Well I can hardly believe it! My sheep season is over and never to be done again. But by Gods' grace and blessing I shot my dream ram with my longbow on day 7 of this extreme hunt. He is 7 years old, 160" greens score and was the only close encounter and only shot opportunity I had at any ram. The hunt was very demanding, exhausting, and draining. I'm glad its over. He is the only ram ever to be listed from Oregon in P&Y Traditional Record Book and I feel honored. My partner, Scott and I spotted 5-18 rams a day but usually couldn't stalk them because of location, wind or wasn't the ram I wanted. I wanted a heavy, wide, full curl ram that would score in the 160". I spotted this ram in early Aug. with buddy Tor when we were packing water in, (smart decision!). I nicknamed him Pretty Boy cause he was awesome to watch.

Friday before the season I spotted him and pretty much dedicated the season to getting him, although I hunted a number of other big rams. I saw higher scoring rams but none that looked as impressive as Pretty Boy. The other hunter was a 14 year old girl named Byerly who got a 5 year old ram on day 4 of her hunt that scored 148". Her family and I camped together and were wonderful people to shared camp with. She hunted very hard and am I very proud of her for making a one shot kill, the last 10 minutes of light on her last day to hunt.

I spotted my ram early in the hunt with 4 other rams and thus called them the Elite 5. On day 7 I spotted them going up the same rim and watched as they disappeared. I waited until midafternoon to go after them and proceeded the 1000' descent. I peeked over the ledge and 80 yard below I spotted a young ram bedded under a juniper with 2 other shooter rams. As I crawled up to edge of a 40' ledge directly above them I heard rocks roll to my right 30 yards away. Two rams, a young ram and Pretty Boy, bedded in the cliffs. When they finally bailed off that 15' cliff to join the other rams below, I stood up with my toes hanging over that 40' cliff with my longbow between my legs at full draw I shot him at 40 yards while he was quarting away directly on top of him. The shot was perfect and died in 40 minutes, 60 yards away. Its 4:30 in the afternoon.

The pack was my most extreme pack ever, climbed 1000' straight up with 90 to 100 pound packs on Scott and my back. It was 5 miles back to 4 wheeler and we hadn't eaten or drank anything to speak of all day. We were exhausted so we spent the night right there and at daylight climbed, clawed, crawled our way out of that hole.

The meat is excellent and the cape is in great shaped for a life sized mount. I left out a lot important details but you get the idea of what we went through. Hope you enjoy the essay - Chris