by Matt McMillan
What started out as an annual whitetail hunt in Terrell County, south of Sheffield, Texas, ended up being a record book mouflon harvest.
We were hunting on a low-fenced 40,000 acre ranch. While glassing the many canyons and mountains of this ranch, my brother Lane and I spotted a mouflon ram on the top of a mountain approximately 1500 yards away, staring right at us. We watched him through our binoculars and spotting scope for about 30 minutes and decided to make a stalk on him. The deer hunting was unusually slow, pre rut conditions, poor weather, so we decided ‘what the heck’. We knew it was a monster ram and we thought it would be fun to try and stalk him, knowing how wild and elusive they are.
Little by little, we cut the distance down. At 600 yards, we decided to sit down and watch him closer. We watched him finally bed down behind a rock, but were fearful of other eyes that might be on us. We thought he was alone, but we knew that a herd of ewes watching us could ruin it. We finally kept moving, stopping behind what seemed like every tree to check on him. We finally made it to with 210 yards. I layed on the ground, gun and bipod ready, and waited. I told Lane to move 30 yards to the left and do the same, in hopes of having a different angle on him for when he did stand up. After about 30 minutes, he did stand up. Lane had a shot, took it, and dropped him with his .270.
We finally made it up to the top of the mountain and took pictures and started to cape him out. We got back to camp, knowing we had a good one, and took some measurements. We measured 3 different times, all within ¼ inch of each other. From our calculations, we believe we have a Gold record book SCI mouflon ram on our hands!
All in all, the stalk and pursuit of this wild, free range animal was something that I will always remember.
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