It is Thursday August 21st 2003 and I found myself on the latter part of my summer vacation from The Ohio State University.  Since mid-June, when I returned, I had been doing some hard hunting on my home island, the Big Island of Hawaii.  However, unfortunately until now I haven’t been able to meet success with any trophy animals.  My Lanai archery trip, earlier in the vacation, proved humbling as I missed what was probably the largest Mouflon Ram of my bowhunting trips twice on the same day.  It was quite windy and the shots I missed were at 40+ yards and 15 yards.  Needless to say, I was very disappointed in myself as I met with the harsh “miss” reality called bowhunting.

Another month later and still trophy-less, things were not looking to good for me.  Over that time, I missed a good feral ram on the west side of the Big Island at 35 yards and the military areas I often hunt were closed due to extensive training.  I was stuck with hunting one archery area and one rifle area.  I did what I could with what archery areas were open, but was unsuccessful at finding any really good rams.  One hunt, I was very discouraged to the fact that I observed poachers with rifles in the archery area, which was not just insulting on their part, but also very unsafe for bowhunters that day.

So now I’m sitting at home Thursday August 21st 2003, contemplating what I’m going to do for the weekend archery hunt.  With game being hard to find and poaching in session, I was stumped.  I got so bored out of my mind that I said, “I need to get to the field.”  With rifle hunting year-round on Mauna Kea, I decided that I would take out the rifle and go on what Hawaii people call a “holoholo” trip, to see what I could find.  This trip, I really didn’t expect to see anything because all ungulates on the mountain were being eradicated since the 1980’s and numbers have dropped from thousands to a reportedly mere 200-300 sheep for the whole mountain. 

I packed up the truck and left home at 10:30am to the mountain.  I wasn’t surprised when I saw a good herd of sheep in the archery areas right off the highway with some good rams bedded.  Of course!  This has to happen when you can’t hunt them, so I took a few pictures of them and decided that I would come back on the weekend with my bow for them.  I arrived at the area I wanted to hunt at 3:00pm.  This area has proven successful with my younger brother taking his largest ram yet on June 18th 2003.  So I hiked up the mountain and took observation over an area above me where I just might get lucky and where my brother shot his ram.  I sat there for around 10 minutes when to my astounding amazement some Mouflon/Feral hybrid sheep appeared above me about half a mile up.  With time being short before nightfall, I quickly made my way up as close as I could; even running uphill at times.  The altitude around that area is around 8,000-9,000 feet so I found myself often stopping for a break with my heart racing and lungs short of breath, wishing I did a little more physical training for this.  What seemed like hours was only minutes and I got within range pretty quick.  I watched the sheep at 300yards and spotted a nice jet-black ram, which looked to be around 24-27 inches, with about 5 ewes and smaller rams as company.  I couldn’t believe it!  I haven’t seen a ram like that rifle hunting in a long time.  Most Hawaii hunters that hunt Mauna Kea GMA would probably agree that rams like this don’t come by often, so this was quite the treat for me.  I’m pretty confident at taking a 300 yard shot, but decided that I want to get a little closer and see what else is there before making any decisions.  I crawled myself for 150 more yards over unforgiving lava rocks and spiney pukiawe bushes and waited and watched.

I was set up pretty good with a prone position and my rifle resting over my pack with a beautiful view of about 10 sheep with one nice black ram in the sights at around 130 yards.  I pretty much decided that I would take this black ram, when suddenly a ewe looked in and up the draw in front of me and gave out a confiding call or deep “baaaaaa.”  I suddenly wondered what was she calling to?  Could there be more sheep closer to me that I didn’t see?  I decided to crawl around a bush to investigate.  Now in plain view of many sheep, I peered up the draw and saw a very large body of a ram up against some dirt banks feeding.  He was facing a little away from me, but I could definitely see that his horns were curling up to the jaw like a large Mouflon Ram should.  I was shocked and couldn’t believe that this guy lurked over this mountain after all the eradication efforts and years of rifle hunting and I would be the lucky one to find this guy.

So there I was a mere 80-90 yards from a relatively large ram on the slopes of Mauna Kea with the anticipation building.  In previous years, before I got in competitive rifle shooting, I was a very horrible rifle shot and today I sure as hell didn’t want to remember that.  However, I couldn’t help but replay for a second that I could miss this guy because of my anxiety or common “buckfever” maybe “ramfever” in this case.  I blocked out what I could and tried to concentrate on making a quartering away heart shot.  I steadied, aimed, and slowly took up the pressure on the trigger until my father’s custom Winchester pre-64 in .338/8mmRemMag let off its deep growl and sent the bullet to its mark.  Immediately after the shot, I saw the ram jump, letting me know I got a hit.  However, he ran down closer to me, as I chambered another round and followed him in the scope.  I saw that the hit was not bleeding like it should have by now so I quickly stood up and took another shot at 50 yards, aiming for the high shoulder stopping power shot.  The rifle hit its mark and the ram hit the dirt. 

While I got my stuff together to go check out the success, I couldn’t believe what just happened.  Mauna Kea still has very good rams!  When I got to him, I could see he was bigger than I thought he was and my first shot wasn’t a heart shot like I hoped.  I didn’t get the angle right so instead it was a gut shot, so it’s a good thing I was able to get another shot in or I could very well be tracking a long time or even worse lose it.  Well the excitement died down when the striking reality hit me that I had no camera in my pack!  Then the ram’s body looked larger at the moment and my back began to hurt before I even touched him.  I really had no choice and decided to risk it and carry out this ram whole down some steep mountain, close to a mile, and dark coming in an hour.  I really wanted to kick myself for not bringing the camera and leaving it in the truck, but my back and legs made for the punishment.  It was definitely the hardest pack out I ever did; at times slipping up and nearing hyperextensions on my knees.  I humorously knew I would feel all this pain tomorrow.  I got back to the road about 20 minutes after sunset with light dwindling and “dead beat” tired. 

 

 **Took this picture when I got back to the truck.  My flash was dead so I improvised with some headlights and dive light.  I don’t think I could have looked more tired!**

Anyway, remember how I saw those sheep in the archery areas the same day that I would go back for on the weekend?  Well, I did go back there on the weekend and came across the same ones.  As my luck would have it, or not, I missed the largest ram in the herd at 25 yards because I hit the rock in front of me with the arrow before it got to the ram.  Guess my luck ran out just then! 

As a closing note, sometimes it’s when you don’t expect something, something happens.  I was trying so hard all this time for a trophy this break and the one time I didn’t try it came together, but let us never forget, trophy or no trophy; it is the experience of the hunt that counts and stays with us.  Hunt hard and hunt safe!

 

Details of this hunt

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