It was early in the morning of the seventh day of my hunt for
a Texas desert bighorn ram. I had begun seeing sheep from just after first light
as the Sun’s rays warmed my perch in a scrub oak thicket high upon the slopes
of the Sierra Diablo Ridge. At six hundred yards, a lone ewe popped over a slope
just above the rim of Black John Canyon. Her chocolate color, darker than the
ashen gray mule deer that shared this habitat, and her buff colored rump patch,
caused her to stand out in the morning sunlight. And then, trailing behind,
unaware that the bighorn rut had supposedly ended a week or two earlier, came a
majestic desert bighorn ram. I knew that, given the chance, I would take this
ram.
My
hunt had actually begun several weeks earlier when I received a call from the
Texas Bighorn Society regarding a permit issued by the Texas Parks and Wildlife
Department for the Figure 2 Ranch. I had placed my name on the “interested
parties” list maintained by TBS several years before, but had never been able
to seriously pursue a permit. Fortunately, I had been successful earlier this
year in merging the public company I had been running into another company. I
was now on an extended sabbatical, which is a kinder way of saying…
unemployed. As a result, I could go sheep hunting. After several conversations
with Ron Stasny, owner of the Figure 2, and with Clay Brewer, manager of the
desert bighorn program for the TPWD, I finally had a permit to hunt a desert ram
in my home state of Texas. Yikes!
The
Figure 2, which once comprised 800,000 acres, is one of the great historic
ranches of West Texas. It lies at the north end of the Sierra Diablos
approximately twenty miles across the salt flats from El Capitan, the massive
prow on the south face of Guadalupe Peak, the highest point in Texas. Several
rugged canyons, including Apache, Black John and Marble canyons, cut through the
ranch. Apache Peak, which at 5690 feet stands as prominently as during the days
when Captain Baylor of the Texas Rangers used its summit to track the movements
of Victorio and his Apache renegades, flanks the north end of the ranch.
Under
the Stasny’s stewardship, the Figure 2 has played a prominent role in the
recovery of wild sheep in Texas. Some of the original brood pens constructed by
the TPWD for holding bighorns newly transplanted to Texas from other states were
located in Black John Canyon. And the local habitat, though affected by several
years of drought, is still favorable for the sheep. On my seven-day hunt we saw
bighorns every day and estimate that we observed five rams and twenty-five ewes
and lambs, adjusting for duplicate sightings. In addition, we saw mule deer,
javelina, and numerous coveys of blue quail and top-plumed Gambel’s quail.
Joseph
Stasny, Ron Stasny’s son, would be my guide for the hunt. Joseph is a big man
who played college football. He also proved to be an excellent guide. Joseph had
honed his game-eye through many seasons of hunting mule deer on the Figure 2 and
from this experience he had become familiar with the haunts of the bighorns on
the ranch. Joseph had also seen, on several occasions, a very large ram that he
believed could contend for the Texas state record, though this ram had only been
observed in the past during the late winter and spring. In early November, with
the rut winding down, there was no way of knowing where this ram might be
roaming across the Sierra Diablo range.
On
the first day of the hunt, Joseph and I shouldered our packs and hiked into a
basin bordered by Black John Canyon to the east and Apache Peak to the west. We
chose to go on foot to minimize our impact. The terrain was a mixture of sotol,
yuccas, chollo (jumping cactus) and lechuguilla, the signature plant of the
Chihuahuan desert. Lechuguilla can be nasty stuff. The spines are slightly
poisonous, and all point uphill. Clearly, it would not be wise to stumble while
descending a steep hillside covered in lechuguilla. Deep in the canyons we also
found stands of Texas madrone, a showy tree with reddish, paper-thin layers of
bark that peel away in sheets.
The
morning sun had been warm, and after several hours of climbing the cliffs and
washes of the canyon we pulled in under some shade to eat our lunch and rest. We
soon began to hear the tinkling sounds of rocks that, in the mountains, can mean
that game is afoot. We re-shouldered our packs and began to slip around a knoll
to glass one of the precipitous fingers of Black John Canyon. Suddenly, there
they were… my first desert bighorns. It was just as Jack O’Connor had
described it to me, and to legions of other young future sheep hunters, long ago
in the pages of Outdoor Life… stately creatures with chocolate brown coats and
distinctive buff-colored rump patches, seemingly too robust and out of place in
the austere desert landscape. There were fifteen ewes and lambs, and two rams,
one a sickle-horn, but one massive and mature, with a smoky dark coat almost
black in comparison to the ewes and smaller ram.
We
had seen the sheep at the same time they had seen us… and I knew I would have
to be quick. I estimated the large ram would score in the mid-160’s, and
remembered the advice of Chris Harlow, the noted Arizona desert sheep guide, to
“Think twice before passing a 160 class desert ram”. But it was the first
morning of the hunt, and Joseph, always optimistic as a good guide must be,
encouraged me to hold off until we had searched for his bigger ram. That was all
the hesitation the sheep needed, and breaking into two groups, each headed by a
ram, the bighorns effortlessly made their way across several canyons to climb
high upon the slopes of Apache Peak, making in thirty minutes a trek that would
have taken Joseph and me a good half day to accomplish, if that. As the larger
ram cleared the saddle that separated our basin from Apache Canyon, I said to
Joseph, “Given a second chance, I will take that ram”.
Thus
began several days of cat-and-mouse exercise as we tried to relocate and get
into range of our band of bighorns. We had hoped for the classic “scope ‘em
in the morning, put ‘em to bed, then stalk ‘em for a final approach late in
the day” type of hunt… but it was not to be. It was not until late each
afternoon, too late to stalk, that we would finally locate the ram. If we were
in the canyon, he was on the mountain. When the next day we would move to the
mountain, the ram would appear in the canyon. It was almost as if someone was
providing these sheep with advance information on our plans. Was I becoming
paranoid?
As
all experienced sheep hunters know, the battle to push self-doubt and pessimism
out of the mind during the weariness of the hunt is often the greatest challenge
one faces on the mountain. I have to be one of the luckiest of sheep hunters.
I’ve taken five rams on five sheep hunts, each a full-curl scoring at or close
to the B&C minimum. And I’ve never been rained on during a sheep hunt…
not even once. Take that. But even so, I am often plagued by worries and
self-doubt. This called for a change in plans.
On
the fifth day of the hunt, we rose early and circled high above the Sierra
Diablo Rim, searching for a location to descend to a nest of scrub oaks above
Black John Canyon that would be our base for the next several days. Along the
way we passed a number of bleached mule deer skeletons, mute testaments to the
hunting efficiency of the area’s mountain lions. Joseph stated that, though he
had seen several cats taken by trappers, he had never seen a live mountain lion
in many years of hunting that country. Once we arrived at our scrub oak thicket,
we dug in… sculpting seating spots out of the rocky soil and shallow troughs
to keep our sleeping bags from rolling down the mountain come nightfall. Dressed
in full camo, we settled down to glass, confident that any animals in the basin
below would have a tough time spotting us now.
Late
that evening, just as dusk was settling in, we spied mule deer feeding on the
bench below us. They were dressed in their own full camo, ashen gray coats that
blended perfectly with the surrounding vegetation. Suddenly, Joseph came to full
alert, “By gosh (or something to that effect), there’s a cat stalking those
deer”. The mountain lion was stretched out in full stalking mode, creeping
forward as silently as a shadow. I offered Joseph the shot. He took it… but at
325 yards a mountain lion, even a large one, is not an easy target. The first
bullet exploded a small rock just over the cat’s back. The lion leapt high in
the air, but in one of those balletic motions that only cats can pull off,
decided in mid-air that the exploding rock was not a threat, and came back to
earth locked again in full stalking mode. The deer looked about bewildered, but
fortunately for them, Joseph’s second shot ran true.
With
the sixth day dawning, and one less cat to share the rocks with us, we crawled
out of our sleeping bags to seek our ram. The night sky had been clear and full
of shooting stars, and the effect would have been idyllic, if not for the
fifty-mile an hour gusts that whipped our bags like open sails and repeatedly
blew dirt and debris into our faces. Who said sheep hunting isn’t fun. Late
that afternoon, we finally saw him… Joseph’s big ram. It began as a small
speck of brown something, circling around the north face of the bluff banked
high above Black John Canyon. Eventually, through our scopes, we could see the
large bases, below the jaw drop, and full-curl and a quarter, that proclaimed…
potential state record ram. We let him bed, and planned our stalk.
The
sky each evening had been illuminated by a full moon and the sheep seemed to be
moving about at night, particularly given that the rut, though winding down, was
still underway. We decided not to wait until morning but rather to make our play
in the daylight available to us. We left assistant guide Stephen Venable in our
spotting nest to signal changes in the ram’s location and began our descent to
the canyon rim. Soon, we were only 600 yards from the ram. Unfortunately, we
could get no closer without being spotted, and 600 yards is not within my
effective range. Fellow sheep hunters, listen up…that stud ram is still out
there, roaming Black John Canyon. My hope is that the TPWD issues another permit
for the Figure 2 at the earliest possible opportunity, and that some other
hunter has a chance at what could be a new Texas state record ram.
But
as darkness settled upon me that evening, none of this part of my future was
known. Joseph and Stephen had hiked down through another canyon to fetch
provisions for several more days on the mountain. I spent the night alone, under
the stars, watching El Capitan in the distant moonlight, wondering how all this
would end. At that point the plan was to spend the next four to five days
hunting the big ram, and then to return, if necessary, in January to continue
the effort.
As
the seventh day dawned, I resumed glassing, knowing that it would be late in the
morning before my guides could make it back to our position. I began seeing
sheep almost immediately and it was if every bighorn spotted over the past week
decided to spend part of that morning within range of my location. There were
several bands of ewes, including a few with radio transmitting collars left over
from their releases in these canyons years before. And the sickle horn ram
appeared, still herding (or being led by, it was tough to say) several ewes with
their yearlings in tow. That’s when I saw the ewe and ram climbing out of the
depths of Black John Canyon.
Nothing
I had experienced before in the wild prepared me for the majesty of this pair of
desert bighorns, pacing across the Texas landscape. I felt in awe that such
barren country could support such magnificent animals. And I felt a tremendous
sense of gratitude toward the volunteers of the TBS, the dedicated professionals
of the TPWD, and for conservationist-ranchers such as the Stasnys, that desert
bighorns thrive today in their ancestral Texas home.
As
the ram approached, I could tell that he was not the larger ram of the day
before. But I did believe that he was mature, and heavy horned, and would score
in the upper 160s. I also believed that this was the same ram I had seen on the
first day (though Joseph later said that he believed it was a new, though
comparable ram). I remembered my statement that, given a second chance, I would
take this ram. I thought about my unemployed status, and my earlier self-imposed
commitment that come January I would be engaged in something productive to
support my family. Finally, this ram would complete my slam, a goal that I had
never set for myself, but one which suddenly seemed significant. Maybe, just
maybe, this ram would be the cure for that illness known among the afflicted
as… sheep fever.
As the ram came
closer, first 400 yards, then 300 yards, he finally stopped and turned his head
away from me, and that did it. From behind, his horns looked like curving tree
trunks, as they always do. I shot, and as the ewe raced away, I realized the ram
was down for good. Indeed, I am one lucky sheep hunter.
It wasn’t long
before my colleagues were there to help pack out the sheep. They congratulated
me and we all agreed that that other ram, the big ram of Black John Canyon, was
one lucky sheep himself. Maybe some other sheep hunter will catch up with him
before old age, or one of the lions that still stalk those canyons, catches up
with him first.
Back at the Figure
2, we had a celebratory dinner and a night’s sleep in a soft bed with no wind
whistling through our hair. Early the next morning, Scott Lerich of the TPWD
arrived to record data on my ram. Scott aged the ram at eight to nine years and
scored him green at just under 167 B&C. He also noted that of all the
bighorns taken in Texas since legal hunting resumed several years ago, mine was
the northernmost ram taken to date. How about that.
All Texans, and
all sheep hunters, should take great pride that desert bighorns again roam the
mountains and canyons of the Trans-Pecos region of West Texas. All persons
interested in participating in the future success of Texas bighorns should join
the Texas Bighorn Society, which can be reached at Information@texasbighornsociety.org,
or call Kathy Boone, president of the TBS, at 806.799.6816.
Charles Wolcott
Dallas, Texas
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