Finally it felt like the ankle would support a day on the slopes, so I took my ewe tag out for a walk this morning. I climbed some, glassed some, still-hunted my way up the side of a little canyon, glassed some more etc. without finding a sheep. Hiked to a saddle and glassed across, hiked to the end of the drainage and peek in hole and nooks and crannies. Nothing.
I was supposed to attend a highschool awards ceremony, so come 1:30pm I started on my way down, intent on finding the jacket that I lost four weeks ago. No luck on finding the jacket, but a sheep found me. Small horns, fairly spindly, I figured a ewe had shown up. I kept my direction imitating a hiker, expecting for more of the herd to show up. Nothing came, and from some cover I glassed the "ewe". In profile, it looked like a youngster, but the horns were kinda long, 4-5" approximately.
We played cat and mouse for a bit, while I tried desperately to ascertain sex of the sheep. I never really figured it out... I wanted to say young ewe, but I wasn't certain. Then it joined up with eight more sheep, which turned out to be four ewes and four lambs. They seemed pretty well paired up, so likely no dry ewe in the group.
I had left my backpack behind when I started for the first sheep, including the scope. It was blowing so hard that even the binoculars were hard to keep steady. Time had ran out. I could have gone back, collected the scope, and tried again, but in retrospect I'm convinced the first sheep was a young ram... I think
Anyway, not wanting to shoot a ewe away from her lamb, and not sure about the sex of the one sheep, I turned around and walked away.
Ten steps later I found this one, half burried and tucked up against a rock.
Guess he's been dead for quite some time. It's quite brittle, I think I need a safe spot for it. Probably don't need F&W to gimme a permit for this one.... or do I?
I walked away
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