Well, I was gonna put this out there yesterday, but this past weekend at Native Hunt really left me pretty wiped out! It was fun and all, but by the time it was over, I probably didn’t get more than 10 hours of sleep between Friday and Tuesday, and the waking hours were pretty danged active.
But it was fun!
In addition to Monday’s big dove hunt, we had three hog hunters and two sheep hunters over the weekend. These were, I believe, the last management hunts of the year, which means no one was after a trophy hog.
One of our regular clients (and one of my favorite guys to hunt with), Fabio R., had chosen to use his new TC muzzle loader to take a 
Eurasian Boar. I was excited about the prospect. I love shooting black powder, and I think it’s a great choice of weapon for hunting under the close-quarters conditions we’d have with these exotic species. I was also, honestly, really curious to see how the 295 gr Barnes muzzleloading bullet would perform.
Both the hunter and the bullet did a great job! A solid, mid-sized boar came ambling up on our backtrail as we were moving for a shot on another hog. He took us by surprise, but when he stopped to sample some acorns, he offered Fabio a beautiful, broadside shot at around 40 or 50 yards… well within the range of a modern smokepole. Fabio placed the bullet perfectly, splitting the hog’s heart. Even hit that hard, the animal bolted up the hill for probably 50 yards before expiring.
“Well,” thought I. “My job here is done. I can relax until Monday’s dove shoot!”
I’ve been wrong before.
Turns out that our other hog hunters had been skunked over on one of the other ranches, and Sam, the head guide, would need to take them back out again. This left me to take the sheep hunters into the field on Sunday morning.
Now here’s the thing… I’m pretty new to hunting these sheep. In fact, I don’t even know if I get the breeds right. With the exception of the easily identified Jacob’s sheep (aka Four-Horned sheep), they all kind of look the same to me. And Michael Riddle has some real good, trophy animals on the place. Trophy sheep, though, are fairly pricy, and our hunters were primarily interested in taking non-trophies. Which meant that I’d need to judge the size of the horns, on the hoof, in order to keep my guys from paying a significantly higher rate.
Here’s the other thing. After several management hunts earlier in the summer, and the mass slaughter wreaked by a couple of lions on the place, there aren’t many “management” sheep left in the herd. There are probably a couple that might fall a little short of Bronze class, but they’d be close (as I understand the scoring). This was going to be tricky.
Now, honestly, hunting sheep at Native Hunt hasn’t always been the most challenging endeavor. These animals went largely unmolested for quite some time, and they had little fear of humans. I figured the biggest problem would be to find the right animal to harvest. Then it would be a chip shot for the hunter, and we’d be back at the lodge by 0900. Or at least that’s how I had it figured…
At first it seemed that things would go just like that, but the animals have become a little more skittish since we finally put some pressure on them. As we sat on the hill glassing, just after first light, the herd spotted us and started moving away. We found a fairly young ram, and the hunter said he’d be happy with that for the table. The next trick was getting the animal to hold still for a safe shot. When it did, the hunter’s first shot went wide (he had chosen to hunt with an old Russian Mosin Nagant using iron sights). The herd bolted, and we pursued them, catching up just before they went up a steep ridge. The hunter adjusted his sights and made a beautiful neck shot just in time to save us a heck of a climb.
One down… with the day heating up fast, I thought it would be a good idea to get this ram to the lodge and skinned. We could come back and get the second sheep later, when they calmed down.
They didn’t calm down… in fact, they went quite the opposite direction. They got purely wild. As we stalked down the ridgeline, with the sun settling into the coastal mountains, I was telling the hunter how stupid sheep could be. By the time darkness was coming down on us, and we’d chased those danged animals back and forth over the hills and canyons, I was the one starting to feel stupid. These things had finally gone purely wild, and put a couple of pretty good moves on us.
When we could catch up with them, their habit of mingling together kept us from being able to make a clean shot. We’d wait and wait, and just when we thought we’d have the opportunity, they’d catch wind of us or spot us, and off they’d go again. The whole thing was complicated by the fact that we were still struggling to find a “management” animal. Finally, the hunter agreed that he’d pay the extra if we could find something in the Bronze class. That opened the field a little bit, but it was getting dark fast.
At last, the sheep I’d selected offered a shot. We were perched on a steep hillside, the ground crumbling and slippery under our feet, and with an imperfect rest, the hunter missed his shot. After trailing the animals and watching for blood or signs of the ram stumbling, it was pretty clear that the miss was clean. We slid down the hill to the road, and began the walk back to camp.
The next morning was the dove hunt, but we decided that the hunter could go back out after shooting doves and see if we could take one more shot on his ram. The birds weren’t as thick as we’d have liked, but the guys got some good shooting in, and by about 1000, the flight had slowed pretty significantly. We came back to camp, had a little coffee, and rolled out with several extra guides to see if we could get this ram on the hook.
We spotted them up on the ridge, not too far from where we’d left them the night before. They were resting in the shade of an oak tree, and we were able to get set up about 15o yards from the herd. We picked out another small ram, and after several minutes of hide-and-seek among the other animals, he finally gave us the opportunity we wanted. Somehow, though, the shot went high. The herd was off to the races again!
This story has run on, and it ran on even longer that morning with much running up and down steep trails, another missed shot, a perfect opportunity foiled by the appearance of a certain quad-rider who didn’t realize we were out there hunting, and finally a good shot to bring it all to an end.
Later, as I was saying my good-byes to the hunter, we chatted a little about the way his hunt had turned out, and how the sheep had given us a little more challenge than we’d expected. “You know,” he said. “That was definitely not easy!”
After the last of the guests and clients left the ranch, the guides took to the field for an evening dove shoot. The birds were still a little bit scarce, but it was fun just to get out there and shoot at the handful I did get. It was a great way to wind down from a really busy weekend.
Postscript: It occurred to me after reading over this again that I am remiss in not mentioning the other guides who worked with me on these hunts. These guys, Sid (Sam’s younger brother) and Kyle are always there to provide the extra eyes, ears, and helping hands that make a hunt like this successful. At the conclusion of the last hunt, I think almost everyone jumped in to help, and it was Sam’s last-ditch tactic that got our man his sheep.
Nick
I don’t think I’ve had any hunting experience that was “easy”. Maybe those sheep have learned a thing or two over the past couple of years.
And I wish I could get in on this dove hunting stuff. Oh, I forgot, our hunters in Michigan didn’t think doves were worthy of hunting. Man am I bitter about that.