At this point my wife, seeing my obsession with finding this ram, dubbed me the new Wiley Coyote.  You remember how poor old Wiley would use any gadget imaginable to catch the roadrunner.   Well, she thought I was getting a little carried away by renting a pontoon boat, meanwhile I was willing to strap a rocket to my back if that is what it took to get across "The Creek"!  I thought a boat was a very reasonable next step in what the military calls "escalation of force"; nuclear force was not out of the question because I still had 23 days to hunt. 

With my pupils still dilated I called Floyd Green to see if he was available for the amphibious portion of the battle.  At one time Floyd raced jet boats and was a SCUBA instructor and guide.  On top of that he killed the largest desert sheep in the last decade - all the qualities I was looking for at this point.  Floyd and his copilot Julie met me at 0600 the next morning at my breakfast rally point.

I had not yet found the trail that ascended Horse Mesa but I knew the general vicinity.  So Floyd, Julie and I spent a good while scouring for a trailhead but found nothing.  Frustrated, we kept going down the road toward the "ACME" boat docks at Apache Lake.  During the summer months the marina is packed with boaters, jet skiers, and fisherman but on this winter morning mine was the only truck in the parking lot.  The marina employees were wondering why I was dressed in full camouflage to rent a boat, the Department of Homeland Defense probably wanted to know as well. As I explained that I was looking for desert sheep on the back of Horse Mesa one of the women blurted "You know there is a trail that goes up there?"  I was prepared to use Chinese water torture to get the information but decided instead to just ask "Yes, I have heard about it, do you know where it meets the road?"  "No," she responded (I knew I would need the torture) "but if you stop by the ranch down the road I am sure they would tell you."  My subliminal messages worked and I thought the pieces of the puzzle were coming together as we headed for the boat.  The wind pounded us as we steered the underpowered boat down the lake.  We battled the wind and waves all morning and only saw one ewe to show for our efforts and she was on the wrong side of the lake.  Oh well, we knew where the sheep were not.

Floyd and I are proud of the fact that we are "typical men" so when Julie suggested that we stop by the aforementioned ranch for directions to the trail up Horse Mesa we scoffed.  But after three or four more attempts we made the turn past the corrals and up to the house.  The flu bug had smitten the residence so we kept our visit short and after explaining our situation they gave us more precise coordinates for the trailhead.  Before we left they questioned our desire to climb Horse Mesa when just days earlier they had seen a huge ram next to the road in the bottom of Fish Creek.  Dang!  Could it be that the whole time I was looking in the nastiest part of "The Creek" the ram was hanging out by the road?