Stone Sheep Hunting British Columbia

Stone Sheep Hunting

Gunson Guiding & Outfitting offers just a limited number of Stone Sheep hunts a year.  We have excellent genetics (big dark rams) and a stable population of Stone Sheep, in a relatively small area – we know where the sheep are.

We take a maximum of one (1) Stone Sheep hunter at a time.  This insures that every Sheep hunter we take has our full attention – access to the best hunting areas –  and is hunting with our best guides.

The ‘support crew’ on our Stone Sheep hunts includes an experienced guide (often Jake – the outfitter), a second ‘guide’ who is there to help with the scouting during your hunt, and a string of reliable mountain horses, who will help you (and your camp) get as close to the Stone Sheep as they can.  But it is not an easy hunt – the mature rams are hard to find, and we require hunters who are, in sheep shape – able to put in the vertical feet, miles of hiking, and hours of glassing that it takes to get the job done.

the hunt

Our Stone Sheep hunters typically fly into one of our mountain camps, where they are met by their guide with their ‘crew’ and the horses. In August, our family is usually in camp … it’s very much a family operation… so there will likely be kids running around and causing trouble.

Once in camp, we pack up the horses & trail to where we think the big rams are. We use the horses as much as is practical, and leave them behind when necessary. Sometimes we do a lot of riding, sometimes more hiking, and sometimes we backpack to get and stay up in country that isn’t very horse friendly… but most of the time we’re not camped too far from the horses. It is not a hunt where we would need to backpack 2-3 days just to get to sheep country… a combination of float planes and horses will take most of that ‘grunt work’ out of the hunt.

Every hunter will see Stone Sheep – ewes and lambs, and lots of ‘young’ – 4,5,6- year old rams. But the mature rams are smart and hard to find. The young rams, and family groups, are where you would expect to find them – up above the trees in the higher mountains. But the mature rams like to go down into the rocks and have been known to live in the willow at the tree line – coming ‘up’ to feed in the afternoons and evenings, and they move often. They are there, somewhere, but can be hard to find. For better or worse, a Stone Sheep hunt is simply one of the most difficult hunts in North America – there is no way around that.

This is the ‘hunt of a lifetime’ – for this hunt you want an experienced and capable outfitter – give Jake a call, and we’ll see if we can put a hunt together.