After four months of guiding full time I was finally loading the truck with my own hunting gear.  It was a few days after Christmas and I was heading out early the next morning to try and fill my archery deer tag when the phone rang.  The voice on the end of the line belonged to Pete Cimellaro, my sheep guiding buddy and owner of Yellowhorn Outfitters.

“Do you want to go sheep hunting tomorrow?” Pete asked. It turns out that one of our fellow Yellowhorn guides Jim McCasland and his hunter Mike Bertoldi were still trying to find a ram.  Now the desert bighorn sheep season in Arizona runs the entire month of December, so if you are still hunting between Christmas and New Years it is getting close to “panic time.” So I put my bow back in the garage and agreed to meet Pete at 6:00 a.m. the next morning at camp. 

At 3:00 a.m. the alarm went off and I cranked up the diesel and headed into the vast desert habitat west of Phoenix.  I navigated my way through the early morning darkness and rolled into camp right on time.  Pete already had the jeep running by the time I transferred my pack from the truck to the CJ’s back seat.  Jim and Mike had bivouacked out that night on the south end so Pete and I were going to drive the jeep around to the north end of the mountain range and work our way to them.  By 7:30 we rolled up the wilderness boundary signs and started our trek. 

The only thing friendly about desert sheep country is that it generally low elevation so you don’t have to fight for every breath.  Everything else is against you!  Any soil that exists is washed quickly downhill leaving pea sized gravel on top of hard rock; even the simplest climbs can become frustrating at best.  Going down hill is even worse, the second you become complacent the marbles will cause your feet to fly out from underneath you and bang…on your *&^% you land. You will never again laugh at Charlie Brown as Lucy snatches the football out from under him…UUUGH!  Where there is soil there will be cactus-plants whose only purpose is to cause you pain.  So if it any consolation amidst the falling, puncturing, scratching and bleeding, at least the desert air is well oxygenated. 

So it was as we worked in and out of the draws and canyons of the Eagletail Wilderness looking for a ram that had never been seen.  Then we caught a break.  Late in the afternoon Pete and I were within a few miles of meeting Jim and Mike, having each covered about six miles from the opposite direction.  Pete spotted two rams bedded just below their position and it wasn’t long before they found them as well.   As we watched the action from a mile away Mike was finally able to finish his 21 day quest for a desert bighorn sheep. 

With only an hour of daylight left the thought hit me that my day was only half over!  Pete and I made it to the ram just in time to get a few pictures before complete darkness overtook us.  We were many miles from the jeep or camp, short on water, out of food, and I for one was plain tired.  But we broke out the flashlights and went to work cutting up the meat, splitting pack loads, and mentally preparing for the long hike out. We slung on the heavier packs as Pete took to lead into the darkness.

A little after midnight we stumbled up to the jeep safe and sound.  The hump out was mainly about mentally forcing our bodies to put one foot in front of the other about 10,000 times-outside of a near death experience traversing a cliff face on a sheep trail.  I will never forget Jim scolding Pete about the fact that he had sworn of “dying during a sheep hunt” many years before.  Sometime about 2:00 am I crawled into my cot while every muscle in my body applauded.  It had been 23 hours since the morning alarm started what would be my toughest day of hunting to date.

Chris Denham
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