NWT Dall Sheep

So I’ve shared in my previous series of Redstone Trophy Hunt posts about the logistics, the horses and camp life during our 18 day trip at the beginning of September and now on to the hunting!

The primary focus of the trip was to hunt Dall Sheep with a secondary plan on mountain caribou. As the photographer and videographer for the trip, we had a father & son team (Pete Sr. and Pete Jr) as well as G2 that kept me hopping during the days of the sheep hunts. For the most part the topography within Redstone’s tenure is open and rolling hills that is very accessible by horses and decent even by foot.

After riding into one area and setting up spike camp it didn’t take us more than a day to find a group of 12 that potentially had some decent rams. Taking the next day we hunt around the ridge to where we saw the rams were feeding and hike our way slowly through the bluffs until we see the rams bedded down at 180 yards. Based on a previous agreement, Pete Sr was to shoot first. With one shot he harvests a beautiful ram. The band scatters initially with the sound of the gunshot, but don’t move on too much further. After taking a longer look at the group, Pete Jr then shot his ram at about 220 yards. Father and son were ecstatic to have been able to experience the hunt together and after the long job of skinning and packing the meat into tarps, we make our way back to camp to celebrate the Pete’s successful day by cooking some back straps.

G2’s sheep proves not to be as easy. With the original intent of bowhunting~ the wide open spaces are not conducive in getting a close stalk up to a ram. After a few days of hiking and scouting, we see a group of 10 rams with a mix of mature and younger ones. They are feeding on a slope that has high willows reaching down to a drainage, potentially we could sneak down and crawl up from there. However that was not to be the case as the sheep stopped feeding and slowly moved through the valley to a higher perch in the tundra and rocks. With the wind gusting we slowly move to a steep rock outcrop, where we see a group of 4 mature rams in the group bedded down.

334 yards away… The bowhunter looks uncomfortable and unsure of taking a shot at that distance. After looking at the largest ram, we  decide to wait until he stands up for a potential shot. Being the cameraman on this adventure I’m nervous as hell that I will miss something or run out of battery at a critical moment. The sun is blistering down and the wind is still gusting when the ram stands after about 2 hours giving a chance for a shot. Even with his nerves, the shot was solid and the ram went down right away. Though a bit younger than the other two sheep and not with his bow, G2 was very happy with his first Dall Sheep.  For me the best part was I was able to capture the entire experience without having the camera stop to “BUFFER” itself in the middle of the action.

On the way back to camp we spot two decent caribou bulls and get within 40 yards of them, since it’s getting dark we carry on to camp to have another great meal of sheep steaks. Besides it’s Sept 1st and we still had 10 days left where I was looking to get my first mountain caribou…