GO4STEELHD's 2020 unlimited Ram! Montana Whitetail

[go4steelhd]

I have not posted on here for a while due to moving to Montana. In a separate thread I came back on to ask about information on DIY caribou hunts. After doing that I figured I should share some of my 2020 tales and share some photos that you may enjoy. I moved to Montana 2 years ago. Half of why I moved to here is to hunt the unlimited bighorn sheep units, then throw in general deer and elk tags and lots of game to hunt, well let's say I was ready for a change of scenery. I went to wyoming for antelope, hunted sheep in Montana, and went on an Idaho deer hunt and season is in full swing here in montana for deer and elk.
My first hunt was in Wyoming for antelope. My wife and I both had a tag and we took our 6 year old son along on the hunt. I took my son down to hunt with me for a day before my wife could join up with us. The first day my son wanted me to shoot every antelope we seen, after telling him well let's see if we can find another one about 60 times, we finally found a nice buck. This buck was about a mile away but i could tell in the spotting scope he was a shooter. So after a conversation with my son were I explained to him how far we had to walk and pointed the hill where the antelope was. The I gave him a choice. I said we can go look for another antelope that may be closer to the road or we can go after that one that's at least a mile away. He said let's go after him dad, I said ok but you have to walk out there and back on your own. He said let's go get him! So we walked out to where this antelope fed into a draw. My hope was to set up on the ridge were my son could see the antelope and then watch the whole thing go down. As luck would have it the antelope fed to our side of the draw during the time we stalked up, and when I looked over the ridge he was 70 yards. I could have shot it off hand but my son could not see it, so I let him walk or shall I say run off. The next day my wife joined us and I told her we should go look for this buck in the area I felt he went to. After looking all around we found several bucks but not him. This day the wind was blowing about 30mph and it started raining in sheets. As we crested a hill we seen this buck and he immediately ran off. I asked my wife if she wanted to go see if we could catch up with it, after thinking about it for a minute she said not in this weather. I said ok, well I'm going to go get it then. After hiking over the next ridge I caught him in a draw and made a nice 200 yard shot on him. I went and tagged him, then hiked back to the truck to let the storm pass. After a hour the weather got better and we all went out and took care of the antelope and packed him back.

Lets see if I can get the photos to post

[go4steelhd]

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[Jimmy33]

Congrats! Hopefully more pics to come...


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[go4steelhd]

I can't get anything else to post even after taking a screenshot of the photo's

[go4steelhd]

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[go4steelhd]

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[go4steelhd]

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[go4steelhd]

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[Bowhunter3]

Right on!

[buglebuster]

Come on Matt, quit holding out on the good pics

[go4steelhd]

Ok!!!
Lol
Next I will talk about Idaho. Anyone who knows me is aware my passion is hunting mule deer. Especially in Idaho. Even with my busy work schedule schedule I was hoping to get a few days of scouting in to locate a good buck. At the last minute I was asked to take care of a few things at work. This limited me to 1 1/2 days of scouting. I found four bucks my first night of scouting. The best buck was about a 165 deer. The other nice one was 3 point that was 26-28 wide and light horned. The other two were 3 year old bucks. The next day I went in to a spot I generally turn up a good buck, this year I only seen 7 does in there. On the opener I had to make a decision to either go after the 165 buck or go blind into areas I have had success in the past. I decided I would go blind on the opener into one of my favorite canyons. Then if I didn’t turn up a big buck I would go after the other buck the second day and hope he did get bumped or killed by another hunter. I hiked up into my vantage point to see what the opener would have in store for me. I glassed for about 45 minutes then I spotted a doe, while watching her I seen a big frame of a buck stand up. Instantly my Heart started to race. I knew this was a shooter even before putting the spotting scope on it. I quickly put the spotter on him to see exactly what he was. When he looked my direction I could tell he was probably 28 inches wide.(he ended up being a bit better than that) Knowing there was some other hunters in the canyon (7 total) I quickly moved into a good shooting location and set up on the buck. I shot the buck, and he dropped and started rolling, and rolling, and rolling some more. I estimate he went 5-700 down the hill. I was thinking to myself he will be a two point when I get up to him. I have had a few bucks get busted up only cartwheeling for 200 yards, so this one I figured was going to be bad. Anyways I lucked out, he didn’t even bust a tip off I spent the next two days packing him out.

[go4steelhd]

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[Jimmy33]

Nice!


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[go4steelhd]

Now we will go on to hunting the unlimited sheep units. My first try at hunting one of these units was 2019. I put in a tremendous amount of time scouting for rams. I started on the winter range, spring range, summer range, eventually I would find them in each zone and then they vanished about a month before season I spent time hiking, and horse-backing learning the unit. These units are some of the roughest real-estate in the US. They are almost all wilderness with few horse trails or even hiking trails for that matter. It’s grizzly country and you will more than likely run into one or more at some point. While scouting  I took a lot of photos of rams, I will share many off them in this thread. While scouting I found a ram that I felt would break 180. When hunting season came  I turned up 3 juvenile rams and some ewes. I kept hunting glassing and covering ground. On day 12 or maybe 15 of hunting I located what looked like it might be a legal ram which is 3/4 curl about 2 miles away. I stalked into range and I just could not tell if he was legal. If he was quartering away he looked legal but broad side he looked close. I stalked in closer and closer and kept checking at about 60 yards I used my cross hairs on my rifle and titled them with the base of the horn and through the eye to see that this ram was 1 to 1 1/2 inches short of being legal. I ended up not harvesting a ram in the unlimited on my first year. To be honest this really hurt my pride. I have heard that these were the hardest hunt to be successful on in the lower 48, but I just swore I would get it done. They say the average hunter spending 14 days hunting these units each year will take them about 10 years to figure it out and harvest a ram.
In the winter I got right back to scouting and locating rams. I just enjoy seeing them in person. I have dreamed about hunting a Rocky Mountain Bighorn sheep since I was a teen. I have put in for 25 years and never drawn a tag. On a side note in my interview they asked me why I wanted to relocate to this area, and I told them I want to hunt sheep in the unlimiteds until I harvest one. I kept tabs on the rams this year until the first week of July and then they vanished. Where do they go? That’s the million dollar question that no one really knows but everyone has a theory. I located a ram two days before season that was about 4 hours horseback ride in. He was a very nice legal ram. Since this is grizzly country I choose to ride in and out every day. And I will be honest with you most of this country is really dicey to have a horse in. The next day I was up at 2am to go see if I could locate the ram again, I did not see him. The next 5 days I took off at 2am to ride in, tie the horse off and get up on a knob I figured I could see the most country from, and that I could shoot from if he showed up. He did not show up again. I was riding in on the 5 or 6 day of season and ran into a grizzly bear while riding the horse at about 4:30 am. I heard the bear whoop at me before I seen it, and I kicked the horse to get going because I was not sure exactly where the bear was at this point. Well I came around the next bend and there he was about 15-20 yards away. The horse froze and would not move, which is better than what I expected it to do. Because I figured he would buck me or take off full bore running through the timber if we ever had this happen. I tried to get the horse to go by whipping him, nothing. I tried to get him to turn around, nothing. The bear is still just staring at us. I ride in with a head lamp on so I could see him well. I also always have a 44 mag in a chest hostler. I yelled at the bear, and got off the horse and grabbed the lead rope and took off with him. When looked back I could no longer see the grizzly there anymore. As you could imagine this is a horrible feeling in the dark, and you can’t hear much except the horse shoes hitting the rocks in the trail. My heart was pounding in my throat for the next mile. Then I got back on the horse. He was very rattled and nervous from then on during the hunt. I get up to where I will be hunting and tie the horse off and hike up the mountain. While going into a timber patch that I had walked through for the last week, I herd something popping in the trees. I think it was some elk, but with the amount of fresh bear crap I was going to go a different route this day. So I swung wide up the mountain and got into some marshy timbered area with lots of wind fall. It was still dark and I stepped into what looked like a few feet of muddy area. I stepped in and sank to my shin. Then I made the mistake of taking another step into it. With my pack on and rifle strapped to it I sank to my lower chest instantly. Oh S@#$!! I quickly dove forward and grabbed some brush and kept running with my legs. I do not know how deep the bog was, but I did not find a bottom to it. By pulling and keeping my feet moving I was able to get out. I have never went over my knee in one of these before this. Now it’s 35 degrees I’m five hours from the truck and wet. I picked up the pace hiking and kept some what warm.

[go4steelhd]

Scouting 30+ days over a two year period