Utah offers some excellent bighorn sheep hunting to hunters who either draw a tag in the annual permit lottery or buy a conservation permit at an auction. I finally drew my bighorn tag in 2008 after 15 years of trying. One of my outfitter friends knows the area I hunted intimately and he told me about an extraordinary ram he had seen in a remote part of the area. Because the rams often don't show up in the hunting area until the rut, I elected to scout just once before the season opened in November, and then I made three trips to hunt. I finally filled my tag in an extremely remote and rugged canyon while accompanied by my son-in-law Brinton Frisby. Brinton's a veteran backpacker, long-distance biker and triathlete, but even he was surprised at how physically difficult my hunt turned out to be. We

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My Utah ram fell in almost vertical terrain. His horns were already heavily broomed and broken, but we almost needed mountain climbing gear to reach him safely. No mule could have got anywhere near the area where we found this magnificent Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep.

dropped several thousand vertical feet, climbed just as many, descended and climbed through almost sheer canyons, traversed loose scree slopes, pussyfooted along six-inch-wide game trails on the edge of vertical dropoffs, and glassed till our eyes hurt. But the ordeal was worth it because we found a heavy-horned ram and were able to pack his head, horns and meat back to the trailhead. Our last climb took five hours with perhaps half a dozen short breaks. I had hoped to take an even bigger ram that my friend Tim Pilling had seen while hunting black bear last spring, but we could never find him. We did see a slightly bigger sheep in a bordering game area, but

My son-in-law Brinton Frisby and I backpacked for miles through unbelievable rough terrain to find my ram, the largest I saw in four trips in the area. Tim PIlling, Jerry Nyman and CJ Park also helped me during hunting trips.

this was the largest ram I saw in one scouting trip and three hunting trips in these rugged canyons.

Tim, Jerry Nyman and my cousin CJ Park all get partial credit for helping me to fill my tag as all spent time and effort helping me during the hunt. Outfitter Dennis Byrne of Alaska also gets credit for showing me the finer points of ram hunting and inspiring me to keep going when the going gets rough. I'll always remember this Utah hunt, the last stage of which ranks right up there among the "ordeal" hunts I've experienced during a lifetime of hard hunts. It was also special because I knew we were seeking a special big game animal that has been reintroduced to an area where it existed for millenia before succumbing to diseases introduced by domestic sheep more than 100 years ago. Evidence of ancient sheep are easy to find among the numerous pictograph panels left by ancient Fremont and Anasazi Indians before white settlers took over this range. This was the fourth ram I've been fortunate enough to tag. Thanks also goes to the young basketball players that let me play with them every week in my attempt to stay in good enough shape to handle the rigors of hiking in sheep country. -- Rich LaRocco. Click on the photographs to see larger images.