Nobody could have predicted the outcome of that bighorn hunt, and though I saw it with my own eyes, it’s still hard to believe. It was amazing, sometimes shattering, and I have the memories and scars to prove it.
I’d been in touch with Phimister Proctor, the famous sculptor, by letter during the early summer months of 1912 and discussed the possibility of a sheep hunt with him. He planned to come west on a trip primarily to get art material on the Plains Indians – a trip he hoped to conclude with a sheep hunt. But he didn’t confirm his plans, and when October rolled around with no further word from him, I gave up the idea of guiding him into ram country.
Toward the end of October I was in Pincher Creek, Alberta, buying up six months’ supplies to keep my family over the winter at our ranch on Cottonwood Creek, 30 miles south of the railroad. The trip took two days by wagon, so I stayed in the hotel in town overnight.
About six o’clock in the morning someone knocked on my door. “I’m Phimister Proctor,” said the stranger. “I just got in on the train. When do we start the sheep hunt?”
Trying to hide my surprise, I did some quick figuring and told him we could start the next day. “That’ll leave us four days’ hunting till the end of the sheep season,” I said.
We had breakfast together, then I went to load my supplies. Soon we were heading over the winding wagon road toward my ranch, with the sculptor’s gear stowed on the load. He had only a bedroll a folding portfolio of art supplies and a cased rifle. I’ll never forget that rifle.
It was an 8mm Mannlicher-Schoenauer carbine with a 20-inch barrel stocked to the muzzle. The rifle was fully engraved by the best European craftsmen, with the owner’s name in fine gold-inlaid scrollwork on the trigger guard and a hunting scene in gold on the magazine floorplate. For sights it had a folding peep dovetailed into the cocking piece, and an ivory bead at the muzzle. The outfit was brand new. As we traveled, he told me about it.
Some years earlier, in the ’90s, he’d finished work on an equestrian group done in bronze – a statue commemorating General Sherman – located in New York City. Proctor had been working with the famous Augustus Saint-Gaudens, who specialized in sculpting human figures. Phimister Proctor was the recognized authority on animal figures, so Saint-Gaudens contracted him to work on the horses. Saint-Gaudens was so pleased with Proctor’s work that he presented him with this fine custom rifle as a gift.
While Proctor took great pride in owning the rifle, he admitted he didn’t know a thing about it and hadn’t even fired it. He’d been raised in Colorado and had grown up with Winchester lever-action rifles. His favorite hunting arm was a venerable, much-used .35 Model 95 Winchester that he’d left at home. I assured him he’d have a chance to try out his new rifle on a target before we started the hunt.
Restive by Dan Metz
After breakfast the next morning I pasted a six-inch bulls-eye on the side of a five-gallon coal-oil can, and set it up on the slope behind the cabin. While I loaded our gear and grub on the packhorses, Proctor fired a few shots to check his rifle. I was pulling the last diamond hitch down snug when he came to the corral smiling. The rifle was shooting as well as he was able to hold it, he said, and the last three shots had grouped in the bull at 200 yards.
So we swung into our saddles and rode through the rolling poplar bluffs, heading for the mountains. It was a clear, golden fall day with a gentle warm wind blowing off the peaks. I led the way up a winding trail into the mouth of Yarrow Creek Canyon, the best bighorn sheep range in the country at the time, for it wasn’t hunted by the Indians.
The Stoneys, a mountain tribe, weren’t confined to a reservation then; they wandered through the Rockies of western Alberta, living off the country. Armed with ancient .44/40 and .30/30 rifles, they used a driving system that was deadly. The men would hide on the game trails on the high shoulders and passes surrounding a canyon while the squaws, youngsters and numerous dogs beat out the bottoms and side basins with ungodly howling and barking. Deer and sheep would sometimes be slaughtered in piles on a restricted pass. I once saw a train of 40 packhorses loaded with buckskin and dried jerky that these Indians had bagged this way. But Yarrow Creek Canyon was taboo with the Indians. They feared the grizzlies.
One spring years before, a Stoney band had camped there on a meadow. They were trying to run from smallpox, which had struck their winter camp on the Bow River near Banff. When spring came, a bunch of survivors stampeded south, trying to escape from the mysterious evil. But they brought it with them and soon the camp on Yarrow Creek was rotten with smallpox. The Indians were so demoralized that they merely dragged their dead into the nearby willows.
In the spring grizzlies are ravenous and like nothing better than carrion. The sun was warm and the valley reeked of rotting flesh; the big bears started feeding on dead Indians. When they ran out of dead ones, one or two bolder grizzlies began eating sick Indians and even went for the few healthy ones. These panicked and left the camp. To this day, no Stoney has ever set foot in any part of that canyon. That’s why the Yarrow country was a sheep hunter’s paradise.
In midafternoon we pulled into a little flat by a spring-fed pond at the head of the creek nine or ten miles up the canyon and just under the summit leading over into Castle River. As I set up camp, Proctor was busy with his glasses.
“Maybe I’m imagining things,” he said, “but every once in a while I think I smell sheep.”
I assured him he was smelling sheep, for I’d also noticed the heavy smell of bighorns. It’s possible to detect this unmistakable odor in country heavily used by mountain sheep.
After staking the horses out to graze, we left the flat to climb through a thick belt of timber to the lower rim of a basin behind camp. From a fringe of scrubby firs at the bottom of a big, open slide, we immediately spotted a fine ram bedded deep in loose talus about 150 yards above us. He had a full curl and heavy horns. Silently congratulating myself, I quickly got my client into position. The setup was next to perfect; the ram lay broadside, completely unaware of us, placidly chewing his cud. My hunter was seated behind the roots of a fallen tree with a comfortable, solid rest made to order for accurate shooting.
There was some danger he’d overshoot, as the ram presented a narrow target, so I cautioned him to hold a trifle low. Proctor was visibly excited, and I made him wait till he steadied, then told him to shoot. At the crack of the rifle, rock dust spurted up about six inches over the ram’s back. The sheep leaped up and stood gazing down past us.
“Six inches over,” I called softly. “Hold low.”
After what seemed an age, the rifle cracked again. This time, to my astonishment, the bullet powdered the rocks three feet high. Unaccountably, the ram stood still.
“You’re shooting high,” I whispered frantically. “Hold low.”
After another agonizing pause, the rifle crashed a third time. I’ll never know where that bullet struck. Most likely it missed the mountain entirely. Now the ram took a tremendous bound and tore straight up the slope. On the skyline, three-quarters of a mile away, he paused to look back before dropping out of sight over the ridge.
The sculptor was completely unnerved. He shook as he stood gazing after the ram. “I don’t understand it,” he kept muttering. “I don’t understand it.”
I found no hair or blood, and a careful inspection of the tracks convinced me that the ram was missed clean. We returned to camp.
I first blamed the miss on buck fever. But when I picked up Proctor’s rifle, I immediately saw the trouble. Instead of holding low, he tried to change his sight setting. Each time I’d told him to hold low, he’d screw the elevator of the sight the wrong way until it was raised to its limit.
About 150 yards from the tent, I chopped a six-inch blaze on a stump. Then I screwed the sight down as far as it would go and told my client to take a few shots at the blaze. Lying prone behind a bedroll, he put five bullets in a fair group a trifle high on the target.
Next morning at sunrise, we rode down the valley to hunt out a series of basins. It was clear and frosty without a breath of wind – a typical Indian summer day in October. The trail wound through heavy timber close to the stream. For a mile the trees hid the mountains above. Then we came to the edge of a rocky draw coming into the canyon from our right. Spring avalanches had swept the timber out of it and bared the rocks here and there. Stopping my horse just inside the timber, I glassed the upper slopes. A good ram was bedded on a ledge 400 yards above us – too far to try a shot. The ram was gazing fixedly toward us, which made me sure he’d spotted the horses.
My horse was white and I was reasonably sure the sheep could see part of him through the screen of spruce boughs. Cautiously, I instructed Proctor to slide off his horse, take his rifle and sneak up through the timber to a spot within range, where he could see to shoot. I’d stay with the horses and move once in a while to hold the ram’s attention.
Proctor moved off slowly through the trees and disappeared. The ram never moved a hair, but continued to look toward me. The minutes dragged like years. After what seemed an age, the mountains echoed with the crash of a shot. Through my glasses I saw rock dust puff over the ram’s back.
As the big sheep bounced to his feet, I roared, “Hold low!”
Again came the sharp crash and to my disgust this bullet went four feet high. First the ram bounded straight down over a couple of ledges, then turned and leaped back up again to come to a stand just a little above his bed. The third shot was another miss. The ram jumped across the open draw into the timber.
When I reached Proctor, he was leaning against a tree, staring at his rifle. I reached over and took it; the sight was again screwed up to its limit.
We rode to camp in silence. I went to the tent and dug into my sack of “possibles” for a little roll of brass wire. Once more I screwed the peep sight down to the bottom. Then I solidly wired it there. That fancy rifle looked a bit queer wired up like an Indian’s battered fusee, but I was determined that the sight wouldn’t get moved again.
We hunted for the rest of the day and although we saw several fair rams, none were suitable trophies. Proctor was dejected and halfhearted about hunting. I felt sorry for him.
Next morning I suggested that he spend the day sketching, while I made a quick trip home. My wife was at the ranch alone with a new baby and I was anxious about her. I also thought it might be just as well to give my hunter a day off. He liked my suggestion, and when I left he was busy with sketchbook and watercolors.
When I returned that afternoon he greeted me excitedly. At noon he’d climbed some rock outcrops at the head of the valley. He alternated his sketching with long looks through his glasses. About mid-afternoon he saw three big rams walk onto a ridge crest about a mile below camp on the north rim of the canyon.
“I’m sure they’re bigger than anything we’ve seen,” he exclaimed.
Our evening fire was a complete contrast to the previous one. I silently hoped for a break in our bad luck the following day – the last day of sheep season.
The prospects at dawn were cheerless, for the wind blew out of the northeast, carrying the smell of winter. Gray fingers of clouds slid around the peaks, and the sky was dirty gray.
But by ten o’clock our hopes were going up fast, for the sun had burned through the overcast to make visibility good, though the air still was biting cold. I planned to leave the horses and climb above timberline on the south side of the canyon, where we could glass a series of basins on the opposite slopes. There were three big basins arranged like a giant cloverleaf near where Proctor had seen the rams, and I was gambling on finding them in one of these.
For two hours we climbed nearly horizontally along the mountain face, taking time out for long looks through our glasses. The first two basins were empty.
At noon we reached a spot overlooking the third. We sat with our backs to a boulder hidden in a tangle of firs. As we ate, we searched the slides and boulder fields for the three rams.
Letting my glasses wander, I swung them up onto a saddle on the ridge crest and then across the broken face of Mount Yarrow directly opposite. High on the peak among a jumbled boulder field something caught my eye. It didn’t match the gray limestone and was the right shape for a ram’s horn.
For ten minutes I held my 8x binoculars on it; then it moved. Like magic the tremendous outline of a big ram’s head came into focus, and I almost choked on a mouthful of cold bannock at the size of it. Then, in the rocks close to the big one, I spotted two more rams. My excitement mounted, for though either was a fine trophy, they both looked small compared to the first.
When I showed them to Proctor, he was jubilant, but when he looked at the mountain below them, his face grew long. It was a place to make any man pause. The boulder field, where the rams were bedded, dropped off into a series of ledges forming the rim of a semicircular cliff a thousand feet high Below this a long, steep rock slide dropped clear to the creek.
A diagonal chimney ran up the face of the cliff to a spot to the left and downwind from the rams. From the top of the ledge, where this chimney cut the rum, it was a steep 150 yards to a rock buttress within easy range of the sheep. The climb looked feasible, but Proctor was apprehensive.
Finally he said, “I came out here to get a ram, and that’s probably the biggest one I’ll ever see. But I have a wife and seven children at home depending on me for a living. I can’t risk such a climb. It wouldn’t be justified.”
Knowing that a rock face always looks worse from a right-angle view, I persuaded him to at least cross the canyon for a closer look from the bottom. So we climbed back down.
There we were hidden from the rams by a swell of the mountain above. As I expected, the cliff took on a different aspect from the bottom. It was still close to perpendicular, but the chimney looked much less formidable. I had 70 feet of light, strong rope in my rucksack. When I showed this to Proctor and outlined a plan to climb the chimney safely, he agreed to try.
Tying one end of the rope securely around his waist, I scrambled up as far as the rope would reach. Then I found a secure spot for an anchor and he followed while I took up the slack. While he sat down to get his wind, I proceeded up to the end of the rope again. Suppressing my impatience, I gave him plenty of time. He was a heavy man in his 50s and the combination of unaccustomed altitude, steep going and excitement left him gasping and pouring sweat. Finally he reached the top and thankfully threw himself on the first ledge.
After a few minutes I picked up his rifle and beckoned him to follow. Our progress was agonizingly slow and interrupted by frequent stops. Finally we reach the crest. Pushing ahead, I cautiously lifted my head and looked over.
What I saw almost stopped my breath. The boulder field fell away in a saucer-shaped depression; picking their way slowly across it, three great rams walked single-file in majestic parade. The smallest was a full-curl ram with horns big enough to make any hunter proud. The second was even bigger, while the leader carried a head beyond the wildest dream. His great horns curled around past the bridge of his nose and were tremendously massive and heavy, with the tips broomed off to broad points. It was by far the biggest head I had seen on any sheep, and I had trouble believing my eyes.
Proctor eased up beside me and took his rifle. He was transformed by the sight of the sheep.
“Take the leader,” I whispered unnecessarily in his ear as he lifted the rifle.
We were looking down on the sheep at a range of about 50 yards. The leader was traveling straight away. Then he stopped to look out over the mountain, and the rifle went off in my ear. I saw a wad of hair lift off the middle of his back. Then the big animal slumped in a heap with his head stretched out in front of him and never moved again. The two other rams leaped onto the rocks above him and stood looking down in astonishment. In those days licenses allowed two rams for each hunter, and I wasted no time.
“Take the one on the right,” I said.
Again the rifle cracked, and the second ram rolled down to join the first – stone dead. For a moment neither of us moved. We saw, but we hardly dared to believe.
Then I broke the spell with a wild war whoop and slapped Proctor between the shoulders. I raced across the rocks to the big ram. At that time, all records were fixed on base measurements. When I put the steel tape on these horns, I read the astonishing figures of 18 ¾ inches around the base of one and 18 7/8 around the other. I made no record of it, but I recall both horns were more than 41 inches on the curl. They were extremely massive to the tips and heavily broomed.
This, I believe, was the finest bighorn head ever taken by a sportsman in North America. I think I have the right to call myself a fair judge of bighorns since I was the guide who led Martin Bovey to the present world record, and for years I guided in the limestone ranges of the Rockies where the great brown bighorn reaches his highest development. At the time, of course, neither Proctor nor I had any way of telling what fate held in store for this massive head.
Picking up the big head, I balanced it on my shoulders with the base of a horn resting on each side of my neck, the points turned up. By grasping a point with one hand, I could carry the head nicely, though it was a heavy load. I started down the mountain with Proctor following.
We reached a point on the ledge a foot or so above the final shelf on top of the cliff near the chimney. As I stepped down my boot hit a small, round rock and I felt my ankle turn under me with a sickening loss of balance. With the weight of that great ram head on my shoulders, there was no choice. I dropped in a heap and let the head go. The force of my fall slammed me onto the rock with a heavy jar, and I was projected toward the rim of the cliff in a sliding turn on my side. As I slid, I grabbed desperately for a handhold and felt something slam into the crook of my right arm.
I came to a stop flat on my belly with my legs dangling over the cliff, my right arm locked around a rock sticking up from the ledge. Out of the corner of one eye I saw the sheep head tumbling in a free fall to disappear into the clouds below. For a second I hung there, unable to move. Then my left hand found a tiny crack in the rock and I managed to heave myself to safety. When I stood up, I saw Proctor on the ledge above.
“You’re badly hurt,” he gasped.
“No, I’m all right,” I assured him.
“But you’re bleeding!” he insisted.
It was news to me. Down my right side my clothes were ripped through from my shoulder to the cuff of my pants. The exposed skin was cut and scraped in a dozen places and bleeding freely, but I was so happy to be alive I hardly noticed. I cut strips along the torn edge of my shirt and pants, then tied them together for at least partial protection from the freezing wind.
I looked at the lucky stone that had saved my life and prodded it gently with my toe. It was frozen down. When I kicked it lightly with my boot heel, it cracked loose from the thin film of ice that held it and skidded over the edge.
My client continued to look at me as though I had returned from the dead. He was white and shaking. It took me several minutes to assure him I could travel, and longer still to persuade him to tackle the chimney.
Tying the rope around him again, I acted as an anchor, paying out the rope as he gingerly picked his descent. Then, bringing the rifles, I would join him, and so we proceeded to the bottom. All the time I was worrying about the magnificent sheep head that was probably smashed to pulp at the bottom of the mountain.
Leaving the sculptor to find his way to the creek, I searched back along the foot of the cliff.
Finally, in a fresh gouge in the loose shale, I found a couple of hairs and a tiny spatter of blood. Figuring the line of fall as closely as I could, I headed down the slope through the mist, searching as I went.
When I came to the creek, I stood looking up and down, wondering if I’d passed the head in the brush. Then I glanced toward my left and felt a great surge of relief. Half submerged between two stones in about a foot of water was the great sheep head. Scarcely daring to hope, I picked it up and found it was as good as ever except for a tiny scrape on the bridge of the nose.
My whole side was burning like fire, but I hardly felt it as I heaved the head up onto my shoulders and gave a jubilant yell. Proctor answered from a short distance upstream.
“I got it,” I sang out, “and it’s as good as new.”
He smiled as I came up to him, shook his head in a disbelieving sort of way, and fell in behind me on the trail.
Next day I went back and packed out the other head and the meat. Meat was precious in those days, and I didn’t leave a pound. By the time I finished, that rock chimney was mighty familiar.
We arrived back at my ranch late at night in the midst of a howling snowstorm, exhausted, happy and a little worse for wear.
A couple of days later I said good-by to Proctor at the railroad station as he headed east with his two big sheep heads. I never saw him again, but I’ll never forget him.
A lot of water has gone under the bridge since that day on Mount Yarrow, when a lucky stone saved my life. In 1950 Phimister Proctor died in Palo Alto, California, at 89. He remembered the head well and says it was then the unofficial world record. For a time it was on loan either to the Camp Fire Club or the American Museum of Natural History, both in New York, but then returned to the sculptor sometime between 1925 and 1929. The head was then sent to storage – nobody knows where – and has not been seen since.
I’ve done a lot of guiding for bighorns in my time. Over the years my clients have taken 66 bighorn sheep, all over 36 inches on the outside curl and quite a few better than 40 inches. In 1924, up on Oyster Creek, Martin Bovey was with me when he killed his great bighorn ram, which now holds first place in the Boone and Crockett records. All trace of the Proctor ram has been lost, but I can’t help but believe it must still exist.
If it is ever found, it may take its place at the top of the list as the largest bighorn ram of all time.
Note: A Record Twice Lost is from Great Outdoor Adventures – Twenty-four of the greatest true action stories ever to appear in Outdoor Life magazine. It was co-published by E.P. Dutton & Co Inc. and Outdoor Life.
The family of Canadian born Alexander Phimister Proctor (1860-1950) moved to Denver, Colorado, when he was 11. There, he developed outdoor and hunting skills that would remain with him for the rest of his life.
On his many big game hunts throughout the West, Proctor always took along his pencils and sketchpads and was careful to measure, draw and sometimes dissect the game he’d taken. Those studies helped him to sculpt wildlife in action and eventually earned him widespread acclaim as one of the world’s greatest animaliers.