Alaska Bucket List #4

[2MANY]

Now the best part.
Coming home to civilization.

Congrats on the Ram.

[OutHouse]

Wow, congratulations! Anyone know how they taste? I feel like it should be really good given what I think they eat!

[Karl Blanchard]

Wow, congratulations! Anyone know how they taste? I feel like it should be really good given what I think they eat!

it's the best wild game I've ever eaten hands down

[ShaneTyTrey]

Wow, congratulations! Anyone know how they taste? I feel like it should be really good given what I think they eat!

it's the best wild game I've ever eaten hands down

Tenderloins in camp were pretty good!

[bearpaw]

Congrats, awesome ram! 

[fishngamereaper]

Wow, congratulations! Anyone know how they taste? I feel like it should be really good given what I think they eat!

it's the best wild game I've ever eaten hands down

Generally the harder you work for an animal the better it tastes...in my experience.. 😂

[fishngamereaper]

Killer ram...I'm jealous.
The one animal I've never got to pursue....
Congrats....

[rainshadow1]

Congrats Jeff! What a great checkmark to the list!

[jmscon]

Beautiful animal and country, congrats!

[MADMAX]

Trip of a lifetime
Beautiful

[carpsniperg2]

Most excellent!!!!!

[ShaneTyTrey]

Day 1 –

We arrived at the Sea-tac airport about 9:40 on Sunday August 6th to check guns and baggage for our 12:00 Flight to Anchorage.  Upon arriving in Anchorage, we were picked up by our guide Mitch Davis and taken to the outfitters warehouse to go through and organize our packs, make any last second gear cuts and meet our packer, Levi Womack.  Unfortunately, at this time we were also notified that the food caches hadn’t been placed here yet and instead of carrying 2-3 days’ worth of food at a time we were going to carry all 14.  This forced us not only to be carrying another 32lbs but the room it took forced us to make some tough decisions on additional gear cuts to have enough room in our packs.  Once the gear was finalized, we loaded it all into the back of Mitch’s truck, wrapped it with a tarp and began the 5-hour drive towards Chitina.  Once in Chitina we met our outfitter Steve, another guide John, had a quick dinner, set up a spike camp for the night and went to bed.

[ShaneTyTrey]

Day 2 –
We had been warned that today’s hike would be brutal, but you just never know what that means.  Upon waking up, we tore down camp, loaded our packs, ate some oatmeal and when to meet up with John who would be running us down the Copper River on a boat ride where we would begin our hike.  It was a beautiful and scenic ride and the amount of Copper River Sockeye hanging in the shallows as we pulled into beach the boat was just staggering.  Once off the boat, we filtered our water for the hike, checked the zero on my rifle and began the most excruciating and difficult hiking day of my life.  It was about 8 am and our spirits were high, but by 11:30 after climbing 1,900 vertical feet through Alders, Devils Club and just the thickest and nastiest brush you can imagine, I was in suffer mode.  I had to stop, I needed to eat some food, get some electrolytes in my body and get my mind right.  This cycle would continue a couple more times, but after 7 hours of hiking, we broke through tree line and could at least see the general area where camp was for the night.  We rested a bit and then pushed up the last 600 vertical feet and into a beautiful basin.  In all, we had climbed almost 3,300 feet that day, without the extra food or brush, the hike wouldn’t have been nearly as bad, even had we only had one of those to deal with, it would have been tolerable, but it just flat sucked.  Once in camp, we made a short trek to reload water.  We put on some puffy jackets, pants and crocs and rested our bodies, the Peak Refuel dinner has never tasted so good and we were all in bed by 7:45 that night.  We knew this was a good chance to sleep as we still had 2 full days before the season opened and had only about a 5 hour or so climb to put us where we wanted to camp and scout the day before the opener.

[ShaneTyTrey]

Day 3 –
The next day we all slept about 13 hours; we were just dead tired.  So, nobody was out of their tent until almost 9:00.  I shot the rifle again to make sure it was still on after all the brush snags.  We had some oatmeal for breakfast, broke down camp, loaded our packs back up and started another grueling climb, but once we crested the first ridge, 2.5 miles and 1,600 feet later, would at least be in sheep country, even if that was only the ½ way point for today’s hike.  Sore bodies made this hike more difficult than it should have been and it took us nearly 3 hours to crest that ridge.  Once over the top we began dropping down to climb our next mountain, however, we didn’t make it but about 300 yards down the ridge and we spotted our first sheep of the trip, 6 rams to be exact, and the one up high at the top of the next mountain appeared through the spotting scopes to be a mature ram.  We were glassing him from a mile away and needed a better look, but this was sure encouraging.  We watched the sheep for at least a good hour before he got up and fed out of site.  We waited another 30 minutes to make sure he didn’t pop out as our planned travel path wasn’t far from where he was spotted.  We finished dropping off the mountain and back up another 1,000+ vertical ascent on our way to our planned camp spot.  Mitch decided it was would be best to just sleep on top of the ridge so we didn’t risk spooking the ram, so we put up tents in a stiff wind, boiled snow to fill our water supply and planned to get a good night of sleep, with the plan to leave our tents and extra gear that next day and try to relocate the ram and verify he was legal or hope to find another.

[ShaneTyTrey]

Day 4 –
We were forced to remain inside our tents until almost 2:30 pm, thanks to strong winds and non-stop downpours.  Eventually we were able to eat some oatmeal and start looking for rams and it turned into a nice day.  However, without even really leaving camp we were glassing up a lot of rams and decided it would probably be best to just stay in camp and not risk busting a legal ram when I still couldn’t shoot.  After all, we were camped just 400 yards as the crow flies from where we saw the ram, we are 99% sure is legal the prior afternoon.  As we shared hunting stories and rested our bodies, we dreamt of what tomorrow could hold.  We had 3 Ptarmigan walk 5 feet away from us, but their season isn’t open yet either, but I think they could be on the menu later in the hunt.