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| Richard L'Esperance and his Yukon Stone sheep, with each horn measuring 43 4/8 inches. |
On a recent whitetail hunt in Illinois with Zack's Whitetail Expeditions, I shared a camp with a couple of hunters from New Jersey. While shooting the breeze one evening with one of them, Richard L'Esperance, he told me about a great Stone sheep hunt he'd recently been on in the Yukon with Yukon Big Game Outfitters.
Now I'm no sheep hunter, but I nearly choked on my drink when he showed me a picture of this sheep. It was very impressive. But I didn't realize just how big it really was until I read about it in The Hunting Report and learned that it will likely make the Boone and Crockett Club record book. Each horn measures 43 4/8 inches, and it green scores 170 5/8 B&C.
But what makes this even more interesting is that another hunter on the same hunt shot an equally impressive Stone sheep at basically the same time. Apparently both hunters and their two guides were taking a lunch break together when they looked up and saw a group of trophy-class rams calmly feeding about 100 yards away. Since no one had a coin handy, they flipped some sort of pill for sore muscles that one of them found in the bottom of their pack to decide who would get the first shot. The winner immediately got one of the rams, but before long both hunters had connected on big rams. The second one green scores 171 3/8 B&C. Wow.
This outfitter's huge territory was recently acquired from a First Nations Band and had not been heavily hunted; so apparently the sheep population is very healthy and obviously the trophy potential is very high as well. Not surprisingly, their Stone sheep hunts are now basically booked up for the next three years, but I think sheep like this are worth the wait. If you're a sheep hunter, you may want to check it out.
Good hunting.
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