Ram Hunt on a budget?

[SWThomas]

Originally Posted by salukipv1

New Mexico has plenty of free range exotics...oryx, mouflon, ibex...

Really? Where at? I'd like to look into that.

[salukipv1]

Mouflon/Aoudad....I get the two confused

Goto new mexico game and fish website...

a bow tag for ibex is relatively easy to draw I believe, rifle tags are tougher.

some oryx exist on private land I believe so you can just buy a landowner tag/book a hunt.

the mouflon are OTC I believe free ranging...

[turkeyward]

Hey bud:
There is an unlimited sheep hunt in Montana. It is very tough. One of the reasons it is unlimited is because it take an act of God to get a ram in there. I went three times in the unlimited. Killed a ram once got skunked once and turned down a legal rams once. The year I got my ream there were 149 tags issued for the area I was in and two of us killed rams. the season never did close. I kept track for a while and there was a year where they killed like 18 rams the first day. So the year can make all the difference. However even with a good year your chances of success are extremely low. Also in a good year for the hunting the season will be three days. It's closed on a 48 hour notice when the quota is met. Most of the time the quotas were like four rams.
If I was to look for your best chance to hunt a wild sheep on the cheap... it would have to be an audad ram in NM or a free range one in Texas. There are some there and the prices are relatively reasonable. While it may not measure up to the challenge of the four native wild sheep of north America, they are still a true hunt and very rewarding.

[skiking]

I am just gonna wait to draw a tag here in MT. Looking at the statistics, I should draw a tag within 16 years.

[charlie brown]

If you want to hunt sheep, and live out of state, it is going to cost money no matter what. Start applying everywhere you can for the desert, bighorns, and californias, and save the money you put in apps every year for about 10 years and go on a dall or stone hunt. If you do happen to draw a sheep tag in the lower 48, hire a guide! You will be money ahead in the long run. A good desert sheep hunt shoud run 4-6k, which seems steep, but is not too bad considering how much you would put in just for applications for one year in all the states! I live in Nevada, and apply for desert, cali, and rocky every year, and have yet to draw. If I do ever draw, I probably won't hire a guide, but then again, I can see sheep every time I go to where the sheep are, so its not so big of a deal for me.

Later,

Marcial

[Painted Horse]

If you can draw the tag, I have not found the hunts to be too terrible difficult, If you will spend the time to learn the country.

I did a DIY hunt for a desert bighorn in 2007 and helped a buddy with a Rocky in 2008. The unit for my Desert Bighorn was 100mile x 100 mile square. Or about 1000 sq miles. In that 1000 sq miles were unlimited canyons, draws, shelfs etc. So if you count all the verticle, it was 4-5x the surface sq miles. In my unit they figure there are 300 sheep. So you are looking for a needle in a haystack.

I spent a bunch of days searching the country with out seeing a sheep. Once I figured out where to look and got into the right part of the country, I saw 70 sheep in 3 days. So it's just getting into the right place.

The following year, as I helped my buddy with his tag, We found the sheep the first day, Saw 80 sheep and harvested a nice ram late in the first day. Mostly because of the experience I had gained the year earlier.

Fortunately I live with in a 4 hour drive of where I hunted

[Wolf killer]

The cheapest Bighorn hunt I can think of is the Montana Unlimited tag. Your draw odds are 100% but you do face a low success rate. I have done this hunt, I recommend you at least look into this hunt.
You can back pack into sheep country pretty easy in most of this country. You should allow 5-days for pre-season scouting & 3-days to hunt.