Tag Draw Success – Early Preparation

Taking a Look About

As I scanned my Iphone for the hunt lottery results, I almost dropped it when I saw my wife had drawn a desert bighorn sheep tag! I ran out into the living room where my wife was also scanning the results (I love her!) in excitement. We had dropped our lottery goals this year, recognizing we were getting a bit older and needed to start being more serious about just getting a tag, whether it was the best tag in the world or not. Then something caught my eye…my wife had drawn here first choice area! OMG…this is a truly trophy area for one of the rarest tags available in the world!

What we had done is put in our first two premium, and very difficult draw, choices and followed them with a well-researched third choice that gave us a much higher chance of drawing and still a real chance for a Boone and Crockett ram. With 15 points each (in Nevada that number is squared and you get that many lottery picks, plus one, or 226 “balls” each), we figured one of us would draw that third choice. The result was hardly what we expected, as I received no tag, and my wife received one of the most difficult draws in Nevada. Amazing.

The first thing we did, after calling and texting friends and family, starting to line up our hunting party, was to extend our pre-draw research into post-draw research. We revisited the checkout summaries and plotted the last five years’ worth of kill locations in very rough form on a map of the area. We noted the names of hunters we know from the checkout summaries. In Nevada, the sheep checkout summaries are fairly detailed, providing you the hunter name, geographic name of kill location, kill date, days hunted, and the B&C score of the ram. These go back at least 17 years for open units.

Our first trip was filled with memories all of its own making

Since desert bighorn sheep are limited by the availability of water, although not as much as you might think, we then also identified the few water sources in her area and plotted them on a map. We used Google Earth™ to get a feel for the topography and vegetation in the area, and did multiple simulations of “flights” around the mountains to get a feel for the ruggedness and accessibility of the terrain. We know we will be hunting with five other tag-holders in the area, and there are a few state-wide floating tags that allow the hunter to hunt any area they choose. We could have to hunt against up to seven hunters, as our area has a reputation for attracting these dream-hunt hunters due to its trophy potential and access.

The best initial resources you have, I’ve briefly mentioned, but I will lay them out a little clearer here:

• Checkout summaries and public data available from the Fish and Game or Wildlife department should be picked clean for every relevant piece of data. You really should have done this as you were deciding which tags to put in for, but now is the time to make sure you’ve squeezed everything out of the public info. In this category, I include phone calls to these agencies, reaching out to local Facebook groups, calling previous hunters and otherwise searching for real on the ground history for the area;
• Maps are invaluable, starting with a 1:100,000 scale for the area and then going to the 1:24,000 scale for the actual locations on which you will focus your attention;
• Google Earth™ gives you the ability to judge the terrain and vegetation before you go. It also allows you to “recalibrate” your knowledge after you get out on the ground and revise what you think you saw; and
• Finally, I use ESRI’s ArcGIS free account to plot the locations of kills, water, and any other information into a digital map that can be toggled between topographic maps and satellite imagery. From this, I can also measure hiking routes and trace out areas that are roadless or otherwise hold promise.

Once I abuse the above four resources, then it is time to make an initial visit to the area. For some of us, this will have to happen only a few days before the hunt, as it may be half a world away. For my wife and I, this area was only 400 miles away, so we just threw our sleeping bags, optics, maps, and some food into the truck one Saturday morning and took off! Our spontaneous trip took us to cool spots on the map like the Pony Express Deli in lovely Eureka, Nevada, where we had one of the best home-cooked bacon cheeseburgers in our memories. It actually was almost too hot from the grill to eat! We passed many fascinating places ranging from petroglyphs to ghost towns to working major gold mines to some 11,000 foot snowcapped peaks. The whole outing was one big adventure.

We arrived in the little ghost town of Tonopah to top off the tank again, and realized that the early June afternoon was already in the high 80s. Deciding that Tonopah was officially off of the list of places we’d like to one day live (no offense to our friends there!), we continued our trek south through Goldfields, Nevada. This is a place that has been made a bit more famous by the Ghost Adventures team, from the Travel Channel. They have performed multiple lock-ins at the Goldfield hotel, and had also performed one at the Clown Hotel, with its next-door dusty cemetery, in Tonopah for that matter. The Goldfield Hotel is truly a strange looking place and we eyeballed it going by.

Finally we arrived in Beatty, Nevada as the mercury was now solidly in the mid 90s. This was our first foray into the 90s for the year and it felt a bit oppressive as we trundled into “Eddie World”, Nevada’s self-proclaimed largest candy store. Unimpressed by the whole experience, we used the facilities and eagerly headed toward the hills. On a sidenote, we wrote down the names of the local eateries and hotels that looked like they might show promise, for later retrieval and contact.

The first thing we noticed, well besides the seemingly endless supply of wild burros, was the country around Beatty was more “lush” (lush is not a word most would commonly ascribe to any southern-Nevada desert country) than some of the mountain ranges around Las Vegas. There were far more shrubs and grasses and barely any cactus species that we could notice. Almost immediately out of town, we stumbled on a nice 150-ish bighorn sheep not 200 yards off the main road. He wasn’t alarmed and posed for photos for a good while.

We saw what seemed to be limitless families of mama/baby chukar partridge and loads of jackrabbits and cottontails, again in contrast to other sheep country we’d hunted previously. We saw squirrels, rattlesnakes, bull snakes, and lizards. But we really took notice of the landscape and the roads. The landscape was typical of southern Nevada with more than its share of sharp ridges and abrupt topography laden with cliffs and rockslides. However, we also noticed that it had more than its fair share of rounded ridges and moderate slopes that would allow us to attack most of the summits in the range. This was most welcomed news.

What was of critical importance to us was to understand the roads and the mountains and how they interrelated. We needed to know which vantage points would give us the best view through our spotting scopes and binoculars, which roads were through roads and which were dead ends. In this case, we were shocked to find out the roads were both very rocky and sketchy at times, but they reliably found their way through to the other side, through washes and gullys, and sometimes using the “streambed” as the road. Most unusual, but certainly not something you want to wait until hunting season to find out.

We mapped out the times it took to traverse stretches of roads and tried to imagine the hikes we could take to look into various canyons that would be otherwise invisible to our probing optics. We considered routes and paths and contingencies for mistakes made in the field. What we often look for is a secluded stretch of mountain that can be accessed as easily as possible. This sounds obvious, but so many hunters don’t take the time to take a short hike that will result in a vantage that other hunters won’t have.

This first trip out is important, if you can squeeze it into your schedule. For a once-in-a-lifetime tag like this, it is more important than say an annual buck deer or cow elk tag, especially when you find yourself hunting completely unfamiliar country. Of course, if you have a guide, this step is redundant and provides little utility, but for us DIY types, this first trip sets the stage for us. Some questions that can be answered on this first trip potentially:

• Which vehicles will work here?
• What packs are right, and can you pack animals off the mountain easily?
• Which rifle will you use, based on weight, range, energy and so on?
• Which optics will be best?
• What clothing is going to be most appropriate? Do you need camouflage and if so, which of your current patterns will work?
• Are your boots up to the challenge?
• Are you physically in good enough shape to complete this hunt? Will you need help?

Our first trip was filled with memories all of its own making, whether it was sleeping out under the stars with a coyote pretty much in camp with us, or the many burros that we saw. It was the old mines and beautiful sharp desert mountains, the many baby chukar hustling to keep up with mom, and the unforeseen bugs that enjoyed the evening with us. As a bonus, we made a short trip over to Death Valley, just enough to get a good, although smog-filled, view of the incredible valley and its towering guardian peaks.

Now we know better which truck and tires to bring along for this trek, and what access is like. We can now set about to plan a half-dozen hunts within our mountains, being ready to quickly adapt to the pressure of other hunters. We can also attempt to outguess the other hunters, by being up and in position well before dawn. This is public lands hunting and there are no trophies for first, second, or even last place. It is all about preparation and half of the battle is outwitting the other hunters. The other half is outwitting your prey. And yet another half is being in shape and prepared to hunt. There you have it, the three critical halves to public lands hunting…or maybe it is thirds?!