I was looking over the 1993 Oregon hunting regulations when I suddenly thought, "you know, if I don't apply for a bighorn sheep tag, I'll never get a sheep tag". So I decided to apply for one of the Owyhee hunts because I knew someone in the area. I forked out the money and waited, realizing my chance of drawing the tag was next to nothing. One day I checked the mail and saw an envelope from the Oregon Dept. of Fish and Wildlife. I wasn't excited about it because I knew it would be a refund. I got to the house and opened the envelope and pulled out a sheet that showed how to judge rams. My heart skipped a few beats as I thought, "could it be?". I reached in and pulled out a tag that said GOOD FOR ONE RAM. I just about jumped though the roof. I called everyone I knew and told them the news. Drawing an Oregon bighorn sheep tag on your first attempt at applying is like winning the lottery for a hunter. I asked my hunting partner Dave, if he was doing anything in August. I guess he wasn't because he was in it with me. I then realized that we had alot of work cut out for us. Neither of us had ever been in the Leslie Gulch area so I began by getting topo maps and calling the biologists in the area. We planned a scouting trip for July and headed over. We saw a few ewes, but no rams. I called the biologists again and asked for more hints on where the rams might be. We drove back over and checked out some different area. This time we didn't see any sheep. I was beginning to worry. The next time we could make it over was during the season and I was running out of time. Alot more questions to all sorts of people had us realizing that we would need a boat to run us down the lake to Doe Island. So we decided to head over 3 days before season to give this area a try.
The first day out scouting brought us into some great looking sheep areas. The area around Doe Island was steep with lots of rim rock, just like the biologist told us to look for. We beached the boat and headed up. We searched all day and didn't see any sheep, but while we were up there, we noticed another area we would check out. The next morning, we started walking up the ridge before daylight so we could get up into sheep country before it got too hot. We reached the top and started doing some serious glassing. As I was searching a distant hillside, I saw something that caught my eye. As I brought the binoculars back to the area, I saw what we were looking for. Three rams were feeding in the shade of a big basin about a mile away from us. Dave and I set up the spotting scope and checked them out. All three were very nice rams. One was full curl and the other two were close to full curl, but they flared out very wide. We watched the rams for most of the day. We even saw them butt heads once, not very hard, but we could hear it where we were at. Satisfied that they were not going anywhere, we headed back to camp. We would be up here in the morning to keep and eye on them until the next day.
We were back up there the next morning and started glassing the basin. We looked for about 4 hours in the basin the sheep were last in. We finally decided they must have moved on and we should try to find them. We circled the basin, glassing into the draws and rim rocks on the other side. We had just about given up when Dave said, "there they go". We had jumped them on the far side of the big basin they were in yesterday. They must have been feeding all morning in a small depression or something for us not to see them. We watched them run across the basin and up the hillside we had been glassing from. We headed back to camp, hoping they would be in the same area tomorrow.
We beached the boat and headed up the ridge in the dark. Knowing the rams were jumped we decided to hold back and wait for daylight so we could begin glassing on our way to the top. By the time we arrived at the basin, the sun was up and it was starting to get warm. The rams were not in sight. We glassed and glassed and saw nothing. Since it was starting to get hot, I started looking for any shady area to look at. I noticed a steep hillside about a mile away that was still shaded from the morning sun. This was the general direction the rams were headed yesterday, so I gave the hillside a look. When I brought the binocs up, the first thing I saw was the three rams. We dropped down into a little basin and took off in their direction. The rams were across a canyon and I wasn't sure how far across the canyon was. We crawled to the edge of the canyon and looked across. There were the three rams, all looking at us. How did they know we were there? Dave calmed me down as best he could and we decided the canyon was about 300 yards across. We decided on one of the wide flaring rams with heavily broomed tips. As the scope of the 25-06 settled on the shoulder, I squeezed off a shot. Dave yelled, "you got him!". I looked up and saw the ram tumbling down the hillside. One more follow up shot and the ram was down for good. As we slipped and slid down into the canyon, I realized how lucky I had been. The ram was a dandy, not by Boone and Crocket standards, but by my standards. His broomed horns lost him points in the books, but I liked the looks of the old warrior. The biologists aged him at 11 years old. After we got the ram caped and the meat boned, the real work began. It was about 1:00 pm and about 90 degrees. We had a long 3.5 to 4 mile pack out in extreme heat with our water supply dwindling fast. The only thing in our favor was the canyon we were in ended up at the lake, right where our boat was beached so we had flat packing the whole way out. The last mile was pure hell. We had run out of water and with the sun directly overhead, we had no shade to sit in. We later learned that the temps in surrounding towns was close to 100 degrees. By the time we got to the boat, I'm sure I almost had the beginning of heat stroke. I was feeling sick to my stomach and I had stopped sweating. Luckily we brought a cooler to put meat in and we supplied it with ice and soft drinks. We also jumped in the lake to help us cool off. This was the hardest pack I have ever done but it was well worth the effort. My bighorn is the California Sub-species which is smaller than the Rocky Mountian Sub-species but I feel it is still a trophy. The score was 148 with about 5 inches in deductions. By the way, sheep meat is great eating. What a trip to remember!!!