Sheep Goat Hunting

The Barbado Sheep is a very unique breed of sheep that was developed in the Caribbean, although there is evidence that the breed originated in Africa. Barbado sheep hunting in Texas has been taking place for many years. These sheep are very fleet of foot and in may ways resemble a deer.

They are "hair" sheep meaning they grow hair and not wool. These strikingly handsome sheep are much sought after by Texas exotic hunters for their majestic horns, their beautiful coats and their mild tasting meat. While your hunting methods may vary from stand hunting over feed to spot and stalk, you will find that hunting Barbado sheep in Texas to be both challenging and fun at the same time.

The majestic Barbado sheep is not as well known as other Texas exotics like the Axis or Aoudad, but rest assured, Barbado sheep hunting in Texas, may make you think that they should be.

Sheep Hunting’s Crown Jewel

Marco Polo Rams

The rare hunting tales of the fabled Marco Polo sheep from the twentieth century, like Roosevelt’s East of the Sun and West of the Moon and Elgin Gates’s The Legend of Chapchingal, seemed to always begin with a passage by the English poet/author Rudyard Kipling. In order to follow protocol, as well as to feign some degree of learnedness, I suppose I could begin with a rousing quote from Kipling’s The Feet of Young Men. Maybe – “Have you seen the heart of Asia; do you know that lofty peak, Where the Karakoran meet the Hindu Kush?” or “I have sworn an oath, to keep it, on the horns of Ovis poli.” But I have never been much of one to stand on protocol; and learnedness, as any of my teachers could tell you, was not my forte either.

I do enjoy hunting though, especially sheep hunting. I derive immense satisfaction from its simple, rugged pleasures. The cool, crisp tingle of thin mountain air, satiating gulps from icy rivulets and the stunning vistas of sheep habitat assuage the ills of civilization. With knowledge of the area and a good set of optics, sheep are often quite easy to locate and, due to the rugged, broken terrain, relatively simple to stalk. Notice I said simple, not easy. Sheep hunting is a physically demanding sport; however, there is a deep contentment to be found in physically pushing your body to its limits. From the Sierra de La Giantas in Baja, California, to the Brooks Range in Alaska, I’ve always found the view from the crest well worth the price of a few blisters, rubbery leg muscles and burning lungs. The physical exertion required is a large portion of sheep hunting’s attraction. The fact that the largest rams inhabit the least accessible terrain means that only the most dedicated, fit hunters collect the largest trophies.

Even before the climbing starts, most of us must travel considerable distances to reach sheep habitat. The rarest and most desirable trophies have always come from the least accessible areas of the globe; and the highest, most remote and inaccessible sheep habitat in the world is deep in the heart of Asia, on the cusp of four acrimonious countries, where the high desolate Pamirs, the rugged Hindu Kush and the lofty Karakoran mountain ranges intertwine. This is the ancestral home of the Marco Polo sheep (Ovis ammon poli), every sheep hunter’s holy grail.

It was named after the world’s most famous explorer, the thirteenth-century Venetian merchant Marco Polo. His travelogue Descriptions of the World (commonly referred to as The Travels of Marco Polo) is an intriguing diary of his 24-year sojourn to the center of the vast empire of Kublai Khan. His journey crossed the hot, dry deserts of Persia, through the rugged Hindu Kush and over the frozen Pamirs and Himalayan mountains into what is now China. It was while traversing this lofty, “roof of the world,” mountainous section where Marco met some of his greatest challenges, both from the terrain and its quarrelsome inhabitants.

It is also where he reported finding horns of a sheep a “good six palms in length” although he never claimed to have actually seen the animal from whence they came. That honor goes to a Franciscan Friar, Father William, who both saw and reported the oversized animal in 1253, 20 years before Marco Polo began his journey. It wasn’t until 1838, however, nearly 600 years later, that the first specimen was actually hauled down from the world’s white rooftop for all to see. Two years later, in 1840, it was named after the more famous Marco Polo.

Even if we disregard the Ovis poli’s history, legends and its desolate, inhospitable alien setting, it is still an impressive trophy of mythical proportions. In spite of a live body weight of only around 300 pounds, the males grow spiraling horns of over 6 feet in length – the world’s longest. It is no wonder Marco Polo’s tales were considered pure fabrication. They were beyond the scope and imagination of contemporary scientists, naturalists and hunters. Even today a massive set of Ovis poli horns stretches credibility.

In the late 1880s a small handful of intrepid British sportsmen ventured into the region in order to hunt, but in 1892 Russia annexed Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan and the Iron Curtain slammed shut, sealing off the Pamirs, home to the majority of Marco Polo sheep. The 1925 Roosevelt expedition for the Chicago Natural History Museum and the 1927 American Natural History Museum trip by Morden and Clark were the only official trips by western hunters allowed by Russian authorities. The narrow Vakhan corridor of Afghanistan and the high, desolate northwest corner of Pakistan were reported to have once held remnant populations of the sheep, but the few intrepid hunters who risked trips to these volatile countries failed to find any sheep. It wasn’t until the Iron Curtain collapsed that hunting for Marco Polo sheep again became a reality.

In December 2001, with the events of September 11 still fresh on everyone’s mind, I departed Alaska for a trip to the high, frozen Pamirs south of Murgab, Tajikistan. Airport security in the U.S. was tight, yet my flights to Seattle, Amsterdam and Moscow were pleas- ant. I was joined in Amsterdam by fellow sheep hunters Pat Acciavatti and Dan Peyerk, and we spent our first night in the hotel Metropol in Moscow. The following morning we boarded a dilapidated Air Kyrgyzstan Yak-40 for our flight across the frozen heartland of Russia to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.

We awoke early the following morning for a scheduled flight to Osh only to discover it had been “canceled due to bad weather.” That was an excuse any Alaskan pilot could understand, but after four more days of conflicting excuses, we all began to feel a bit anxious. We were now four days into our allotted 10 hunting days. In order to pass the time we explored Bishkek with our Russian interpreters. One morning they failed to show up, and while entertaining ourselves, we discovered the fare for the local taxis was only 75¢, rather than the $2 we had been paying. We visited a local travel agent and learned that the $650 “first class” airfare our outfitter had charged us from Moscow to Bishkek on Air Kyrgyzstan could have been had for only $220, business class, on Aeroflot. Capitalism appears to be finally catching on in the former U.S.S.R.

The afternoon of the 10th, another decrepit Yak-40 jet finally landed in Bishkek, and we boarded it for the short hour hop across the desolate, mountainous center of Kyrgyzstan to the 3,000-year-old city of Osh. A way-stop on the ancient Silk Road, Osh was a teeming conglomerate of ethnicity. Tajiks, Kyrgyz, Uzbeks, Hazaras, Baluchi, Kazaks, Pamirs, Turkmen, Chinese, Koreans and Russians intermingled throughout the city, each speaking their own tongue and dressed according to their tribal custom. I began to grasp the sheer complexity of the logistics involved in traveling across this part of the globe. As were the Polos, over 700 years before, we were at the mercy of those assisting us.

In Osh we were met by a van and a large, prosperously dressed and well-fed individual, who was introduced to us as a former KGB agent. “Al Capone!” he proudly announced, patting himself on his chest. He had been hired to accompany us to the Tajikistan border. He seemed to know everyone of any importance, and they all deferred to him. He proved invaluable in expediting our journey.

Our first stop in Osh was the market in the center of town, where we purchased a large quantity of potatoes, eggs, bread, cigarettes and the ubiquitous vodka. We then changed into our long johns and winter garb and began our 16-hour journey toward Murgab. The van slowly labored upward on a steep, sinuous, snow-covered road toward the 14,420-foot pass separating Kyrgyzstan from Tajikistan. We were stopped by AK-74 (.223- caliber versions of the AK-47) wielding guards at five separate checkpoints that night. One for agriculture, another for drug enforcement, one for immigration, another for military and a final border exit. At each one our KGB assistant gathered our passports and papers and disappeared inside for up to a half-hour. He would return to the vehicle to rummage through our supplies and return back inside with an armload. Five minutes later we would be on our way to the next check station. Around midnight we left him at the final Kyrgyz/Tajik checkpoint and continued on to Murgab where we bedded down in the home of one of our guides for three hours of sleep.

The following morning we continued our drive south to camp in the upper Aksu River Valley adjacent to the Vachan corridor of Afghanistan. Camp, situated at 13,800 feet, was a rustic conglomerate of stone buildings in varying degrees of decay. A natural hot springs fed an indoor pool and provided heat to all buildings. We were the only hunters in camp, and each of us was assigned a guide, an assistant guide and a jeep driver. We resighted in our rifles for the altitude, enjoyed a hot meal and retired for the evening. We were all tired from the journey and each suffering headaches from the tremendous altitude change.

The following morning the camp doctor awoke us for the obligatory blood pressure check. I normally have low blood pressure; however, due to the rapid altitude change, it had risen overnight to 135/90, but I felt fine and my headache was gone. Pat and I elected to follow the doctor’s advice and drink lots of green tea with lemon while Dan chose to take the prescription altitude drug Diamox. After breakfast we each climbed in the front seat of our Russian jeep and, with our guides in the back, headed off in separate directions.

The headlights cut through cold rarefied air illuminating 100 yards of hard, untracked, foot-deep, windpacked snow. The jeep was laboring up the frozen valley floor at 30 mph when the front wheels dropped through the crust of snow into an unseen gully. There were no seat belts in the jeep, and upon our rather abrupt halt my forehead shattered the windshield. My headache returned. Fortunately that was the only damage, and an hour later, just as daylight began illuminating the surrounding 20,000-foot peaks, we managed to extricate the jeep from the snow-filled gully.

We continued driving up the mile wide valley floor, stopping to glass from time to time. It was -20 degrees Fahrenheit, clear with unlimited visibility and with distant bands of animals visible virtually all the time. Except for the altitude, it could have easily passed for an Alaskan winter caribou hunt. We saw hundreds of sheep. There were small bands of rams and large bands with dozens of ewes, lambs and the larger dominant rams. If you would like to know more about sheep hunting, check out our Desert Bighorn Sheep Hunting page. Within a half-hour of daybreak, we had spotted a ram across the valley with wide, sweeping horns that curled up, outward and had that distinctive Ovis poli downward twist on the backside. Sasha, my guide, judged him to be 58 inches.

I was faced with the typical hunter’s conundrum: shoot the first good representative specimen or take a chance and hold out for a bigger one. Although it was my first day of hunting, we had only four days left due to being stranded in Bishkek. The weather was clear and cold but that, I knew, could change rapidly. Plus, although I had awakened without a headache, it had returned, and my blood pressure could not rise much farther before I would be required to descend to a lower elevation. The effects of high altitude are serious and can escalate rapidly. Besides that, the ram looked beautiful and would look spectacular on the log wall of my cabin back in Alaska. I elected to try for him.

The driver carefully navigated across the valley and parked behind a small hill a half-mile below the ram. The ram was accompanied by three ewes and was slowly feeding along the slope above us. We were all dressed in overwhites, and by moving slowly across open snow patches, we worked our way between the diverging gullies where we could climb closer to the sheep. Within 30 minutes we had maneuvered to the edge of a bench directly below the ram. There was no way to get closer without being seen. I attempted to determine the distance with my little Bushnell rangefinder, but with nothing but snow and a light colored sheep to sight on, I could not get a reading.

I estimated the distance to the ram to be around 300 yards and hurriedly scratched the number in the snow in front of Sasha. He nodded an affirmative. I was shooting factory 270-grain Hornady Heavy Magnum ammunition in a Winchester Model 70 .375 H&H that was sighted in at 200 yards. The bullet drop at 300 yards was 8 inches, and with the B&L scope turned up to 6x I held the crosshairs high on the ram’s back and squeezed off a round. A geyser of snow erupted between the ram’s feet, and before I could chamber another round, he was bounding away at top speed. With the constant jockeying of position between the sheep there was no way I could get another decent shot. Sasha and I walked over to where the ram had been standing just to make sure I had not drawn blood.

From a position halfway up the slope, I turned around and aimed the little laser rangefinder at the spot from where I had fired. It read 224 yards, making the distance to the ram a good 400 yards plus. It had been a clean miss.

We left the jeep parked below and began sidehilling along the mountain, maintaining our hard-earned elevation. There were shallow descending gullies every few hundred yards, and a mile or so later as we approached one, we noticed the top of horns just over the edge. Five rams were feeding in the bottom, and as we moved closer, they spotted us and bolted up the opposite side and stood watching us from a distance of only 60 yards. It was a magnificent sight, but from what I could tell, none of them carried horns over 52 or 53 inches. I decided to let them grow larger.

After lunch we descended to the jeep, and while sipping tea, I placed my spotting scope on the hood of the jeep and began inspecting the various bands of sheep across the valley. In one band of a dozen ewes, a lone ram lifted his head. From a distance of over a mile, I could see a heavy set of horns. Sasha decided we should drive closer.

Driving directly across the open braided valley was considerably rougher than slowly maneuvering parallel to it. As we bounced closer, the sheep spotted our jeep and began running toward higher terrain. Our driver sped up, maintaining pace with the band, while we braced ourselves inside the hurtling vehicle. The sheep reached the base of a steep, rocky face and began climbing. Drifted snow near the mountain halted our vehicle, and Sasha and I got out.

The ram, no doubt feeling safe a couple hundred yards above us, stood watching. Sasha indicated he was 57 inches. He didn’t look nearly as long as the one I had missed earlier; although, he was noticeably heavier and appeared to be broomed off. I decided to take him. A quick glance through the rangefinder showed him to be 211 yards, mostly straight up. I centered the crosshairs on his chest, and as I fired he collapsed in his tracks. I had touched the holy grail.

It was dark by the time we returned to camp. An hour later Pat arrived with a tale of a long, hard climb, a difficult 524-yard shot and a ram very similar to mine. Our tape measure showed his horns to be 56 inches long with 151⁄4-inch bases. The ram I shot was heavier with 16- inch bases although broomed off to 54 inches. Two hours later Dan and his entourage arrived. They had stalked a band of six rams, three of which had horns over 64 inches according to the guide. The sheep were moving as Dan fired, and he had hit a smaller ram. The entire band managed to escape across the border into Afghanistan, so they had dejectedly returned to camp.

According to our guides, short, unauthorized border crossings normally present little difficulty, but due to the current wartime situation, security was tight. (We had seen U.S. B-52s above us on their way to Tora Bora.) That evening after dinner, Dan’s guides sifted through our diminishing stash of vodka and departed for the nearest military border check station.

They returned the following morning, minus the vodka, with permission to continue tracking Dan’s ram. Temperatures had warmed up to a pleasant 8 degrees above zero, and Pat and I both felt great as our blood pressures had dropped back close to normal. We spent the day riding around, ostensibly hunting for ibex, but saw nothing of any consequence. We were content admiring the magnificence of the landscape. We returned to camp at dusk and soaked in the hot springs until Dan returned.

With help from a small tracking dog, Dan’s guides had located and recovered his ram. Its horns were beautifully corrugated and virtually identical in measurement to Pat’s. Dan, however, wasn’t feeling well. His blood pressure had risen to 150/95, and his resting pulse rate was 95. The doctor decided he needed to move down in elevation. Our van driver was called and drove in from Murgab. We departed early the following morning.

The telling of post-hunting stories is an integral part of any hunt, and as we descended toward Osh, we discussed our trip. By normal standards we had been wildly successful in our quest. We had safely traveled halfway around the world to one of the most remote and inhospitable areas of the globe and achieved a goal attained by only a fortunate few. Yet the many long days of travel and the endless requisition of fees, tips, bribes and thinly veiled extortion so prevalent in this part of the world, coupled with only a single day of hunting, left us with a palpable, anticlimactic feeling that we had missed something. Perhaps we had. After all, it had taken Marco Polo 24 years to complete his journey. Sheep, grails and life’s major quests aren’t supposed to come easy. For more sheep hunting, see our Stone Sheep Hunting page.

By Phil Shoemaker

This article and many more like it can be found by Successful Hunter Magazine. Visit them at www.successfulhunter.com