Part 1
Long version...photo heavy!
With bonus hogs!
Wrangled an invite through my youngest daughter's husband. He is the ranch manager for several properties owned by his Boss. One of which is in Leakey Texas. My Son-In-Law (SIL) has told me about the place and that is had Aoudad. The owner had shot a big ram in December of 2018. I offered to do the taxidermy work to get a hunt, but I don't think my SIL said anything to the land owner.
My oldest daughter about to turned 40 two weeks ago and a few days before my youngest texted me the land owner was planning to sell the ranch in Leakey. WELL! I wasn't going to let this go lightly. My plan was at the birthday party to work on going hunting!
Worked out without effort! The land owner has been trying to get my SIL to go hunting there for a long time, but he isn't much of a hunter so he doesn't realize what he has.
So get the trip arranged, my SIL offers to go up and 2 fills feeders so we're set!
We arrive at the ranch and it is a beautiful place! The house was a recently built log home that my SIL had done a great job keeping it up. He comes up every other week to maintain the house and out buildings.
We decided to hunt from the house the afternoon because there was a beautiful ridge that just looked sheepie.
There was also a feeder and small pond in front of the house. My youngest daughter wanted us to shoot first so her 9yo son would at least see something on the ground! So my wife was to be on the rifle that afternoon.
We had a doe come to the feeder about 6:30pm even though it was about 100 degrees that first afternoon. Around 7:45pm 5 hogs walked up to the pond so my wife stepped up to the rifle, my go to AR chambered for 7.62x39 running 123gr Barnes TAC-X bullets at 2550fps. It made easy work of the biggest boar hog standing there. So she had drew first blood for the weekend!
I wanted to check the hill face at the house at first light so we didn't get up until the sun was just rising. The ranch is 635 arces of out of control cedar like most of the area NW of San Antonio Tx. With the ranch size I didn't want to run all over it and take a chance of pushing the Aoudad off the property
So we waited until it got good light before we started easing around the property. The ranch is perfect sheep country except for all the cedar. It reduced the amount of land we could see. So glassing was more important than covering ground. But then all the cedar along the roads limited where could stop to glass. The combination of terrain and cover really made it a challenging hunt.
There was just so many places where they could hide, but I found a group of sheep roughly 1000 yards away. Having never seen the place before I had no clue if we would find a vantage point to shoot from, but my wife and I took off. We were able to close the distance somewhat by walking down the road but we were over 700 yards away and couldn't see the sheep. So off into the brush we went.
If the grade was not real steep the cedar were tight and heavy. As it turned out the hill had a slow slope so it was solid cedar. I had to look ahead for paths through the branches trying to see a place where we could see the opposite hill side. The third clearing happened to prefect. We were able to back up under the edge of a cedar and just see over the cedars in front of us and see the sheep.
In my hast to get after the band of sheep I forgot my shooting sticks. The 9" bipod was worthless and I ranged the sheep at 381 yards. So a free hand shot was out of the question.
On top of that she was going to shoot my rifle, 6.5-06 that I custom built on a Savage Axis action. Her 6.5 Creedmoor was limited to short range shots. The load I worked up was accurate but the dope on the ammo was not. We just didn't have the time to true up the ballistic card for the hunt. At the range the dial up at 400 yards was almost a foot off. So when were at the range the week before she shot my rifle from the bench and prone.
I found a cedar limb that had a nice fork in it. While trying to get it in the right position for the shot the limb broke off. So it was now a shooting post. I manged to wedge it in the legs of the folded bipod so she had a steady rest.
Now I had to get her to on the rams in the scope. We had worked on it at the range because she had only hunted out of a box blind so game was right in front of her all the time. There was two decent rams in the group but they were hard to see in the brush. I knew pointing out land marks but she couldn't find them. BUT, to be honest the sun was in our face and the Sahara dust was externally heavy the first day. I had got behind her to help try to line her up, but she could only see the ewes standing one the rim rock.
I told her to take one of the ewes, because one of the rams was now in heavy brush and the other was less than a body length from being gone. At that point things went into slow motion. At the shot I reach up and worked the bolt while she was looking through the scope picking up her next target, she took her second shot but I heard no hit. My reaction was not planned nor have we ever talked about doing it. Her reaction to stay on the gun, ready to take her next shot was crazy.
She ask me if she got one, I told her I heard the first shot hit. It also ran down hill in a blind run. I knew she hit the first one but the second shot just disappeared. No dust...no whop...nothing...just sheep running. I call my SIL to come down the ridge to a spot above us to pick up my wife so they could go around while I guided him in to where I felt the sheep was down.
He came down the side hill about 350 yards horizontally from the spot. He said it was too steep to come down from above where the sheep was down. We talked a bit on the phone and we decided it would be best for him to come get me. I was planning to go down in the bottom and go up the other side to where they were, but he said that would a brutal hike. So they came back to pick me up.
I found her first sheep right away...it had run down hill about 50 yards.
The second shot was a miss. It had been standing on a big white rock and there was no sign it was hit. I had to field dress her sheep so I could drag it 350 yards horizontally to the ridge top to a location where my wife could come down for photos.
Long version...photo heavy!
With bonus hogs!
Wrangled an invite through my youngest daughter's husband. He is the ranch manager for several properties owned by his Boss. One of which is in Leakey Texas. My Son-In-Law (SIL) has told me about the place and that is had Aoudad. The owner had shot a big ram in December of 2018. I offered to do the taxidermy work to get a hunt, but I don't think my SIL said anything to the land owner.
My oldest daughter about to turned 40 two weeks ago and a few days before my youngest texted me the land owner was planning to sell the ranch in Leakey. WELL! I wasn't going to let this go lightly. My plan was at the birthday party to work on going hunting!
Worked out without effort! The land owner has been trying to get my SIL to go hunting there for a long time, but he isn't much of a hunter so he doesn't realize what he has.
So get the trip arranged, my SIL offers to go up and 2 fills feeders so we're set!
We arrive at the ranch and it is a beautiful place! The house was a recently built log home that my SIL had done a great job keeping it up. He comes up every other week to maintain the house and out buildings.
We decided to hunt from the house the afternoon because there was a beautiful ridge that just looked sheepie.
There was also a feeder and small pond in front of the house. My youngest daughter wanted us to shoot first so her 9yo son would at least see something on the ground! So my wife was to be on the rifle that afternoon.
We had a doe come to the feeder about 6:30pm even though it was about 100 degrees that first afternoon. Around 7:45pm 5 hogs walked up to the pond so my wife stepped up to the rifle, my go to AR chambered for 7.62x39 running 123gr Barnes TAC-X bullets at 2550fps. It made easy work of the biggest boar hog standing there. So she had drew first blood for the weekend!
I wanted to check the hill face at the house at first light so we didn't get up until the sun was just rising. The ranch is 635 arces of out of control cedar like most of the area NW of San Antonio Tx. With the ranch size I didn't want to run all over it and take a chance of pushing the Aoudad off the property
So we waited until it got good light before we started easing around the property. The ranch is perfect sheep country except for all the cedar. It reduced the amount of land we could see. So glassing was more important than covering ground. But then all the cedar along the roads limited where could stop to glass. The combination of terrain and cover really made it a challenging hunt.
There was just so many places where they could hide, but I found a group of sheep roughly 1000 yards away. Having never seen the place before I had no clue if we would find a vantage point to shoot from, but my wife and I took off. We were able to close the distance somewhat by walking down the road but we were over 700 yards away and couldn't see the sheep. So off into the brush we went.
If the grade was not real steep the cedar were tight and heavy. As it turned out the hill had a slow slope so it was solid cedar. I had to look ahead for paths through the branches trying to see a place where we could see the opposite hill side. The third clearing happened to prefect. We were able to back up under the edge of a cedar and just see over the cedars in front of us and see the sheep.
In my hast to get after the band of sheep I forgot my shooting sticks. The 9" bipod was worthless and I ranged the sheep at 381 yards. So a free hand shot was out of the question.
On top of that she was going to shoot my rifle, 6.5-06 that I custom built on a Savage Axis action. Her 6.5 Creedmoor was limited to short range shots. The load I worked up was accurate but the dope on the ammo was not. We just didn't have the time to true up the ballistic card for the hunt. At the range the dial up at 400 yards was almost a foot off. So when were at the range the week before she shot my rifle from the bench and prone.
I found a cedar limb that had a nice fork in it. While trying to get it in the right position for the shot the limb broke off. So it was now a shooting post. I manged to wedge it in the legs of the folded bipod so she had a steady rest.
Now I had to get her to on the rams in the scope. We had worked on it at the range because she had only hunted out of a box blind so game was right in front of her all the time. There was two decent rams in the group but they were hard to see in the brush. I knew pointing out land marks but she couldn't find them. BUT, to be honest the sun was in our face and the Sahara dust was externally heavy the first day. I had got behind her to help try to line her up, but she could only see the ewes standing one the rim rock.
I told her to take one of the ewes, because one of the rams was now in heavy brush and the other was less than a body length from being gone. At that point things went into slow motion. At the shot I reach up and worked the bolt while she was looking through the scope picking up her next target, she took her second shot but I heard no hit. My reaction was not planned nor have we ever talked about doing it. Her reaction to stay on the gun, ready to take her next shot was crazy.
She ask me if she got one, I told her I heard the first shot hit. It also ran down hill in a blind run. I knew she hit the first one but the second shot just disappeared. No dust...no whop...nothing...just sheep running. I call my SIL to come down the ridge to a spot above us to pick up my wife so they could go around while I guided him in to where I felt the sheep was down.
He came down the side hill about 350 yards horizontally from the spot. He said it was too steep to come down from above where the sheep was down. We talked a bit on the phone and we decided it would be best for him to come get me. I was planning to go down in the bottom and go up the other side to where they were, but he said that would a brutal hike. So they came back to pick me up.
I found her first sheep right away...it had run down hill about 50 yards.
The second shot was a miss. It had been standing on a big white rock and there was no sign it was hit. I had to field dress her sheep so I could drag it 350 yards horizontally to the ridge top to a location where my wife could come down for photos.
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