The New Swimner Reported first: Even when he walked up and got a good look at the Dall sheep ram he had just shot in the Brooks Range, Fairbanks hunter Bill Foster didn’t know what he’d done. Of course, how can you know that you just shot one of the biggest sheep taken in Alaska in years, if not decades, when you’ve never even gone sheep hunting before, much less actually shot a sheep?
“After I shot him I lost control of all my emotions,” Foster said. “It was like, ‘Holy cow, this could be something big.’ It looked like it could be a full curl and a quarter.”
It wasn’t until Foster got the sheep part way down the mountain he shot it on and met up with his hunting partner, Tim Dingey of Fairbanks, that he began to realize how special his sheep might be.
“Bill was like, `Is this a good ram? Should I get it mounted?’” Dingey said, recalling their conversation. “I told him, ‘Bill this is a ram of a lifetime.’”
But even Dingey, an experienced sheep hunter, had no clue how big it really was.
“It was a trophy ram, you could tell,” Dingey said. “I told him, ‘I’m going to guess this is over 40 inches, maybe 42.’ I never would have guessed it at 46.”
Freak sheep
When it comes to defining a “trophy” sheep in Alaska, 40-inch horns is the benchmark most hunters and guides adhere to.
“For big sheep, 40 inches is kind of the standard,” said state wildlife biologist Jason Caikoski, who monitors sheep in the Brooks Range for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game in Fairbanks.
The measurement is taken around the horns from the base of the skull to the tip of the horn.
Only 261 of the 6,068 sheep — 4 percent — sealed by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game between 2004 and 2010 were measured at 40 inches or more.
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