much fun as we do going over all the gear and aspects of the hunt planning. We pick Joey's spotting scope and leave mine in camp because his is larger and I am happy to not have to carry heavy glass when ounces really start adding up. He has a Remington 700 chambered in .30-06 and a DeLorme InReach satellite communicator. We go over the selection of Mountain House meals and snacks and fill the water bladders. We are not flown out and are told that tomorrow, opening day, we will climb over the huge mountain behind camp and start our hunt there.

10August Opening day! Joey and I are ready and as we are eating breakfast we are told that we will have a packer go with us up and over the mountain and hunt sheep. That is good news. His name is Casey and it is discovered that he is an absolute mountain goat. He is in great shape and lives in Colorado at high elevation year round and his lungs show it. I never saw him winded. He and his black Labrador Boone have been in camp for two or three months before season opened. He was here by himself with his dog getting camp in order and doing whatever it is you do when you are by yourself for several months in the Alaska bush in a wall tent. He has a large reddish Grizzly Adams type beard and a happy-go-lucky personality. The three of us leave camp at about 9am and fight through all of the nasty thick alders and brush before starting up the massive mountain. We take our time and pick our way up the mountain saddled by our packs. I am a moron and left my binocs back at camp on the breakfast table. Casey doubles back and meets us with my binocs just as Joey and I are making it to the top. It is amazing how small camp looks from up here.







The planes and the cook shack are smaller than tiny toys along the winding river that drains all of these mountains. We can see rain clouds in the distance. They are no worry as they are very far and moving away from us. Carefully we peak over the edge and see some ewes and lambs very far away on another set of mountains. No rams. Far enough that they can just be seen with naked eyes but I am unsure how spooky they will be so I let the guide lead and instruct. We watch them for a while and then eventually work our way to the left and find a smooth saddle between two large mountains. We are very high and moderately protected from the wind. We build a stack of stones to block the wind to boil water and eat Mountain House meals and pitch the tent. The tent is a three man made by Mountain Hardware called the Trail Star 3P. It is a very tight squeeze to get all three of us in there. Lucky the other two guys are not as tall as me as I can just barely fit with my head and feet touching the ends of the tent and the condensation was heavy in the tent each night. There is no way to avoid touching the tent walls with me at 6'2" and the three of us packed in tight. The wind was very, very strong all night but the tent did fine. I had to put on my Feathered Friends puffy jacket as we were getting dinner ready and were glassing at last light. I did not ever put on my Sitka puffy pants throughout the entire trip but they were always in my pack and ready if the temperatures ever required it. The sheep cannot see us as we are on the base camp side of the mountain and the unexplored mountains remain ready and waiting until tomorrow. I am happy that we saw some sheep on opening day but wonder how long it will be before we see any rams.

11August Morning breaks and we all are ready to get moving. It is cold and looks like rain may be moving in today. We eat a quick bite of protein bars, beef jerky, and dried mangos. The dried mangos are a favorite of us three on the trip and I will remember to pack those again on future hunts. Only about 500 yards from camp we are making our way to a grassy knoll that will be a good vantage point. We are single file and Joey is first and peaks over it. He spots rams and motions for us to slowly come up and peak over one at a time. We watch the rams for several hours to determine what they are doing. They are really far away and we estimate them to be 1.5 -2 miles away which was accurate looking at Google Maps after the hunt. There are six rams all together skylined across the drainage on the next mountain. They haven't spotted us however they are looking our general direction and we are just barely peaking over the grassy knoll at them one or two at a time. We pick them apart with binoculars and the spotting scope. One is much bigger in body size than the other five and he appears to carry his mass in his horns well to nearly the end but no one is sure that he is legal from this distance. Two rams are 4/5 or 7/8 curl rams and three other rams were banana heads. We watched them for perhaps two long hours and decided that we need to get closer and look at the big one and we should be able to approach them by backtracking to near where we slept last night and follow that drainage down. It should be deep enough to provide us cover so that they cannot see us moving.

It did and then some. We easily stayed out of their sight all the way to the bottom and then traveled across the water and then skirted around the base of the first mountain of a long connected series of mountains that they were on. We dropped some gear to get lighter and move easier. Food, tent, and anything else that we did not need on what we hoped would be a successful stalk. We travelled on the backside to try and stay hidden from the rams. The climb up was very steep but more easy going as it was covered with green vegetation and not the awful loose and sharp shale that gives way with every step you take like what we were moving up the first day. We made it to the top eventually after several false summits. Our spirits were lifted when I noticed several landmarks I spotted from the grassy knoll that we were pretty close to the location where we had seen the ewes and lambs yesterday. We knew now that we could get to the rams today and not have to bivy and sleep on the side of the mountain and try and find the rams the next day.