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This year I was lucky enough to draw a bighorn sheep tag here in Colorado. The hunt takes place in the Apishapa canyon out in the shortgrass prairie in the southeast part of the state from December 1st-31st. From the research I’ve done Apishapa, pronounced, A-pee-shapa, is Arapahoe for “stinking water”. The area has a lot of cool history. It’s pretty remote out there so hopefully the weather will cooperate and I’ll have some good stories at the end. I’m pretty excited about this hunt. I’ll be hunting with my old trustworthy Matlock longbow which has helped me take a lot of game over the years and has some good medicine. Here’s some scouting pics I thought you guys might like to see.
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Thanks guys,
So far I haven’t tagged a ram but have had a blast trying. The first week after lots of hours behind the binocs and burning a lot of boot leather I was only able to find four ewes in the area I can hunt. This week a couple of good rams showed up as well as a few more ewes. I’ve been able to get into 40-60 yards a couple times. Getting closer, into their comfort zone, has been tougher though. It’s super dry this year and the crunchy grass is like walking on potato chips. Also getting past the eyes and ears of the ewes is tough.
One morning I got to watch three rams smash heads three of four times, pretty cool.
I’ve attached a couple pics. The pic of the sheep bedded was taken at about 40 yards. It would have been perfect if not for two ewes bedded out in the open. The two rams were tucked up under the rocks and I think I could have got right on top of them had the ewes not been there. Or, when they got up to feed if they would have fed my way it could have worked out. They ended up feeding out into the meadow away from me. I think if I get into those situations more often they might make a mistake. Luckily, I have the only tag for the area so I came home to let them mellow out a bit and will head back over next week. Maybe I’ll get lucky and find them again,
Rick
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Sorry it took so long to get back to update.
This ended up being one of the funnest hunts of my life and I didn’t fill my tag. I ended up spending 18 days over there during the month of December chasing the small group of sheep that lived in this canyon. I spent hours within 60 yards of them, hoping one of the rams would make a mistake, but never could get closer. Between one of the ewes spotting me and the super dry crunchy grass it was tough. I learned a lot and had a blast trying. Just to have the opportunity was priceless to me. Bighorn sheep are amazing animals and I can see how I could easily become a sheep hunting fanatic. Here’s one more pic I took at about 60 yards. They had already spotted me and the rams took their normal place in the middle and behind the ewes.
Rick
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