Majestic rams of the Wind River Range By Larry Myhre
Reprinted from the Sioux City Journal
It had come down to a simple trigger pull from success.
A bighorn ram stood on a mountain side 536 yards away.
Sixteen years of applying had finally yielded a $2,266 sheep tag for Tim Delance of Early, Iowa.
He teamed up with good friends and longtime outfitters Justin and Sandra Wright of Mule Shoe Outfitters at Pinedale, Wyo.
They set up base camp a full day’s ride from the trailhead in the Wind River Range. Sandra stayed to manage the camp and take care of the pack mules.
Justin and Tim, with Justin’s dad Earl and wrangler/guide T.J., remounted and set out for another day’s ride where they set up a spike camp.
From here, they glassed the mountainsides for two days.
On Sept. 1, opening day of sheep season, a group of rams had been sighted and a stalk begun.
The rams, however, disappeared into the rocks and were gone.
Yet, a quick look through the spotting scopes revealed this ram, a nice trophy, 500-plus yards up the mountainside.
And now, Tim tried to regain his breathing 13,000 feet up in the thin mountain air. He settled the crosshairs above the ram and his 300 Winchester Mag sent out a missile.
The mountains reverberated with the sound of the shot echoing between the valleys.
“Shot under him,” Justin advised.
The ram, not able to pinpoint the origin of the shot began working his way down the slope toward the hunters.
Tim fired again.
Another miss.
“I was thinking ‘holy crap, I cannot believe this. There goes my chance,’” Tim said last week in his trophy room in the basement of his home.
The ram still could not find the hunters and boiled down the mountainside.
The ram disappeared behind some rocks. Tim changed position, and waited for the sheep to appear.
“He came out, and I got one in him there,” Tim recalled. “He came at us again, and I kind of moved around a boulder, and he was alongside of us about 40 yards.
“We could see that he had been hit high,” Tim said, “so I fired again.”
And managed to miss again.
“What am I doing?” I thought. “I got my wits together and shot and killed him at 30 yards.”
What started out at over 500 yards had ended right in their laps.
“Most of my hunts seem to have a wild side,” Tim smiles. “We tend to joke about it.”
They had spent most of the day climbing for the sheep. It was now about 4 p.m.
They had to field dress the ram, skin him out for a full body mount and bone and wrap the meat.
It was clear they would be spending the night on the mountainside.
“We put on as many clothes as we had, tied space blankets together and tried to find a flat spot,” Tim said. “I saw the moon come up, the moon go down and the sun come up. Didn’t sleep much.”
The full-bodied sheep mount will join several elk, a moose, an antelope and mule deer heads and a full-bodied mountain goat mount and a couple of mountain lion rugs and a bear rug in Tim’s basement.
All the trophies have been take on hunts with Mule Shoe Outfitters. See their web site at: www.muleshoeoutfitters .com.
Tim and his wife Heather have four children with two still at home.
“I’ve been able to do a lot of hunting over the years,” Tim said. “I have to thank Heather for that. I’m fortunate to have an understanding wife.”
He may not go back to Pinedale next year. A sheep hunt is pretty expensive, he says.
“We’ll have to see,” he adds.
But right now his thoughts are leaning towards the Iowa bow season and early muzzleloader season for deer.
His once in a lifetime opportunity realized, he now turns his attention to what is perhaps the most difficult trophy of all.
A monster whitetail deer.