Unit 27 Rocky Mountain Bighorn

[trphyhntr]

give me a story on how you killed that big bastard.

[StickFlicker]

Congratulations on a great ram! You mention the official score, but just to be clear an official score is obtained only after a 60 day drying period is over and an official measurer scores it, which I don't believe there has been enough time to allow for that. Yours is a Green Score if taken this year. I look forward to the story too!

[ruthunter]

Congrats on your ram. He may referring to the G&f check in score as official. That's the score that gets published for the public.

[naturebob]

Beautiful Ram. One in a lifetime way to make it count..............BOB

[wildwoody]

Shazam!!

[Explorer]

Amazing ram! Did you get lucky or have you been buying bonus points since you were 10?

[218buck]

Congrats great ram

[sigfour]

Great ram ! Congrats and thanks for sharing

[cramerhunts]

Congratulations on a stud ram!!

[cohntr6]

Congrats on a great ram.

Did you get him in town? LOL...J/K

Awesome!

Jeff

[roninflag]

what load do you use, tell more. awesome ram!!

[catfish campbell]

Congrats...how many bonus points?

[CouesWhitetail]

Wow! congratulations.

[BlairHunter]

Sorry it has taken me so long to reply to you guys. First off, thank you all for nice comments. It is greatly appreciated. A lot of you have asked for a story, so here it is. It started back in July when I seen my account was hit with the "rare" $300 Game and Fish transaction. I was stunned considering I only had 4 bonus points ( I am sure everyone of you reading this right now hates me!) Once the results were posted online and I figured out the unit and hunt I had, I started scouting- scouting meaning studying paper maps, google earth, and driving up to my area at least 3 weekends a month to hike and learn the trails, creeks and mountains. It was exhausting juggling these trips in between work, fire department activities (I am a volunteer firefighter), my sons Friday night football games, my daughters fall softball games and our 3.5 year old twin daughters pre-school events.

Well, the hunt has arrived- I have my friends and family rounded up for this hunt of a lifetime. My friend, Andrew, and I decided to ride the horses on a trail head we studied on some maps the morning before the hunt started. He gets on his horse and I get my left foot in the stirrup and whip my right leg around, but my stupid self kicked the horse in the belly and he started bucking- his head nailed me on my left eye and I went flying! Just like that, I started off that morning with a nice shiner! HA!

On opening morning my little brother, Kevin joins us on the horses and we take off riding. We get a few miles back and start glassing a place I had scouted a few months earlier. Literally, a few minutes behind the Swarovski 15x56's, some rams are located. We decide to get a closer look and make a stalk. We got to 610 yards and set up the bino's and spotting scope. After watching them for a good hour, I decide one of the rams is a shooter. I get behind the gun and squeeze off a shot- I missed! Shot right under him. He gets up, grabs his ewes and they head up hill. I shot again when he stopped at 700 yards and missed again! At this time, I was pissed and frustrated with myself. After I calmed down a little bit, we hiked up after them. I thought about it over and over, I should not have made those shots and should have been more patient. The rams are nothing like the deer and elk hunts- I just got caught up in the "hunting moment." We never got back on those rams again. Looking back, I am glad I missed that ram and I didn't work out for me. We get back to camp late that night and eat dinner with my father-n-law and more friends of mine. They had seen some small rams and other big game animals glassing that day, but my best friend and hunting partner, Daniel had some photos of a ram him and Caiden had seen. After looking at them, we decide to take a closer look at those the next day which would give the horses a day off to rest. We locate the rams early the next morning and watch them for the most part of the day to study their movements and to get good looks at their horns.

Day 3, I told the troops I wanted to hike in closer and see if that ram was going to be our shooter. 3 of us were able to take an old overgrown trailhead in about 2 miles with the horses then start hiking while the others followed us in behind the horses. After the horses are tied up, we hike another mile and a half to set up our binos and look for them rams.. They were located and I set up my Swarovski spotting scope. There was a lot of action on top of that nasty, rugged, steep mountain! 2 great rams along with 3 other good rams were chasing 6 ewes. At this point, Kevin, Daniel, Ino, Brian, Andrew, Jones (father-n-law) and myself had guesstimated this ram to be mid 170's. I was going after him! Daniel, Brian and myself started the long, miserable hike of up and down, up and down, crawling and climbing on our hands and knees up these nasty mountains. About 4 hours and 3 miles later, we found ourselves within 400 yards of the sheep. I had the rifle set up and decided I was going to make one final steep climb to put myself in a better shooting position. I made it to the bluff I wanted to shoot from after being undetected by the sheep! I set up the gun and did a million practice shots while the 2 big rams were still bedded. About an hour goes by, 1 of the big rams gets up. He walks out in the opening but I didn't pull the trigger- He was a huge ram, but extremely busted up! Brian crawls up to me and tells me we might have to come back for the bedded ram.... It's getting late and a huge storm is rolling in. I didn't want to hear it but in the back of my mind I knew he was right. Literally a few seconds later, that big ram gets up out of his bed and starts walking out of the oak shrub tree he was bedded in. I jump behind my rifle, he walks out and stops at 215 yards- I squeeze the trigger on my Mauser 30-06 he does the famous back flop roll...DOWNHILL! I watched him go head over butt a few times and put my head down (he's going to be broken, we are not going to get to him...etc) until he stopped rolling.. Remarkably, he gets up and Brian tells me to put another one in him before he runs down and jumps off the cliff- I put another one in him and he starts rolling again. He stopped about 30 yards above a 300' bluff that was straight down. You could hear yelling from everyone below and the high fives began... and so did the hard work! I finally got to the ram about 430 and couldn't believe the mass on him! We took a lot of photos and began capping him out. It was dark by the time we finished quartering him out and loading up our packs. The long pack-out had begun. I was shocked at how much the head and cape weighed. We got off that nasty mountain and began the up and down, up and down hike right when the rain started. We got back to the horses around 1 am and thankfully Andrew had a fire going. We striped our packs off and stood around the fire for a few minutes, then loaded the horses up and started our way out only to find ourselves in a bind.. Where is the trail? Everything is wet and the trail wasn't used much... We ended up going back to where the fire was and start the fire back up. This was around 2 am. Everyone was hungry, exhausted and WET! Ino opened up one of the game bags and cut up some fresh back straps. We cooked them on the rocks around the fire and devoured them! They hit the spot! The sun finally started to rise up. Daniel and Kevin took off to locate the trail while the rest of us got the horses loaded up. They came back and had located the trail (we were only off by about 50 yards earlier that morning. We got back to the vehicles around 8 in the morning and headed to camp.

This hunt of a lifetime was definitely that! It was the best hunt I have ever been on and will probably never be topped! I am glad my friends and family were able to experience this with me and I am extremely thankful for my fiancé taking care of everything at the house while I was gone scouting and hunting so much these past 4 months. It would not have been possible without her. I had a lot of people tell me to hire a guide for this hunt and said I was crazy to not hire one. I think that's what makes this ram even more special, he is a huge ram that we had to work for, but it was killed without using a guiding service. Nothing against guides at all, but I figured if I put in the work before the hunt started, I would be successful and harvest a respectable ram. I think my team and I did that. That is my story for my 187 4/8 unit 27 upper blue ram.

Brandon

[BlairHunter]

Here are a few more photos of my ram along with the Game and Fish scoring sheet.