Jim's Blog
Amazing Aoudad Hunt in Texas!
After the Cabela's 50th anniversary event at which I appeared in Denver, I headed back down to El Paso and met up with my friend Mike Powell of Primos. Mike had a car rented and he and I drove to our aoudad ranch way down south about 12 miles from the Mexican border. Amazing beautiful area. Had a good talk with Mike about business and the state of the industry. Mike's a great guy and really knows the business.
We arrived at the ranch right at sunset, a beautiful sunset. Todd Bissenden was already here. Had a super dinner and about two dozen javelina showed up right behind the ranch house we were staying at.
This morning got up early. Beautiful day, not too windy. We started seeing aoudad right off the bat. I've never seen a density like this for aoudad anywhere. Started seeing sheep right off the bat. Two days ago when Todd was here they video'd a group of 10 rams and they were all giants. We tried to find them, but we couldn't. We found a group of about 11 rams, but nothing big enough for us. I think today we probably saw 125 aoudad all together. We know where they are; we kind of stayed there til this evening watching them, and tomorrow morning I think we're going to go after them. We also saw a lot of mule deer today. Lots of javelina today, too. Amazing. Lots of old Indian artifacts around here too. The aoudad are eating the prickly pear cactus right now because it's so hot and dry out here. Also a lot of geological interest for me out here too. So we didn't get one today but we're working on it and tomorrow hopefully we'll get closer. Neat place love the hunt and we're having a great time.
The Next Day ...
Went out this morning because we saw all those aoudad yesterday way out on that mesa; we crawled down the mountainside first thing and then up onto the mesa really hard to get to; steep walk up. Cool as heck. Got on top bumped into a herd of about 50, they went by us, but there was nothing big enough. Then we spotted four rams. So we sneaked up on them, got within 250 yards. Waited until noon when they finally stood up again, they had bedded, they walked toward us at 200 yards, I made a shot, I don't know what I did. It hit high, but it dropped right in its tracks and then it got up and started running and stopped again at about 325, and I hit it again and that was that with the T/C .300 Win. Mag. It wasn't as big as what we had thought it was, thinking 30 or 31, but it was actually about a 27. Still, a beautiful animal.
In the afternoon, Mike was the shooter ... We spotted three aoudad up on a cliff face. We sneaked up within 250 yards, and they were just monsters. Obviously much much bigger than mine. Mike took the biggest one when they stood up and it was just a whacker, about 30 inches, but really heavy, just a magnificent, beautiful, old, heavy sheep and just exactly what you're looking for in this area.
Great day all the way around. Beautiful weather. Calling for 70 mile per hour winds tomorrow, so we were happy to get our rams today. Mike is over-the-moon happy with his aoudad. It's magnificent. I'll be far, far more selective next time I get the chance to hunt them here.
The Next Day ...
Today we slept in because we got both of our rams yesterday, so we didn't have to get up real early. The only things we wanted to do today, the last day of our hunt was to try for javelina and also look for arrowheads so we went out about 8 in the morning and by 9 we bumped into a whole sounder of javelina, and we sneaked up on them. Mike made a great shot on a big, old javelina; three of his tusks were wore right down to his gums almost, and then he had one long one that had to be close to 3 inches sticking out of his mouth. It was amazing. And I got a big one as well out of the same sounder. We both got our javelinas, so we were thrilled, then we wanted to video looking for arrowheads, and we went to a place where we had seen a bunch of chips, this is all on private land. And I found a beautiful perfect arrowhead point.
Todd and I left the ranch and are headed back to El Paso to catch an airplane for Corpus Christie and there we'll be heading out to hunt nilgai. Mike Poweell is a great guy. We had a ton of fun. Mike's ram and javelina were bigger than mine, he drew the long straw on this hunt and got magnificent animals. Hope to hunt with him again soon!
The Next Day...
The guys are just skinning Brian Johnson's magnificent, old, blue nilgai bull. He got it tonight. We got into the town of Raymondville about 2 p.m. after landing in Corpus Christi, and our guide said if we wanted to go hunting this evening we could. We jumped in our Under Armour clothing and headed out to the ranch. It's magnificent beautiful, it's just like being in Africa it's so cool. It actually bumps up against the King Ranch, it's not high fenced, it's all free-ranging, totally low-fenced and white-tailed deer everywhere around here and nilgai all over the place. They take a lot of nilgai bulls off of here every year. There is lots of water here, so they come in from all the surrounding countryside, and we probably saw 20 to 30 actual bulls and maybe twice as many cows and calves today going through the brush. Real spooky.
Late afternoon, our guide spotted this gorgeous big bull. We made a stalk, had to wait for probably 15 minutes for it to clear the brush so we could see it. Brian made a 220-yard shot perfect. It took off running. It took us some time to find it, but we found it with flashlights it had run about 200 yards. Brian is excited. He's the managing director of the Loew's Ventana Canyon Resort and Spa where we do our charity golf event every year. And just so everybody knows, Brian is my guest on this hunt. I paid for this on me as appreciation for doing all of his hard work. This gives Brian his gold level of introduced animals of North America for SCI, so he is thrilled. Tomorrow it's my turn!
