Outdoor Reflections: Rick Martin - Alaska Dall Sheep
Written By: Joseph Andreasen
This is the story of a place so wild that it has remained wild through the epidemic spread of comfort and ease. This is the story of a man dipping his toes and taste buds into the wildness of Eastern Alaska. Even with help and guidance from the best, time spent in a place like the Alaska Range searching for elusive Dall sheep can test a person’s resolve.
Few things get your heart pounding like the sound of a bush plane propeller echoing off spruce trees in Alaska. It almost always means the stakes are high. Rick Martin was early in his hunting career when he boarded his bush plane from Fairbanks headed toward a base camp in the eastern portion of the Alaska Range. He knew that if the weather turned bad during this hunt, that it could be days, even weeks of extra time spent in the wilderness. These bush planes are the only way in and the only way out. Rick had done his research and hired a guide to help him bring down his target: a mature, ringed out, Dall ram.
Photo by Grace Simoneau
Base camp was located in a valley near a ribbon of glacial runoff. Rick is quick to bring up that, though the gear and food is a lot to pack, there is no need to worry about packing water or even a filter because the rivers run clean in that part of the world. That being said, he still had an 8 mile hike with 60 pounds ahead of him. Spike camp was their destination. They needed to get closer to Dall sheep habitat and be prepared to stay there for three nights. Dall sheep live up in the peaks beyond the tree line in a world of vertical rock faces. Once the spike camp was set up, they wasted no time getting out to find them. They had one day to scout (season opened on day two), one day to get a ram, and another day just in case.
Alaska hunting has a few important restrictions that manipulate the way that hunters go about their business. Restriction number one is a natural restriction: the days aren’t the typical shape that we are accustomed to further south. They can be incredibly long and hard to track. Sleeping can be difficult because it doesn’t get dark for very long. Restriction number two is that you can’t hunt on the same day you fly. Restriction number three is that if you are going after a Dall sheep, you can only kill one that has a full curl of horns, or 8 annular rings on the horns. Rick points out that the annular rings on Dall sheep are comparatively easy to identify since the difference in the sheeps’ nutrition changes so much from season to season. If you find one after your first day with full curl and 8 annular rings where it won’t run off a cliff or get spooked by you and your crew, then that ram might be a shooter.
On Rick’s first day he started what he called a game of cat and mouse with the sheep. The idea is to get close enough to the sheep to see them and count rings but stay far enough away that they aren’t alerted to your presence. They saw some sheep, but couldn’t do much about them other than note their existence. It was the first day. After a night without much sleep, they set out again to refind those sheep. This time they got close enough to see that there were six rams in a group. Two of them were shooters. One was a really nice looking shooter. The trick now was to get close enough for a shot without spooking them. The rams were about 400 yards away. It was windy and hard to tell where the cliffs were. Rick couldn’t take a shot yet, but if he or his group moved, then they would probably bump the rams. Then began the long wait. Laying down behind some rocks, they took turns watching the rams. On one rotation, Rick started snoozing. What a perfect time for the sheep to move! He says he remembers dozing off and being woken up by his guide kicking his boot and whispering, “They’re up!”
The rams started coming down and toward the group of hunters at an angle that looked like a beeline to get over a ridge. The rams eventually got about 200 yards from the ridge where they would disappear and 350 yards from the group. Rick set his backpack down, lined his scope up with his rifle resting on his pack and watched. The time had come. With little sleep and tired legs he pulled the trigger and hit the big shooter ram. The shot did not hit where he wanted. His heart sank as the ram tumbled down some steeper sections. He had hit it in the hind legs. It’ll probably take a bit for the ram to die. An anxious Rick Martin hurried over to the one he shot and, upon arriving, found a very dead ram. After some inspection they found that he had miraculously hit the ram’s femoral artery causing it to bleed out incredibly fast. It was likely that the ram died long before it stopped rolling down the rocks. Despite their worries, it was a merciful kill.
It was from that point on that the wildness of Alaska was really driven home. A heavy pack out with a guide who had been shaped by this wilderness proved to Rick that he was only a visitor. He notes how amazed he was at how much weight his guide could manage after all the work they had already done. As though this place was trying to remind them of its wildness, they stumbled upon a fresh wolf track on a river rock. The track had been made only by the water clinging to a wet paw that passed by less than a minute earlier. The paw’s owner was nowhere in sight. Once back to their base camp, they cooked up some ribs “cave-man style” straight over the fire. Rick was amazed at how such a tough landscape could produce such tender and delicious meat. The next day, wild ptarmigan was hunted and served up as a kind of “cherry-on-top”.
Eventually the distant sound of a bush plane propeller approached. Rather than excitement and anxiety, Rick felt only gratitude as he loaded up a set of horns, a full pack of meat, and plenty of memories.