Reader-Submitted Story
One in Ten Part I
by Kyle E. Short of Spruce Grove, Alberta
One year in ten boyo. One year in ten you’ll get your chance at a legal ram.” Those were the words my father first spoke to me about sheep, as I jammed my pack full of gear and headed west into the Rocky Mountains of Alberta with two of my best friends, Scott and Jared. Our spirits brimming with the confidence and optimism of youth, we were set on defying those one in ten odds.
That first foray into the hills, while an adventure to remember, served as a reality check for us—a stark reminder that the mountains, though majestic and ruggedly beautiful, were also harsh and cold, bigger and harder that we could have imagined. Seven days later, descending that mountain, tired and footsore, our egos humbled, my father’s words echoed in my mind, ringing truer than I’d ever wanted to admit. “One in ten boyo.”
While that first trip was a wake-up call, it also lit in us a passion for the mountains and hunting the sheep that call them home. That passion drove us to return year after year, trekking through endless valleys, up the wind scarred ridges and onto the high peaks in search of the rams that haunted our dreams in the off seasons.
As the years passed the lessons learnt began to pay off for our little group. The mountains rewarding our perseverance, as first Jared and then Scott both took beautiful rams. While elated at the success of my friends, for me the years and hunts continued to tick by, one in ten becoming eleven, then twelve, leaving me with incredible experiences and memories but no ram to complete the journey. To say this didn’t weigh on me would do the truth a disservice. With each passing season, the hills felt steeper and the nights colder. At times, my mental resolve to continue in the pursuit of a ram wavered. To quote the most famous of sheep hunters, Jack O’Connor, “Sheep are for young men.” And while at forty-one I was by no means over the hill, the grey in my beard and the ache in my joints were constant reminders that I was no longer a young man.
Despite the ever-increasing aches and mental doubts, each year as the heat of summer nights gave way to the cool of the impending fall, I would find myself in my living room, huddled over a pile of gear, methodically packing and planning the next adventure back into the hills in pursuit of my dream of a ram.
And so it was this year that I found myself two days before the opener once again headed west. A sheep tag in my pocket and the hope that every new opener holds, that hidden in a basin, waiting at the end of the climb, was a ram, and that this would be the year.
Pulling into the trailhead I was met with a familiar sight to many Alberta sheep hunters. Four trucks, three trailers and a bunch of hardcore looking sheep hunters—not exactly an ideal start. With the explosion of sheep hunting’s popularity in recent years, this is just a part of what one must accept if you want to hunt sheep in Alberta, one of the last bastions of resident over-the-counter opportunity. The mountains are filling up and the hunters in them are more passionate, educated, and geared up than ever before. Luckily for me, one of those hardcore hunters was my good friend and hunting partner Scott, while the others were a good crew of guys we’d met over the years of tramping around the same country.
After hurried greetings and confirming that nobody was heading into where we had planned to go, we threw on our boots and packs and were headed up an old familiar trail. Meandering our way up across the old coal roads and through the alpine meadows, we soon found ourselves back in our home basin. The shadows of the towering walls and cliff faces looming over us in the fading evening light. As the grass of the high meadows gave way to the shale and rock of the mountain, we pushed up into a small stand of stunted mountain spruce to make camp for the night. With camp set and after a short, grunted conversation between tents, I laid back, listening to the sound of the mountain winds whispering through the trees. I was completely at peace yet filled with a tense excitement and anticipation of what the morning and days ahead might bring. Lying there on the edge of sleep, my mind drifting to visions of opening day rams, I became aware of another familiar mountain sound, one that every sheep and mountain hunter knows all to well, the soft patter of rain on my tent.
In the dull grey of early morning I awoke, not to the soft patter of rain on nylon, but to a thrashing storm, the thunder reverberating off the rock walls around us. Our plan to push further into sheep country that day quickly turned to one of keeping dry and warm, dodging smoke from our fire and watching water bead off our tents into strategically placed cups and bladders. While not exactly ideal conditions for spotting sheep, those days are the ones that I’ve come to love about sheep hunting. Completely immersed in the backcountry, disconnected from our modern world, the miserable days spent engineering shelters, telling stories and sharing memories of years past are the moments that I cherish as much as any trophy taken. Luckily for us, the weather in the Alberta Rockies never stays the same for long, and we rose the morning of August 25 to crisp clear blue skies.
Setting out from camp, we pushed up and out of our home basin, our pace quickened by the appearance of two hunters newly arrived from the bottom. Our destination, while no secret to some of the more seasoned locals, was a small out-of-the-way basin that we had dubbed Hidden Basin due to the inability to see into it from anywhere in the valley below. For some reason or another that I don’t claim to know, that little basin had always seemed to be a refuge for rams in years past.
As we picked our way across the shale slides and sheep trails onto the final small razor back ridge, I was filled with the intense anticipation and excitement of what the basin on the other side might hold. As is common for many sheep hunters, the band of rams I had been dreaming of seeing sunning themselves on the slopes beyond were nowhere to be found. In fact, not a single sheep could be seen anywhere. Now, thirteen years earlier, in the impatience of my youth, I would have almost certainly left this seemingly lifeless basin in my dust. Pausing only long enough for a brief glass of the terrain before charging down through the bottom and over the next ridge or clambering up and across the steepest saddle to see what was beyond. Thirteen years of mistakes and learning the hard way had left a few lessons however, with the most important of these being patience. Along with that patience has come a peace and contentment with just being in the mountains. The hard charging days of running ridges, always pushing further and deeper, have given way to the enjoyment of a warm coffee while playing with the pack rats and chipmunks between intermittent glassing sessions. And so, we stayed on our ridge. Soaking in the sun, as I read from my old worn Gideon New Testament, I felt like an old monarch ram, perched high overlooking my valley.
continued next issue.
For the previous Reader Story, click here.
