THE GAUNTLET- Hunting Dall's Sheep in the Northwest Territories with Our Tough Sheep Winner

Rocks shifted around our feet, threatening a landslide on the high-angle slope. Normally, this would have sent butterflies through my stomach, but after six days of trekking up and down Canada’s rugged Mackenzie Mountains in search of a mature Dall’s sheep ram, this was pretty standard. 

I’d climbed slightly past Lasse Vinding, the hunter, and Elijah Anderson, our guide, to get some top-angle photos of them ascending the slope. As the pair of them made the climb, clouds receded from the drainage behind them like the ghost of a river slipping through the valley.

 

Our goal: two rams we’d spotted on their way to a bedding area we’d identified a day earlier. At the top of this climb we’d wrap around the backside of a crumbly shale mountain and work our way to a perch where we’d finally be able to get above them and, hopefully, get a shot off on the more mature ram. The hunger in my belly made those hopes especially strong.

The Cast

Lasse Vinding is a 24-year-old hunter from Denmark who grew up hunting red stag and waterfowl with his father. Those cold mornings in the woods looking for game sparked a lifelong passion that carried him across the world. He worked as a wrangler for an outfitter in British Columbia, a safari guide for a game ranch in South Africa, and most recently, as a hunting guide in New Zealand. Now he was here in Canada’s Northwest Territories to fulfill a lifelong dream of harvesting a Dall’s sheep.

 

Elijah Anderson has been guiding hunters into the backcountry for nearly twenty years. He started as a wrangler in British Columbia and spent most of his life on the move, guiding hunts almost year-round from the mountains of Mexico to the Northwest Territories. Quiet and unassuming, Elijah could handle anything the mountains would throw at him, from icy weather to ornery grizzly bears, and keep an even keel. 

 

I was there on assignment for MTNTOUGH to capture the hunt on camera and tell the story of one of the greatest adventures I’ve had the pleasure to be a part of. 

Tough Sheep

Lasse was randomly selected to win this Dall’s sheep hunt at Sheep Show in January, just for completing MTNTOUGH’s TOUGH SHEEP workout. Nearly 500 hunters participated in this grueling endurance event intended to replicate different aspects of a sheep hunt, including: a high volume of step-ups, walking lunges, and pack get-ups, with a ruck lap between each station. The terms were simple: finish the workout to get your name entered into a drawing for a coveted sheep hunt with Stan Stevens Mackenzie Mountain Outfitters in the NWT. 

“My mate, Alfred, and I normally hike a lot of miles and climb a lot of meters in the mountains,” recalls Lasse, “But our legs were sore after that workout. Especially after 150 lunges!”

Finishing somewhere in the top 30 contestants felt like a win to Lasse. Little did he know that the best part of the day was yet to come.

“Of course you’re dreaming of them pulling out your name,” says Lasse, “But then when they actually did [it was hard to process] what I’d actually just won…I was shaking on the stage.”

Fast forward to August of the same year, after a total of 62 hours of travel from Denmark to Norman Wells, Lasse finally arrived in the Mackenzie Mountains at the renowned outfitter camp of Stan Stevens. 

Into the Wild

Lasse and I stepped off the floatplane to a warm welcome from Stan and his guides, who led us to our cabin. Four other hunters were already in camp, making it a full house for the outfitting team.

We met our guide Elijah after we settled in and sorted our gear. He told us to pack for a seven-day backpack trip. We had ten days total to find a ram, and if we weren’t successful by day seven, Elijah said the crew would fly in a resupply. 

We quickly packed our backpacks with food and supplies and placed them in the staging area - we’d be leaving tonight.

 A helicopter roared to life outside before the dinner dishes even hit the sink. Stan operates across more than nine thousand square miles of the Mackenzies, and after forty-nine years of guiding, using everything from horses and bush planes to pack dogs, he has found the helicopter to be the most efficient way to move clients through the mountains.

The Gauntlet

Stan’s son, Danny, flew us out to our drop-off point, briefing us on the way about the spot we’d be hunting in: an area they called The Gauntlet. 

The Gauntlet is a deep mountain drainage in the Mackenzies, its entrance filled by a colossal landslide about 20 years ago. The result is a 40-foot wall of loose rock, shifting boulders, and deep gravel pits that stretches for half a mile. It’s a formidable barrier to entry, which is why the guides rarely take clients there and why it’s home to many mature rams.

Danny dropped us off 20 miles from base camp at a junction 4-5 miles from the entrance to The Gauntlet where we would make camp for the evening. As the sound of the rotor blades receded, the silence that followed drove home just how alone we were. According to Elijah, no human being had set foot in this drainage for at least 2 years. 

The Hunt Begins

You don’t really “walk” through the Mackenzie Mountains - you stumble through them, particularly in this area. Every step, whether you are down in the drainage or up on the peaks, something is shifting under your foot. You’re either navigating talus, scree, shale, or some ungodly mixture of all three. Every now and then your feet would be graced with a small patch of tussock to tread on before once again tangling with the treacherous rock fields typical of the area.

We spotted a mature ram on day one - roughly 10-11 years old. He was with a friend who only had one horn. My initial thought was, “sheep hunting can’t be this easy.”

The next five days proved that statement to be correct as we made several attempts to close the 2,000 yd distance between us and those two rams. They were always bedded in just the right location where they had a full view of everything around them.

“90% of sheep hunting,” said Elijah one evening after another failed climb, “is spot ‘em, get above ‘em, and kill ‘em. But these ones here are just so dang smart that we really haven’t been able to do that so far.”

Each day held a new challenge for us to meet, many involving a long and treacherous climb to get above them, only to find that they’d zigged while we zagged. 

One day we used the cover of some fog to get in a position overlooking where we expected them to come down to feed, only to find when the fog lifted that they were bedded directly above us at 600 yds or so. As we found ourselves totally exposed with no cover anywhere near us, Elijah told Lasse and me to slowly lay down and cover our faces with our hoods so we didn’t spook them.

“Get comfortable,” he said, “We could be here a while.”

 Six motionless hours later, the rams finally got up and moved.

 The Climb

 And this brings us to where we came in.

 Day 6. Big climb. Sketchy rocks. Rams at the top.

As we wrapped side-hill around the mountain, Elijah signaled for Lasse and I to hang tight as he scouted ahead. My feet shifted slightly on the slope, sending a small shale stone tumbling off the cliff edge 15 feet below me, a sobering reminder that there was no room for error.

Elijah returned a few minutes later and signaled for us to follow. We slowly worked our way across the angled field of broken pottery, stones crunching beneath our feet, until we came to a raised pinnacle with just enough room for the three of us to lie down on. 

According to Elijah, the rams were bedded three to four hundred yards below us, out of sight. Once they stood, we’d have a clear sight picture of them. Moving closer was too risky; the slope’s angle meant we could stumble right on top of them and blow the stalk. The wind was perfect, we were within shooting range, and for the first time all week, we were above them. Tonight we were going to kill a ram.

A raindrop on my nose wiped the grin right off my face. Lasse and I glanced at each other as more drops began to pepper our position. Our eyes turned westward as the wind picked up and dark clouds came racing over the ridgeline above us. 

Elijah pulled out his windchecker; the white dust swirled a bit, but not enough to suggest the rams would catch our scent.  We’d hold out for a while longer - we’d worked hard enough to get up here that we couldn’t just turn around and head down because of a little wet weather.

The world went white as thunder split the electric air. At this, Elijah grabbed the rifle, the only item containing a significant amount of metal, and dashed away from our hideout, placing it roughly 100 yds away from us. The wind roared from the tops of the ridges, cutting straight through every layer we had on. It was time to get low and wait out the tempest.

We ducked down below the rocky pinnacle we’d been set up on, getting off the skyline and behind a good wind barricade. At this point it wouldn’t be safe to try and get down the mountain - we’d dig in until the full fury of the storm had passed. 

Two hours dripped by as we shivered in our rain gear and insulation layers. No more lightning strikes came near us, though distant booms would periodically roll across the mountaintops. 

The rain eventually subsided. Elijah, seeing Lasse and I shivering in our wet gear, suggested that we get up and walk over to a chute around the corner from us to see if the sheep had retreated up into it. We really had no hope of actually finding anything at this point; the wind had shifted dramatically and blown right down to where the rams had been. He was just trying to get us warm again. 

After checking the last potential hiding spot for the rams, we packed up and began picking our way through the wet shale slopes back to our tents. It was a quiet walk back that evening. Tomorrow was resupply day, and considering that those rams had most likely left the drainage entirely, it was likely we’d get moved to a different spot. To add insult to injury, my camera clicked off, indicating a dead battery - the last one I had.

It seemed that The Gauntlet had thoroughly beaten us. 

Buzzer Beater

Hope rose with the sun on the seventh day.

I awoke to Elijah’s voice, low and urgent, speaking with Lasse in the next tent over. I poked my head out to see what was up. Elijah motioned for me to stay put as we made eye contact, then slowly and quietly worked his way to my tent. He paused for a moment and glanced over his shoulder at the cliffs above the camp.

He spoke in hushed tones. “Two new rams are moving on the cliff up there,” he said, pointing to the far face. “They look bigger than the other two we’ve been chasing and are headed in our direction. Let’s just stay hunkered down for now and see what they do.”

I was glad I’d packed a small e-book as a luxury item. I pulled my bag tight around me and listened to the rain tap against the walls of my PEAX teepee.

Eventually, a dense fog rolled in, engulfing our camp and providing some cover for us to convene out of sight of the rams who had steadily picked their way closer to us. We weighed the options carefully: Either hike the six miles back to the helicopter dropoff point to pick up our resupply or skip the resupply and take a chance on these two new rams.

Our food was nearly gone. We had planned for a Day 7 resupply and barely had enough to make it through lunch. If we gambled on the rams and blew the stalk, we’d be out of food with no hope of resupply until tomorrow.

On the other hand, if we didn’t go after these rams there was no guarantee they would still be here when we returned. It was a twelve-mile round trip, including a jolly jaunt through The Gauntlet, between the helicopter dropoff point and our campsite.. W; we wouldn’t be back until late evening. 

If the rams bedded down where Elijah was suspecting they would, they’d be in an ideal spot for us to make a play on them. 

We decided to wait a few more hours and see if the fog would lift. If the rams bedded down where Elijah expected, we’d go for it.

The fog lifted around 1pm, revealing two white dots exactly where we wanted them.

Elijah gathered Lasse and me behind my tent. He crouched over his spotting scope and whispered his plan to us. On his signal, we were to quickly move back to the creek where we’d been drawing water and duck out of sight. He would follow once the coast was clear.

We did as instructed, and soon all three of us were peeking over the top of a shallow cut just above the stream. I borrowed Lasse’s phone to get some footage of the event ahead of us - it was all I had to work with.

We waited only a moment before moving again, heading into a wide draw toward the same slope we’d climbed the day before. The ground offered us no cover. We stopped every few minutes and crouched low while Elijah checked the rams in his spotting scope to make sure they weren’t concerned about us before we continuing on.

While we were hopeful, the odds still seemed a thousand to one that we’d actually make it into position. It was 2:30pm, and we had a long steep climb up to a ridge where we would then have to side-hill silently across a 200 yd stretch of loose, crumbly shale before we could peek over another ridge and get into position to take a shot. The rams were completely out of sight for all this, so we had no guarantee that they’d still be where we needed them to be when we got up there. 

Ascending the jigsaw talus slope, placing our feet carefully to avoid sending any large rocks rolling, we crested the first ridge and surveyed the next obstacle: the shale field. 200 yds doesn’t seem like a very long distance, but when silence is a priority and every step sounds like crunching glass and creates a mini landslide, it feels like a mile.

It took us an hour to navigate those 200 yds. Every muscle tense. Every step taking an eternity.

At last, we reached our destination - the final ridge. 

Once again, Elijah signaled for us to wait as he scouted ahead and peeked over the ridge. Lasse slowly unbuckled his gun from his backpack in preparation as we studied Elijah’s body language for any clue of where our luck had landed.

As soon as Elijah began lowering himself from the ridge at a snail’s pace we knew we had made it. The bigger of the two rams was not only still bedded but had actually gotten up and moved closer to our position before settling down for a nap. 

At Elijah’s signal, Lasse crept up to the shooting position, settling in with his .300 Win Mag propped up on his backpack as a rest. The distance was 330 yds, well within his comfortable shooting range.

Lasse’s shoulders rose and fell steadily as he calmed himself behind the gun. It’s no easy feat to keep the nerves down when you’ve got a game animal in your scope, let alone one as legendary as a Dall’s sheep. And seven days into the hunt without a shot opportunity, Lasse was starting to feel the pressure.

A shot broke the silence.

“YES, MAN!” Lasse exclaimed.

The pair embraced in a bear hug as I leapt up to see over the ridge. The ram lay dead 50 yds below its perch. 

“That was a marathon,” Lasse said between breaths, regaining his composure.

A Hunter’s Feast

Ice-cold rain pelted our rain jackets as Lasse hoisted his pack onto his back, ram’s horns curling out from the top, and began picking his way down the loose shale field one final time. The rain couldn’t wipe the smiles off our faces this time as our shoulders felt the familiar weight of full game bags. 

That night we feasted on sheep backstrap cooked on a hot rock over an MSR Windburner; a better meal than any resupply could have brought us. It was especially sweet for me, as I had made the foolish decision to counterbalance the weight of my camera gear by cutting back on how much food I had brought. It was the first time in 7 days that I had felt full, and that sheep meat couldn’t have tasted any better.

Tomorrow we’d make the six-mile trek to meet the helicopter and begin the journey home, back to the bustle of everyday life with all its cares and concerns. But tonight, we laughed, enjoying the fruits of our labor and watching the mist race across the mountains from the shelter of my tent, reminiscing on all the highs and lows of a truly grand adventure. As my Dad always says about such moments, “We’re gonna get a lot of mileage out of this one.”