As the single lane dirt road climbs out of Fish Creek there is a lookout complete with guardrails, sidewalks and restrooms and some great vantage points into the canyon.  We hiked 150 yards on the sidewalk, loaded down with tripods and optics, to the first point.  Floyd continued another 100 yards to the next point as Julie and I sat down.  Julie had never seen a big horn sheep before so she was excited by the opportunity. 

I heard a ruckus back at my truck and turned to find at least 5 vehicles full of less than trustworthy looking folks unloading to use the bathroom.  I realized that I had a small fortune in "ACME Sheep Killing Equipment" unsecured in my truck and decided I better head back and lock it up.  I tried not to make eye contact with any of them as I locked the doors and headed back to my tripod. 

Then, all of a sudden, Julie jumped up, left our optics behind and started running toward Floyd.  "Right on," I thought, "Floyd has found something."  Without even making eye contact with him she stopped and ran back toward our equipment and sat down again, then she jumped up again headed toward him and this time gathered his attention.  That is when I realized Julie had seen something! 

As she caught her breath Floyd and I set our tripods and optics in the direction of her finger pointing.  Within seconds we were all on the sheep and it was him!  After 8 days of hiding we had found him again and I had two people who had never been on a sheep hunt to thank - Julie and the rancher.  Since I had been by myself until this point I had not bothered to name any of the rams but the one became known as Julie's Ram.  It was the first sheep she had ever seen and the only one I was looking for.

The next day I watched Julie's Ram and his two running mates from sunrise to sunset.  The big boy was a real bully, hammer heading the others into subordination, and pushing them off of the best feed.  As I watched him the phrase "doesn't play well with others" kept coming to mind.  In order to make a stalk I would have needed to drive down to the trailhead, climb the 1000 vertical feet of elevation, and then traverse about two miles of bluff-laden sheep terrain.  Even then the wind would have been all wrong unless they moved, in which case I probably would not find them or worse yet, blow then out of the country.  I decided that I was going to need help every day in order to kill this ram.  If the ram moved into a location where I could make a stalk then I needed to be able to take off. 

Most of my hunting buddies are sheep guides and now that I was over a week into the season some of them finally began to return from successful hunts.  I called Clay Delcoure.  He would meet me the next day and bring Chance Cheathum along with him.  Just days before Chance and his crew had been packing out a 170"+ from the unit across the lake and had seen me glassing on the other side. 

I described where we would find the rams to Clay and Chance as we quickly positioned our tripods.  Sheep don't typically move at all during darkness so I was a little nervous when they were not standing exactly where I expected them.  Clay finally found them across a small ravine and easily 500 yards from where I had left them the night before.  As we all enjoyed the view, I explained how we needed to find the trail and climb up behind the sheep.

 I should have left one of them there to keep an eye on the sheep but I was confident that they would not go far and we would need as much help as possible to find them once we were on the other side.  Well, you probably guessed; we climbed up on Horse Mesa but could not find the sheep anywhere.  Chance busted back down the mesa to our original spot but there was not a sheep to be found.  I spent the entire next day looking for the rams with no luck.  Floyd and I hit it hard on Friday as well.  We found a big ram but not Julie's Ram.