Old Man Mountain

In July of 2023 I was able to head north to complete the sheep hunt I had booked four years earlier with Stan Stevens of Mackenzie Mountain Outfitters (MMO) in the Northwest Territories. The backpack hunt had been delayed for several years due to the COVID lockdown and subsequent scheduling conflicts. Stan had been operating for 47 years in his 9,000 square miles of untouched wilderness and I was looking forward to it.

I landed at base camp on McClure Lake with four other hunters and met the guides, who looked like members of Seal Team Six. My guide, Jacob Thompson, was also a helicopter pilot. Together we went through my gear before being flown by ‘copter to a huge flattop mountain. We set up our camp then hiked and glassed for three days in 90-degree weather and very smokey conditions due to the huge wildfires in Canada. We covered 8-10 miles per day but only saw a few young rams and a couple of mountain caribou.

On the fourth day Stan asked if we wanted to move to a new location, as he had seen a large ram on a distant mountain range several days previously. We agreed and Stan picked us up at about 9:30 p.m. Once dropped in the new location, we set up camp for the night and the next day started up the mountain with packs weighing more than 50 pounds. That was two days of very difficult hiking through boulders, with the last assent 2,000 feet straight up a steep chute. When we finally made it to the top Jacob asked me how old I was. When I told him I was 72, he said I was the oldest hunter to ever make it to the top of that mountain. I asked him what the name of the mountain was, and he said that it didn’t have a name but from now on they would call it “Old Man Mountain.”

Old Man Mountain looked very sheepy with excellent forage and bedding areas. We hiked and glassed around the mountain eliminating areas that did not hold rams. That evening at about 9:00 p.m. I was in my Croc slippers, just finishing some Mountain House when Jacob said, “Don’t move, we have two rams coming over the saddle.” I calmly put my boots on and set up my 300WSM on a Spartan bipod for a rock-solid rest. The rams moved from 750 yards to 450 yards, where they stopped, turned around and slowly started back up the mountain.

I tracked the largest ram in my scope and when he stopped and turned broadside at 510 yards, my 300WSM spoke and down he went. We packed up camp and started down the cliffs to the ram. We found my 10thram to be40”, full curl, and 13 years old. I was very happy with this beautiful ram. We hiked up to the saddle that the rams had come from, set up our tents, then returned to process the ram and pack him up to our camp. We got back to our camp at 2:00 a.m. The next morning, we contacted Stan for a pickup. Due to the thick smoke, he couldn’t fly until about 4:30p.m. When Stan landed his H505 we loaded up the ram and our gear, and guide Jacob took the controls and flew us back to base camp. Talk about full-service guiding!

When we got back to base camp, we found that all five hunters had taken mature rams in very hot and smokey conditions. This was a very difficult hunt for me at my age, in those conditions, with the heavy pack and steep climbing. I owe my success on this hunt to my conditioning program, Stan Stevens’ excellent operation, and guide Jacob Thompson’s motivation. I don’t believe I could have done it without Jacob’s help.