Well seeing the hunting stories are slowing down a little here , I thought I'd post some photo's of my buddy Travis with his spectacular Bighorn he harvested this year in Montana.
First of all the odd's of drawing a tag in this area is less than 1% of applicants actually getting one.
After Montana FWP posted the results on the winners of the tags in August it wasn't long when the phone rang with one excited fella on the other end of the line
So the scouting trips start 2 weeks before the season opened. After a couple of trips, he got a battle plan on how to access one of the big boy's.
He decided on two battle plans. The first was to utilize the higher ridges to scout from , then closing in to score the animal. The second was floating the river , glassing canyons for animals, then closing in for closer scoring. with the sheep , inches makes a ton of difference.
He made several trips using the old fashion method of beating the dirt. There were a lot of mature rams being seen on each trip, but not the one.
The next trip, Travis and his brother floated the Missouri for 32 miles in there 12" aluminum boat They spent 4 days on the river , but still was too early in the season to end it.
Travis made a total of 13 trips after his ram , being in the field for a total of 34 days this season.
Well the last week of arrives on Thankgiving weekend. He took 6 day's off work for this trip and headed out solo back to the Missouri river for another 32 mile float.
Sounds fun eh? Well we got a dandy snow storm that brought 8"-12" of fresh snow along with single digit temps right in the middle of his float. He dropped his ATV off down river and drove his truck and trailer up river the 40 miles . No warm camp to look forward too any time soon.
He finished the float on day 4 and still hadn't found his shooter. Once back to his camp after a very cold 40 mile ride on the ATV he relocated to a chunk of private property that was along a migration route for some dandy rams.
Finally , after the sixth day his luck turned. He glassed a good ram in his book.
After a successful stalk, he launched a 180 gr pill from his 30-378 Accumark. Of course the bullet/rifle combo did the job! Now the fun begins
He was able to get the ATV with in 150 yards from the ram, but he slid over a cliff and ended up in a six foot hell hole in the side of the canyon.
Working on the hillside with darkness closing in, he skinned the entire ram out , deboned the meat and started the task of getting out of the canyon.
He said it took 1 1/2 hour to get the cape and horns up the hill side , six feet at a tiime. He'd throw the cape and horns up in a pile of sage, then pull himself up to the spot and repeat.
Next was getting the meat out. Having to use a frame pack on the back It sounded like a lot of fun.
After getting all the hide and meat back to camp, it's time to boogie back to town. On the drive back he had a Mule deer buck jump into the side of his truck, spinning off the side and taking out the front corner of his camp trailer. On the same highway, he had another deer slam into his passenger door , crushing it in.
I'm sure he would head out today if the opportunity was there. Sorry for the long post and poor photo's, but this guy is my new hunting hero.
The ram scores 192" , but is still green. He will place well in the books here in Montana. He is having a replica of the horns to use on a life size mount body mount and is having the actual horns and skull done "In the White"
The last photo shows where the ram went over. Look at that country in the background
