The Best Laid Plans….
Looking down the barrel of turning the big six zero, I had made some hunting plans for my summer. They were suddenly smashed in the spring when my best friend and sheep hunting partner Kevin Stewart died unexpectedly at the age of 59. We had been planning to celebrate our 60th birthdays together with a sheep hunt to commemorate the milestone. You may have met Kevin back in 2015 when he and I both harvested rams on “Mountains of Stone” on Best of the West. (If you missed it, you can watch it on YouTube – https://youtu.be/7k539J44Gro?si=SbdZGmVdQPjuzKYO). Since then, we had a couple of unsuccessful fly-in sheep hunts, a reminder that stone sheep hunting is not easy nor guaranteed.

A CHANGE OF PLANS
I missed my good friend, but I still wanted to get out on a sheep hunt. I talked to a few friends and was invited to join a group hunt, which morphed into Logan Paul and I going on an early-season hunt with the plan of checking out some new country.

MY HUNTING PARTNER
For those of you who have lost a great friend and hunting partner, you know how difficult it is to find someone new to hunt with. For a matter of fact, no one can ever fill the shoes of an old friend. As a guide for over 25 years, I have talked to a lot of hunters who quit hunting when that happened to them, and I feel very blessed to have met Logan last fall.

At the time, I was short a guide and after a pile of calls, fi¬nally met Logan and he came out guiding for us. He guided two moose hunters and got them each a nice bull. Logan is a top-notch hunter, and I would not have harvested a ram this year without him. I may have pulled the trigger, but it was certainly a huge team effort, and the success would not have happened without his skills, knowledge, and super-hard work.

HOW I PREPARED
I have been doing CrossFit workouts for the last 10 years to stay in shape, so all I did for this trip was add a couple of leg workouts to my routine and change my diet a bit.

My knees are a weak spot, so I did knee exercises daily. A leg broken in five places plus two torn meniscuses means regular maintenance to maintain mobility and strength, and to keep arthritis at bay. My routine is to put on a 50 lb pack and do 5 minutes reverse treadmill with the power off, working the eccentric movement of my knee, then 3 minutes of stair climb, and 5 minutes treadmill walking and 3 minutes stair climbs. Back to the treadmill for 5 minutes and one more set of stair climbs for a total workout time of 24 minutes.

As far as my diet, I started drinking moringa in the mornings as it has anti-inflammatory properties. I ate a little extra, trying to store a few extra calories on my bones as I knew I would burn them off on the hunt. I also did a lot of mountain biking prior to the trip focusing on climbing big hills. I climbed Pidherny Mountain 30 times, which is a 4 km mountain bike climb.

THE HUNT
Our expedition started on July 30th, two days before the season opened. We drove up the Stewart Cassiar Highway to the Cassiar Mountain Range and used my 8-wheel Argo to get into the back country. On opening day, we hiked up into the alpine with a spike camp and started glassing, hiking, and glassing some more. After three days we had only found one ewe and two small rams, so we packed up and drove 500 km to the Rocky Mountain Range on the Alaska Highway.

Upon our arrival, we were disappointed to find pickup trucks parked at every trailhead and drainage that led into sheep country. Logan recommended we check out his secret spot and were able to use the Argo to get back into some amazing country. I should note here that using an Argo in the mountains is legal only on certain trails. At the end of the road, we loaded up our packs with our spike camp and six days of food and packed into a drainage across a valley. That was a huge day of packing, but we finished the day on a ridge looking over sheep country where I spotted three rams up the valley bedded on a slide.

The next day we put together a plan. We figured that since we could only see one side of the slide from where we were glassing, there must be more than three rams up the valley. We prepared our day packs and headed out.

Rest of the Story continued in Part 2