Sheep Camp
August 30, 2024
A sheltered grassy bench in the Brooks Range, perfect place to drop the load and set up camp, with Dave Leonard’s Mountain Monarchs of Alaska outfit.
By Craig Boddington – Excerpt from Wild Sheep Magazine
My first sheep camp was on the shores of Lake Denotiah, heart of the Cassiars. Back then, the lake was full of rainbows, the nearby mountains teemed with rams. Unimaginable today, in those days northern B.C.’s dark Stone’s sheep were the most available, accessible, and least costly to hunt of North America’s wild sheep. Camp was a cluster of white wall tents just back from the shore, roomy tents with stoves, possible in those dwindling days of big pack strings. Trout sizzled in a skillet while a rack of sheep ribs browned near the coals.
That first sheep camp, fifty years ago in balmy August weather, set a high mark to follow. Some sheep camps would be “better,” meaning only more comfortable. Most would be more Spartan and less permanent, often mobile by backpack or just one packhorse. Doesn’t matter…so long as you know what you’re getting yourself into and prepare accordingly. Whatever form it takes, the sheep camp is critical to the experience and the memories.
Set in a sheltered spot, magnificent country rising all around, every morning in sheep camp brings fresh promise. In the Brooks Range, possibly my last North American sheep camp (although I hope not!), we set our cluster of backpack tents in the last grassy saddle, broken ground behind us, big mountains rising to our front.
We saw rams right away, couldn’t close for a shot, couldn’t relocate them, spent a couple of days watching rain drops bead up, join, and chase each other down the slick nylon. The seventh morning dawned cloudy but dry, with three rams on the big ridge above camp. I’ve read too many stories about hunters who rolled out of their sleeping bags to shoot their rams. Never happened to me, but we started with a good ram in sight. Slipped out of camp the back way, climbed all the way to the top, circled around, and started back down. We got the shot in the early afternoon, up on the skyline, our bright orange tents visible far below.
Every morning in sheep camp brings fresh hope, but also new challenges. From there, we sally forth, steadfast in our belief that this is the day we will find the ram we seek. That promise isn’t always fulfilled. Mountain weather is fickle, just part of the deal. There will be wet days, cold and snowy days, and days when fog and clouds blanket country you must see into. Twenty years ago in southern Yukon, it was a bad fire season, weather mild and favorable, but smoke drifted in so thick glassing was impossible the first half of the hunt.
Bottom line with mountain game: If you can’t see, you have little chance. Even if the weather cooperates, the ram you seek may not be on your mountain. Maybe he was, but maybe he and his buddies moved. Wife Donna just returned from her first attempt for Stone’s sheep, good country, well-scouted…rams hiding out down in the timber. Twelve hard days, no legal rams seen. These are bitter pills, but the risk must be accepted, also part of the deal. There are no guarantees. Despite best preparation and extreme effort, sometimes the mountain beats you. You come away with the satisfaction of having given it your best. Some of your fondest memories will be sleeping peacefully in crisp mountain air, and stepping out of your tent for that first look in the morning, confident once again that this first new day will be the day.
I haven’t seen many “cushy” sheep camps. Southeast of Spatsizi Plateau, Ron Fleming and Brenda use cabins alongside lakes, warm and comfortable, as good as it gets. In the ‘teens I did several hunts out of their Duti Lake camp, snug cabins along the south shore, looking north onto a massive ridge. We’d have Brenda’s pancakes with fresh blueberries, fill up cups with fresh coffee, and step outside to glass across the lake from a row of lawn chairs.
Glassing from the lawn at Love Bros. & Lee’s Duti Lake camp in northern B.C. Don’t know what we might see, but for sure we’ll see something. Wayne Henderson on the right, next to Ron Fleming.
We’d sometimes glass sheep from the front lawn, but always goats, frequently grizzlies, and occasional caribou or moose. I always had a tag or two, but I never fired a shot from that camp. Either I was looking for the one species we couldn’t find, or it wasn’t my hunt. Didn’t matter.
Freeze-dried Mountain House meals are pretty good,
but in a lot of outfits pre-cooked, frozen home-cooked
meals add some variety . . . at least for a couple of days.
It always went down much the same. In the early morning we’d glass goats from our lawn chairs, either on the big ridge across the lake or on tops to the east, beyond the head of the lake. Nannies and kids in clusters, with a lone billy or two off by themselves. Sometimes they looked approachable. Often not, because much of the stuff near the skyline was steep and treacherous. So, we’d wait them out, and if a billy offered a possible stalk we’d launch. First, across the lake by boat. From there, straight up, or up deep cuts on one end of the big ridge.
There would be days when the tops were cloaked with clouds, and even when things looked good it didn’t always work. Took five or six tough hours to get up there; sometimes the goats wandered off and disappeared, other times there was no safe approach. Mind you, if I’d needed another goat we could have made it happen. I didn’t, so I saw it work often enough. Both Brittany and Donna took their Rocky Mountain goats from that camp.
Seems odd, but my “fanciest” North American sheep camps were for desert bighorns. My Arizona tag was in the Virgin River Canyon, so we “camped” in a motel in St. George, on the Utah side, and did some of our glassing from Interstate 15. Almost seemed like cheating, but the hunt unit is what it is, and the sheep are where they choose to be.
Mexico offered a different and completely wonderful experience. In Sonora, camp was a small hacienda on a remote ranch, looking up into rocky canyons. We never glassed any sheep from the yard, but we needed to clear everything we could see before we proceeded. The weemsi hunt on Carmen Island was different yet. Again, not my hunt, Donna’s and son-in-law Brad Jannenga’s, but probably the most enjoyable of all my sheep hunting experiences. Camp was at the head of a half-moon bay, once the headquarters of a salt mining operation. Behind camp, a vast salt flat bisected the island, white and shimmering, like fresh snow. Above the flats, both east and west, the island’s rocky ridges rose steeply. From the porch, we could glass rams up one canyon or another, perhaps plan a stalk. Field lunch was burritos in fresh-made tortillas. Dinner was most likely fresh fish from the bay…or the tasty little langostino lobster Baja is famous for. The island’s ridges are rocky and crumbly, treacherous footing with sharp cacti everywhere, but one of few sheep hunts I’ve done where I felt the issue was not in doubt, never a matter of “if,” simply a matter of when.
Sure doesn’t look like a sheep camp! Camp on Carmen Island once served as headquarters for a salt mine.
Elsewhere in the world, sheep camps vary but are always memorable…usually in a good way. In Mongolia, round felt tents are universal. We call them yurt, but that’s a Russian word, from the long Soviet occupation. Much preferred locally is gir. To this day, more than half the Mongolian people spend at least part of the year living in girs, tending their flocks and herds as they have for a thousand years. Sheep camp will be a neat cluster of girs, reminiscent of a Rocky Mountain tent camp…until you notice the round tents.
Not a camp, but a herdsman’s summer home in Mongolia’s Altai. More than 50 percent of Mongolians still spend at least part of the year out on the land, tending their flocks and living in the traditional round felt tent, locally called “gir.”
Although serious transport (camels or vehicles) is required, the gir is surprisingly mobile, quickly erected around a wooden frame, brightly painted to match the door. Inside, amenities usually include real beds and a wash basin, with generator power common today. The gir is snug and well-insulated, a good thing because in both Altai and Gobi, weather switches fast. In 2018, it had been a decade since I hunted Mongolia, and things had changed. The girs had not, but in the several camps we hunted from, camp food was consistently excellent and, different from a decade earlier, much English was spoken, with language barriers broken. Consistently open to hunting since the 1970s, with some of Asia’s most experienced mountain guides, Mongolia remains a prime destination for hunters wishing to expand horizons. Ibex hunting is inexpensive, her sheep not. Her mountains are not especially high nor steep, the short season summer into early fall, so generally pleasant, likewise are her camps and the Mongolian people.
Evening mist rolls over camp atop the Caucasus range in Azerbaijan. Light backpack tents are almost universal in North America today, and increasingly common elsewhere in the world.
Off to the west, in the rugged Caucasus, light backpack tents are most common, both in Azerbaijan and on the Russian side. Azerbaijan is like Mongolia: Continuously open for decades, with wonderfully experienced guides, many now multi-generational. Horses are commonly used (at least to get into tur country). Camps, though simple, are well-supplied, the people are great, and the country is magnificent. Azerbaijan would be another prime choice for a first Asian hunt, inexpensive and productive, but with one caveat: The Caucasus is one of the steepest, most abrupt ranges I have seen so it’s a tough hunt.
Outside of North America, the best of the best was Nepal. Purely a foot hunt in the tall Himalayas, but I didn’t have to carry much. We had fully two dozen Sherpas carrying the camp in huge baskets, including live chickens…decreasing in number as days passed. I went in spring, mild weather, with tropical flowers blooming along the trails. We started just below timberline, about 12,000 feet, tahr first. With that accomplished, we moved on up to hunt blue sheep, setting the camp in the last cut that offered a bit of firewood. It was a tough hunt and very high, but there was nothing better than topping the last ridge and seeing that welcoming cluster of tents down below.
TOP/LEFT: In Nepal, our Sherpas struggle through a tough spot. Using huge pack baskets, the loads these guys carried were amazing, always smiling. BOTTOM/RIGHT: Blue sheep camp in Nepal was set in the last valley that offered firewood. After a long day up to 16,000 feet, the cluster of tents was a most welcome sight.
Conditions in Central Asia vary so much camps are hard to characterize. In Turkey, with good road networks, a country hotel often serves as camp. In Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, and Tajikistan, a remote farmhouse or village may serve as a base. Some of this hunting is best late, when the rut is on but it’s really winter; a small tent on the mountain may not be practical. I did two hunts from the famous Hot Springs Camp in the Pamirs of eastern Tajikistan, built around thermal springs piped through the rooms. Not fancy, but the high, open wind-swept Pamirs are brutally cold in November and December, when big numbers of sheep are in from China. Hot Springs is high on my list of most memorable sheep camps.
This past February I did an ibex hunt in central Tajikistan. Not being much for extreme cold (if I can avoid it), I was terrified of the weather. You don’t know what you don’t know; far west of Pamir, it was already spring, with cherry trees blooming in the valleys, temps rarely below freezing. Camp was the upper story of a tall, rambling farmhouse, upstairs fireplace and, rarely seen in Central Asia, running water. I had been advised the coldest weather should have broken, and the house (camp) was exactly as described. I was reluctant to believe it, so I had cold-weather gear that I never used. Not the worst thing in the world on any sheep hunt to hope for the best, prepare for the worst…and expect to roll with the punches.
I have never been ill-prepared on a mountain hunt, but the weather will be what it is, likewise the camp, best be flexible. On a backpack hunt, camp is where darkness catches you, and there’s no room for extras. The most miserable I’ve been on a sheep hunt was another backpack hunt in the Brooks. Late August, how bad can it get? Well, that far north, anything goes. Glassed a band of rams from the bottom, marched up the hill to find them. The farther up we got, the lower the ceiling dropped, then came rain, sleet, hail, and snow. Lasted for days, never saw the tops…or the rams lost somewhere up in the clouds. Cold, wet, and hopeless. It happens.
You do the best research you can, hoping you know what to expect and pack accordingly. Horseback hunts offer more flexibility, but sooner or later you must leave the horses…and come back to them. And, by whatever means, you will go where the sheep are (or are supposed to be).
Read your O’Connor; his northern sheep hunting seems just a matter of riding up through gentle country, dismounting and tying up, then strolling over the top to shoot your ram. My first ram went pretty much like that…almost none since! We spiked out from the lake with horses; camp was a tarp secured to a downed tree. We woke up to a few inches of snow one morning, but the late August weather was mild. In a few days we rode back to Denotiah with a nice ram and a mountain caribou on a pack horse.
Since then, most of my northern sheep hunting has been by backpack in Alaska, plus a tough—and excellent—14-day backpack hunt in the MacKenzies with Arctic Red River, when Kelly Hougen had it. Note, please, that much of our lore of sheep hunting still comes from Jack O’Connor…especially regarding Yukon. Jack did all of his Dall’s sheep hunting there, never in Alaska or NWT, and always with horse outfits.
I did my first Yukon hunt in the Bonnet Plume range in ’99, with the late Richard Rodgers. Base camp was an awesome old cabin in a sheltered valley, a memorable camp, with the history of Yukon hunting written on the walls. I expected to ride horses from there up into sheep country.
Uh, not so fast. The sheep portion was backpack from the cabin and, unlike some of Yukon’s ranges, the Bonnet Plumes are steep and rough. Although not exactly prepared, partner Mike Satran and I were in shape for it. We both took good rams, mine my best Dall’s sheep. Later, we used horses for antlered game. I took a good caribou; Satran, looking for moose, shot a nice grizzly that charged the horses.
Base camp at Bonnet Plume in Yukon, 1999. Boddington expected an O’Connor-style horseback hunt, but the sheep hunting was pure backpack. Never mind, it resulted in his best Dall’s ram, and a fin sheep nd grizzly for his buddy Mike Satran.
Those sheep were a grab-bag; we saw bands of rams that had everything from very dark to almost white. By then, B.C.’s quota was tight. Every sheep with a dark hair was now a “Stone” and going up in value. Both of us took nice rams, Dwight’s dark salt-and-pepper; mine a near-classic “Fannin,” which is what I really wanted. I loved the country, much of it negotiable for horses, and the tidy, comfortable base camp in the middle of nowhere was a piece of heaven. No matter what we called the sheep, I’d have been back, but the area sold. The new owner doubled the prices, probably again since then. Too bad; it was a sheep camp I’d like to see again…but that applies to almost all my sheep camps.
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