This story, “Quest for the Desert Sheep: Ram Beyond the Rampart,” appeared in the December 1975 issue of Outdoor Life.
The desert bighorn sheep, Ovis canadensis nelsoni, is one of the most coveted game animals on earth. This isn’t because they inhabit particularly remote crevices of the globe or because they’re all that hard to hunt. They can be legally hunted in four Southwestern states plus part of Mexico, and the hunter success ratio runs over 50 percent in some areas.
It isn’t their magnificence as a trophy that makes desert bighorns such favorites either. The coloration of a mature ram is somewhat on the order of a corroded battery cable. His headgear is notably less impressive than that of his brethren farther to the north. Nonetheless he is No. 1 in the North American game hierarchy, for two reasons. First, he is the great stumbling block on the tortuous route to the Holy Grail of North American big game — the grand slam (Dall, Stone, Rocky Mountain bighorn, and desert bighorn). And second, licenses to hunt him are frustratingly hard to come by.
Related: Carmichel in Alaska: An Odd Way to Die on a Sheep Hunt
In 1975, for example, the four desert-sheep-hunting states — Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah — allowed only 123 permits among them. Of these only a dozen were assigned to out-of-state hunters, Utah granting none at all. Thus, even with out-of-state licenses costing up to $300 each, the odds are still a thousand to one against being drawn. Some hunters have become so intense in their quest for the desert treasure that they’ve quit their jobs and left home just to set up legal residence in one of the desert sheep states in order to improve their chances of being drawn. In Arizona, only one out of 10 licenses goes to nonresidents. In Arizona and New Mexico a hunter is allowed only one sheep in a lifetime. In Utah permits are so rare that only one is granted in a lifetime whether the hunter bags a sheep or not.
The scarcity of desert sheep is a result of constantly reduced habitat. They once ranged over a comparatively large area of the Southwest, but competition with domestic livestock and other land-use factors have restricted their range to certain protected and managed areas. Within these management areas the sheep thrive and steadily increase their numbers to the point where mature rams can be harvested. The sheep populations are carefully monitored by game-and-fish agencies, and the number of rams that can be taken in any given year is closely controlled.
The hunter is a vital tool in the management of these remaining desert-sheep areas. So long as their habitat isn’t endangered, these wonderful game animals will continue.
Free-roaming wild burros are now the leading threat to the desert sheep. The burros deprive sheep and other game animals of water. In past years the burros were regulated by controlled shooting when their numbers became excessive. But now, under the Wild Horse and Burro Act, they are protected by federal law-ridiculous situation when you consider that the burros aren’t even true wildlife but only domestic animals that have gone wild. “Disturbing” them is a high misdemeanor with a penalty of $2,000 and/or a year in jail. But the maximum fine for taking a sheep illegally is only $300. Soon animal lovers, be they hunters or not, may have to decide between wild burros and desert sheep.
All these facts were tumbling through my mind as I studied a rusty-tan form through my 10X binoculars. For more than four hours my guide “Connie” Clare and I had been working our way closer to the old ram. Now, at a range of 600 to 700 yards, we had a clear look at our quarry.
He was magnificent!
His horn didn’t droop down at the rear in the “sickle-backed” manner of some desert rams, but instead swept up past the jaw in a full, even circle with the tips flaring to each side. The horns were those of an old ram, massive in front and having deep crags showing evidence of past conflicts. The tips rose high and sharp and there was surprisingly little brooming.
He was a sheep hunter’s dream come true, a once-in-a-lifetime trophy. And I had a license to take him in my pocket and a rifle in my hand. But after a final look at him through the binoculars, I slung the rifle over my shoulder and headed back down the mountain. If we played our cards right, he’d still be there the next morning.
Like nearly every hunter who seeks the desert bighorn, I had gone through the annual ritual of applying for an Arizona sheep permit, only to have it returned stamped “Not successful in drawing.” The news that I’d at last come up a winner came at an especially good time. I’d just emerged from the wilds of northern British Columbia after two fruitless weeks of hunting caribou, moose, and mountain goat. I’d just checked into a Whitehorse hotel. After my first bath in many days, I called home and was pouring out my woes to my semisympathetic wife when she suggested that perhaps my poor luck in Canada was a sign that my desert-ram hunt would be more auspicious.
“What desert ram?” I asked.
“Oh, didn’t I tell you?” was the coy answer. “You got a letter from the Arizona Game and Fish Department. They say you’ve been drawn to hunt sheep this fall.” I had been luckier than most: it was only my third try.
With those words the whole Canadian misadventure was forgotten. Instantly I started making plans for December 7, the opening of sheep season in southern Arizona.
The first move was to book Dr. C.G. (Connie) Clare as my guide. Clare is a successful Phoenix optometrist who indulges his passion for sheep hunting by guiding a few Arizona hunts each season. He spends a good bit of his free time roaming the Arizona mountains and studying sheep habits. He knows just about how many legal rams live in any given area and where they’re most likely to be found; all he asks of his clients is that they be in good physical shape and know how to use a rifle.
On December 6, the day before the opening of sheep hunting in the area I’d drawn, I checked into the Game and Fish Department in Phoenix. There I met fellow hunter Mort Green of Mt. Lebanon, Pennsylvania, and Jack Gruer, who runs Clare’s hunting camp and serves up a tasty plate of beans and mesquite-broiled steaks.
Our hunting area was about 120 miles west of Phoenix in the Plomosa mountain range. When we met Connie in camp that evening he told me that he’d been scouting the area I would hunt.
“I spotted a fine ram high on a steep mountain about fifteen miles north of here,” Connie said. “He’ll be tough to get at if he stays on the mountain. But there are four more rams working around the base of the mountain. Possibly the bigger ram will come down and join the others sometime during the late afternoon. If he does, we’ll be faced with dangerous climbing and difficult stalking. Not that it’ll be easy in any event.”
His horn swept up past the jaw in a full, even circle with the tips flaring to each side. The horns were those of an old ram, massive in front and having deep crags showing evidence of past conflicts.
Before daylight the next morning Connie and I drove into the Plomosa foothills. (Mort went to his area with another guide, and I learned later that Mort took a fine ram a couple of days after my hunt ended.) Then, leaving the four-wheel-drive vehicle, we hiked the remaining few miles into the basin where the sheep had been spotted the day before. It was a beautiful beginning for a desert-country hunt. There was no wind to speak of, and the air was just cool enough to make a flannel shirt feel good.
Connie is one of those “think positive” guides. He remains convinced that sheep are close at hand and the only trick is to keep looking until you spot them. As soon as enough light had crept into the desert basin to see farther than 100 yards, he began scanning the hills. He didn’t stop scanning for over half an hour. I followed his example, carefully tracing the outlines of every rock and projection that could possibly be a sheep or even a small part of a partly hidden sheep. But, predictably, it was Connie’s greater experience that bore fruit.
“Look at this,” he said, stepping back from his tripod-mounted binoculars. Four rams were meandering across a low saddle in one of the ridges sloping down from the main peak. The distance was a bit over a half-mile, but the rams were angling toward us and would come closer if they kept on their current course.
Despite the distance to the sheep, Connie’s voice was barely more than a whisper as he gave an appraisal of the situation.
“I only spotted four, probably the same band I saw yesterday. That means the big ram isn’t with them.”
Still studying the moving forms through the heavy glasses, I agreed. “Four is all I can see too.” But then a fifth head rose above the skyline.
“No, wait — there are five!” I almost shouted. “Another ram is catching up.”
“Then my hunch may be right after all,” he said, grinning, “and this is a near-perfect setup. They’ll follow the lower contours where the mountain levels off into the foothills. We can get a lot closer without being seen by following a dry wash leading that way. This is too much luck to expect the first day out.”
Twenty minutes later, after an easy stalk through a deep sandy-bottomed dry wash, we were settled behind a low granite outcropping with a sawtooth profile. The breaks in the rock made a perfect place to watch the sheep without being spotted ourselves. There was even a low notch to use as a rifle rest. Ahead the ground sloped gently upward for about 200 yards, then reared up at a sharp 60° angle where the foothills and gravel-strewn rills gave way to a sheer granite wall. Since the sheep were staying close to the base of the mountain, they would pass within easy rifle range.
Ten minutes later the first head — a good, mature ram — rounded a rockslide about 400 yards to our right. He was immediately followed by two more, one with about a three-quarter curl and the other only slightly better. A moment later the fourth ram came into view, and my heart skipped a beat. His horns swept up to the level of his eyes, then spanned gracefully outward before ending in smoothly blunted tips. For a moment he stopped and looked back in the direction from which he’d just come, giving us a quick inspection of both sides of his head. A few seconds later the fifth sheep, a respectable ram of about the same quality as the leader, rounded the rockpile.
There was no doubt in my mind that the fourth ram in the procession was the one we’d come for and that in less than two minutes I’d have an easy shot at him. But Connie had other ideas.
“That’s not him,” he whispered. “The curl on this ram is too tight. Let’s let him go. That old ram I saw on the mountain must still be up there.”
Over the years I’ve learned that it’s seldom wise to disagree with guides, especially experts like Connie Clare. But desert sheep are not a game animal you can hunt year after year until you run across a record-book specimen. Any desert ram is a once-in-a-lifetime trophy. Yet here I was being advised to pass over a full-curl head that thousands of hunters would hock the family homestead for.
Before I could register my protest, a tawny form flashed out of the rocks above the second sheep and glanced off his back. A bobcat! The sheep were in full flight in an instant, racing in front of us with the cat in pursuit. After a sprint of about 75 yards the bobcat gave up. He bounded to the top of a boulder to watch the fast-departing sheep.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Connie said. “I never saw anything like that.”
As the last white rump sank out of sight behind a sharp-crested ridge some 300 yards to the west, it occurred to me that we were lucky the big ram had not been with this band. He would be hard to find after a fright like that.
By early afternoon we were back at the spot where we’d been earlier. From that distance we could see most of the south face of the mountain. I had studied every rocky crevice and outcropping on the mountain’s face until I knew them all by heart, but we hadn’t seen anything that looked like a sheep. Connie reasoned that the ram he’d seen the day before wouldn’t join the others. because he was plenty smart and had a hideout too safe and secure to leave for long. We’d just have to glass the mountain until the ram showed himself.
At last we spotted a movement among some palo verde bush in a narrow but deep pocket about two-thirds of the way up the mountainside. Clare’s guess had been right. The ram had tucked himself away in a spot that gave him protection on both sides but also allowed a clear view of all approaches from the desert floor below. Or at least so it looked from where we stood. The only way to make sure was to get a lot closer.
An hour later we had closed the gap to a few hundred yards. From there we could see no way to get closer without running too much risk of being spotted by the ram. Three separate washes led directly to the sheep’s redoubt. To our disadvantage he could observe each avenue of approach from top to bottom, and there was nothing bigger than a barrel cactus to hide behind in any of them.
The fourth ram came into view, and my heart skipped a beat.
Possibly he could be approached from the right side of the mountain, but that would mean an hour’s backtracking to avoid crossing open ground, plus another hour or so of angling along the hillside. Only about two hours of daylight remained.
The left approach appeared impassable because of a huge, almost vertical rock outcropping. But at least that route offered enough concealment to get closer without being spotted, and with luck we might find a climbable route. Unfortunately, the closer we got, the rougher it looked. At one point we estimated we were within 200 yards of the ram, but that was through 200 yards of solid granite. Scaling the wall would have challenged the skills of a first-class mountain climber. There was no guarantee of an open shot, even if we made it to the top.
The left approach was out of the question, but at least our exploration hadn’t been a waste of time. From this extreme left angle we discovered why the old ram was so confident of his hideaway. A narrow cleft, completely concealed by a ridgeback of sharp-edged granite, angled down from the mountain’s highest peak directly toward the sheep’s hangout. Viewed head-on from a distance, the ridgelike outcropping looked like only a scar on the mountain’s face. In fact, it was a perfectly protected getaway route. In less than five minutes the ram could be on the other side of the mountain, having left no trace of his whereabouts. It also provided a passageway into his private pocket.
With only an hour of daylight left, we made our way back to where we could get another look at the ram’s hideout. He was still there. He had moved only a few feet from where we’d last seen him. In a do-or-die situation it might have been worth risking a shot, but at that range the chances of a hit were less than one in four. With time running out, we briefly discussed the wisdom of a full frontal assault that afternoon. I even made a brief reconnaissance to check out the possibilities of such a plan. Dodging from boulder to boulder. I worked my way about 200 yards closer to the ram but succeeded only in getting blocked off in a dead-end gully. I retreated to where Clare had waited. Then we watched the old ram until deep shadows crept across the face of the mountain and a chill wind sprang up.
“This is the smart way to do it,” said Connie. “We’ll put him to bed, and we’ll be here when he gets up in the morning. Let’s go get some steak and beans.”
With that, we turned our backs on the sheep and made our way toward the desert floor as I described at the beginning of this story.
During the night the southwesterly wind turned cold. In the morning, as we huddled behind the raw ridge of granite from where we’d last seen the ram the evening before, my light down jacket felt snug and cozy. The sky was still black, sparkling with stars. Minutes later the thin blue line outlining the eastern horizon seemed to explode into day.
The old ram was exactly where we’d left him 12 hours earlier. He was munching on the tips of a palo verde bush, at ease in his rock-walled citadel. This time we didn’t linger to admire his horns. We’d worked out our plan the night before, so we knew exactly how we’d proceed. Jack Gruer would act as a precautionary observer. He would stay bedded down out of sight and keep track of the ram’s movements with my spotting scope. Connie and [ didn’t know how long it would take to circle the mountain and come in the back door. It could take hours and might even prove impossible. But if the sheep wandered off, Jack would know where he’d headed and we wouldn’t lose him.
The climb wasn’t impossible but close to it. Several times we had to crawl across narrow ledges. Once we were almost halted by a sheer rock wall. The only choices were to scale the bare face, using whatever handholds and toeholds we could find in the few crevices, or backtrack and try to find another route. We chose the wall. Clare went first. Then he hauled my rifle with an empty chamber up by a tow line we made from the sling. It was the last major obstacle. We edged around a chimney-shaped pinnacle and found ourselves on the rim of the gash that led down to the sheep’s hideout. Cautiously we crept along the wall of the crevice to a spot where we wouldn’t be sky lined.
What ram? As far as we could tell none was in sight.
For an instant we thought we might have hit yet another slash in the mountain’s face. From this upper angle the south slope looked a lot different. It would be easy to come out at the wrong spot. But the landmarks were there. Not more than 200 yards away was the palo verde bush on which the sheep had been feeding. ,Just beyond was a giant, three-armed saguaro cactus. Its image had etched itself on my memory the day before.
There was no mistake — we were at the right place. But where was the sheep? If he was still there he should be clearly visible with the naked eye. Apparently he had gone down the mountain. Our only hope of catching him would be to hurry down the crevice and hope he hadn’t gone too far.
Still, we hadn’t made any mistakes so far, and we didn’t intend to start now. Chasing sheep can be a fool’s errand, especially in treacherous terrain like this where a misstep can mean a rockslide, a nasty scope-busting fall, or much worse. Even though the sheep couldn’t be seen, we stayed hidden and carefully studied every rock and bush through our binoculars
“Look to the left of the bigger palo verde tree,” Connie whispered in my ear. I focused on what looked like a round gray rock. It was like thousands of others on the mountainside but had a peculiar, almost white slash across it. It appeared cold and lifeless. It was different from all the other rocks in the area, but how could it be the ram? Where was the head: where were the legs?
At that moment there was a movement a couple of feet beyond. For a split-second the top of a sheep’s horn swept out from behind a flat boulder, then disappeared again. I heard Connie’s breath catch in his throat. He had seen it too.
The ram was taking it easy in a depression. His white rump was sticking up on one end, and his head was out of sight behind a rock on the other end. No wonder he’d been so hard to spot.
Some eight feet down the slope was a rough-textured boulder. It was about the size of an easy chair and would offer good concealment. It would also make a solid rifle rest. At that range I probably could have made a good shot offhand, but I didn’t intend to take any chances. Without risking even a whisper I pointed to the rock so that Connie would know that I was going to move closer. He nodded his agreement.
I spent a full minute slowly but soundlessly feeding a cartridge into the chamber.
After crawling up to the left side of the fist-shaped boulder I stuffed my gloves in a groove on the rough surface. Then I laid the rifle in the padded notch. Next I slowly lifted the bolt. I spent a full minute slowly but soundlessly feeding a cartridge into the chamber. The rifle was the same custom-stocked-and-barreled Model- 70 Winchester in .280 Remington caliber that I’d used on a dozen hunting trips during the previous two years. The only change I’d made was the addition of Leupold’s new Vari-XIII 2.5X-to- 8X scope. The magnification was turned all the way up to 8 power. The rifle was sighted dead on at 200 yards with my load of 56 grains of No. 4350 behind a 150-grain Nosier spitzer. Across level ground the point of impact would have been perfect at this range, but I would be shooting downhill at about a 30° angle. It meant that the bullet would hit above the point of aim. So I made a mental note to aim low on the brisket.
I had no idea how long the sheep would lie there. I didn’t really care. Sooner or later he would have to get up, and I was as ready as I would ever be.
Ten minutes passed. Fifteen. The cold wind funneled up the pass, chilling my ungloved hands so that I could scarcely move my fingers. I slipped my shooting hand inside my jacket. Twenty minutes passed. Suddenly he was up! For a long moment he stood facing directly away from me. apparently studying the desert below. The only shot I had was n dead-on rump shot. but I’d waited too long at this point to do anything so foolish. A moment later the ram began walking away from me. He rounded a palo verde bush and stopped just behind it. He was broadside to me now, still more than half covered by the thick growth. I could see him well enough to aim, but I didn’t dare risk trying to get a bullet through the tangle of tough twigs. Instead I concentrated on the great, full sweep of his horns.
Slowly he emerged from behind the brush and headed uphill. He came out into the open now, full broadside, and stopped. The crosshairs moved low on his chest. I gradually increased the pressure on the trigger. When the rifle cracked the sheep reared up on his hind legs, then headed toward me at a dead run. The crosshairs were on his chest, and I was about to pull the trigger again when Connie yelled.
“Don’t shoot — you’ve got him!”
At that instant the big ram reared again and fell dead. The bullet had caught him in the lower quarter of a shoulder and did enormous damage, destroying heart and lungs. The ram went no more than 15 yards after being hit.
Read Next: Great Rifles for Mountain Hunting
Far below on the desert floor, Jack Gruer had watched the action through my 60X spotting scope. He gathered up our packboards and headed up the mountain toward us. A long, hard day still lay ahead. Arizona law requires that not only the horns and cape of desert sheep but also a good portion of the meat be checked in. I was determined to do more than just meet the letter of the law. After skinning the ram out for a full body mount, we divided it into quarters and packed everything out. It took two trips up the mountain. But when it comes to exotic table fare, desert ram has got to be the rarest tidbit of all.
The Best Deals on Outdoor Gear Gifts
