Well, it was a strange weekend at Rocky Top, different than most. The ranch was very green and a good bit of water was spread across the entire ranch. We arrived Friday afternoon and there were some folks already hunting. Teresa and I took a little walk down the lower road that runs near the mountain pasture. We had walked slowly, just enjoying being on the ranch and talking when down the mountain comes a nice white Tx dahl. followed by an average corsican, real shaggy coated. Teresa liked the dahl enough to shoot it, but we were unarmed, having jsut arrived, and not having talked to Thompson yet.
Sat morning bright and early Thompson took us up the mountain, very steep, very rough, with Teresa and another lady riding in the cab of the truck and four of us MEN riding in the bed of the truck on the benches.
It was a bit cold up on top and the wind was blowing. Out of our group of 6, not a shot was fired Sat morning. Teresa and I didn't see a thing. The sheep were spread all over the ranch due to the abundant grass and water. We spied one large New Zeleand Billie across the canyon near our blind, but it wasn't anything Teresa was interested in.
Sat afternoon, after a good lunchThompson got tied up with another guy, trying to get his wife her first ram. It was kinda funny watching them go up and down those steep hill sides. THe sheep were always a step ahead of the hunters.
As it was getting near 5pm Teresa and I decided to walk the mountain to the first blind and set up for the evening hunt. We had only gone a couple hundred yards up past Thompsons house when Teresa spied a large Merino Ram and after looking it over with Binoculars, she decided she wanted it. (Think she jsut didn't want to climb the steep hill ahead of us). She broke her almost new single shot .243 in real quick and suprisingly the 200# sheep dropped straight to the ground.
TO make a long story short her sheep was silver medal and besides the red deer a judge from Mississippi killed, Teresa's sheep was the heaviest animal taken that weekend.
Later Sat just as it was getting late, I managed to take a nice silver medal Billie with a handgun. He had 30" or better of horn per side but was still a silver medal sheep. He would not die easily either. My first shot on him was a bit low I admit and caught the bottom of the heart. He went a ways up the mountain across from the A-frame cabin and stopped in some thick stuff with lots of cactus all around. There were two more lesesr looking billies ahead of him and they stopped to look back at him wondering why he wasn't heading up the mountain. I weaved around as best I could to get ahead of him without getting stuck with too many cactus thorns and had to squat down to find a hole in the brush.
I fired again hitting him in the left shoulder and down he went.
I was shooting my Taurus .44 mag with some factory Win 240 gr ammo. We are trying to figure out how to post some pics. As soon as we do, I will post them for ya'll.
All in all, another great time at Rocky Top. Wish we could have made it to the back canyon again, but with the new lady taking up much of Thompsons time on Sat, it just didn't happen.
There were alot of nice rams killed this weekend. But the best was the very large Red Deer killed on one of Thompsons other ranches. Awsome animal. The same guy killed a really nice black buck on Friday.
markc
