Dave’s Coriscan Sheep Killed in the Trout Creek area of Ore.

 

Some stories are supposed to be a bit funny at someone else’s expense.

Such is this story about an old hunting buddy Dave Brill from Sandy Oregon.

Dave and I have in the past hunted many days together with success for archery deer in Oregon.

On this hunt Dave wanted to harvest a Corsican sheep in Oregon.   At one time there were a great number of free ranging Corsican, Mouflon and Aoudad sheep running around the hills of Central Oregon.

So many years ago, as I might have stated before they were turned loose on a number of ranches in Oregon by Harry Hegardt.  He had made deals with ranchers for the right to hunt the exotics on their ranches with paying hunters.

 

Enough of the history of how the sheep got here!

 

Dave wanted a sheep pretty bad, so I told him I would take him on a sheep hunt in the rim rocks near Ashwood and Gateway.   I figured it would be pretty easy to get him into a sheep or two on this hunt.

 

To cover a vast amount of ground and get to the high spots and glass for sheep, we decided to use motorcycles to cover the ground and they would work great on rough dirt and heavy rocked roads.

 

After scouting for about 2 hours we spotted some sheep down on a flat near Trout Creek.

The hunt was on and it wasn’t long before Dave stalked the sheep down in the junipers and sage brush.   We had just observed the small group of sheep forging the flooding waters of Trout Creek while putting on the stalk.  Dave stalked within about 100 yards of the sheep and made his one shot kill on the ram.  Dave shot a damn nice ram for a free ranging Corsican.   In all the years of hunting Corsican’s and Aoudad’s, I have yet to see any water or barbwire fence stop them.

  Now this is where the story gets good and a bit funny.   Dave decided that he would cross Trout Creek at a different spot then the usual safe spot even during the high water.  Well the crossing was not the best and even with a big 500 Honda, Dave did not make the crossing.  The bike, rifle, pack-frame and Dave both went down in the fast and deep moving water.  He did make it halfway across before the high water faltered his engine.  I could see Dave and the bike going down the river, I quickly ran down the river bank and managed to throw a rope line onto the bike.  As for Dave, he and his rifle made it to the shore on their own. 

Well it took about two (2) hours to get Dave’s Honda running again with me dragging it all around and after putting fresh oil into the crankcase.

As you can see from the pictures Dave was able to get bike and sheep back to the truck.