I drew, illuminates the words on my phone’s screen.

I set the phone down and drew a deep breath and I closed my eyes.

Mordor… I’m going back to Mordor.

A mountain range with a close likeness to a line of shark’s teeth protruding from the valley floor that is as inhospitable as it is unpredictable. I swore these mountains off after years of brutal hunts that made me question if I was better setting down my bow to take up knitting.

But when you have a friend ask for help, you help. Especially if that friend has spent selfless weeks in those mountains with you on your own torturous bighorn sheep hunt. If you’re looking to test the loyalty of a friend, ask them to go with you on a sheep hunt. After you're done wading through the excuses of why they can’t make it and the dust finally settles, the ones still standing are the ones willing to go to the ends of the earth with you.

I picked up my phone and tapped on the screen. See you on the opener.

Life gets hectic and this year was no exception. Try as you may to get the hunting season lined up with work and family life, rest assured that you’ll find stress, making you want to fold and turn your tags back in. We were working on moving down to Arizona, getting the house ready down there, lining up new products for the company, getting the kids enrolled in school and I found out I had two spectacular tags of my own in Colorado that needed scouting of their own.

When you look back at years past, life seemed much simpler. Let me assure you however, it wasn’t. We humans have an amazing capacity for remembering the good times and formatting the harddrive on the bad ones.

Don’t think about it, just do it.

A cloud of dust settled as I put the truck in park and standing there with endless gear strewn about the bed of the truck stood Joe and Braden.

Braden was another kindred soul that didn't mind the endless punches in the dick that Mordor loved to dish out. It takes an odd breed of person to want to come back for the punishment year after year, but he was another one of them. I’m sure if we all had therapists they’d have a field day analyzing why we chose to take vacation time to consent to this torture.

We loaded up the packs with eight days worth of food and mentally prepared ourselves for the first two miles lovingly deemed the sandbox. You’d expect Lawrence of Arabia straddling a camel to come cresting over the ridge at any point on the hike. After you conqueror that section, it was smooth sailing as you gained four thousand vert through blowdown after blowdown while trying to navigate the long overgrown game trail that pierced its way up the basin.

Braden had killed his bighorn sheep in this area the year prior and between him and Joe, they knew it well. We knew a band roamed the numerous cuts that made up the valley, it was just a matter of finding them out in the open.

We set camp down low, close to water, wanting to stay out of sight of any rams looking down from up high, but this also meant we would need to hike up twelve hundred vert every morning to get to a good glassing spot.

Laziness doesn’t work when chasing bighorns, so we thought that we might as well set the precedent right from the beginning and accept this daily chore.

There was still some adrenaline left over in the tank, so after setting up camp we made the move to our glassing spot to see if the next day opener was going to be a bust or not.

The hunting gods shined upon us. We were in them. Excited murmurs passed between us as we sat squinting through spotting scopes. Three shooters in the bunch and one standout.

You can’t play poker by yourself and you can’t hunt animals without unwilling participants. At least now we were in the game.

We sat around waiting for the sun to retire and to see if these rams would produce the one peculiarity that I’ve only ever known sheep to do.

They held true to their species as the shadows enveloped the mountain. They exploded into a sprint like they were being looked over in the NFL Combine.

There seems to be no rhyme or reason to it. Something in their head tells them that the next valley over is filled with an endless grass buffet and promiscuous ewes and off they go.

We noted the direction they headed for the morning and then made our way back down the mountain to slide into our sleeping bags and wait for our alarms. As per usual, it came way too soon.

It was hard not to envision a ram laying at our feet before the sun had its chance to melt off the morning mist. I am forever an optimist on how long a hunt should take and I am forever brought back to reality by how long it will actually take.

We caught a glimpse of them at first light but they disintegrated into the mountains as we made our way over to the side valley.

Mordor swallowed them whole.

The rest of the day and the following was a futile attempt to turn them up until the evening when we saw an unfamiliar blob appear on a mountain top. I’m not a rugby enthusiast, but if you’ve ever seen a scrum, you won’t forget it. This is exactly how they appeared. Thirteen rams in a circle with their heads together, moving in one synchronized pile.

Plans were formulated for the next day. Branden and Joe would head up to where they last saw the rams, while I would venture up the valley to see if they snuck that way overnight.

My day was uneventful as I pounded coffee brewed from clear mountain streams to help my eyelids from winning the battle. I had hoped the guys hadn’t thrown themselves off a cliff out of boredom.

The plan was to meet at camp if the hooting and hollering from success didn’t occur first.

I was sitting at camp swatting mosquitoes, debating if I needed to call in the medics for a blood transfusion when the fellas came trudging in.

No blood on their hands, first clue. The next clue I looked for was in Joe’s quiver. Four arrows.

I have far from a lock-tight memory, but I know he was using a five arrow quiver. Five take away four would leave one missing. Feel free to check my math, but I think I carried the correct remainders, divided correctly and took the Coriolis effect into consideration and I came up with the conclusion that Joe had either had to defend himself against a methamphetamine crazed marmot, or he took a shot at a ram.

Assuring me my math was correct, and by the demeanor in his voice I could tell he was pretty bummed out.

“The big guy,” I asked.

“The big guy,” he replied, “I pinballed an arrow off a rock right between his legs.”

The story continued and from what I could tell the whole lot of them made their way for another zip code. If he had shot at anyone of them except the leader, they would have slowed up a valley over and reconsidered their options. With the big guy coming precariously close to being the backboard of a carbon missile, he decided this neighborhood had gotten too rough for him and told his companions that if they valued their hide even the slightest bit, they had better do the same.

The next few days the place was a ghost town. Mordor was officially closed for business.

A good reset was necessary to re-up our supplies and get our morale in check. We left camp and headed back to civilization to lick our wounds. The rams needed a little alone time as well as the hunters.

It’s amazing what a shower, food that doesn’t require hot water to rehydrate and a soft bed can do for the soul. A few days out of the mountains and the previous week seemed to be seasons ago.

With our hiatus over, we numbed our minds to the hike in and got after it. The packs were light as most everything was left at camp so we made record time.

If they weren’t back in the basin at this point they likely weren’t coming back. The next morning proved to us that this was the case. The thirteen rams were nowhere to be seen.

Joe and I headed up the hill a bit to get a better vantage.

We were no further than a hundred yards uphill when we heard a whistle from Braden. He waved us back. Apparently we missed something in our initial glassing.

Five rams appeared glowing in the freshly lit mountainside. It never ceases to amaze me how a little sunlight can make an animal’s coat radiate.

The game was set, we had to wait for them to analyze their next move so we could counter it. Patience kills animals.

As the earth warmed, they looked for a spot to bed. They sought someplace that would give them all the advantages and none of the vulnerabilities. You don’t survive in the wild for long by sheer luck. You stack the odds in your favor and then let God decide the rest.

Joe started organizing the yardsale of gear we had laid out. Flagging instructions were repeated just for sake of clarity as Braden and I set in for a long day of surveillance. The 2D world of glassing at distance quickly turns into a 3D labyrinth once you insert yourself in the game and it was our job to make sure we could help Joe interpret that landscape.

We pulled on extra layers of clothing and dawned on mosquito nets to prevent any distractions. If given the option of being roasted in an oven of clothing or death by a thousand mosquito bites, I’ll take the former.

The rams held sanctuary in a field of talus, splaying out in different directions, ensuring that Joe was going to have some serious work on his stalk. There wasn’t going to be any freebies on this hunt.

The twelve hundred feet down into the valley below took Joe no time flat, however the climb uphill to get into position was another story. The participants of this hunt, author excluded, involved two of the strongest guys I know in the mountains. If Joe was slow going, it only reiterated how steep the mountainside was that he was climbing.

Braden and I switched back and forth with one person watching Joe’s progress and the other keeping an eye on the rams. From time to time Joe would glass over at us and we would give him the thumbs up signal letting him know the rams were in the same spot.

He navigated his way to the cliffs that were above the rams and eased his way through the maze.

“He’s getting close,” Braden informed me as my eyes strained from staring through the spotting scope.

I was on the rams at this point, particularly the one that Joe wanted to shoot. This could be a long wait. If Joe is anything as a hunter, he is patient. He wasn’t going to just rush in and hope for the best.

“He’s up,” I informed Braden.

The ram knew something was amiss, but by his body language he wasn’t sure what. Most likely the sixth sense kicked in and he could just feel something was wrong.

I intensified my stare, hoping that in some way I could read the ram’s mind. What was he thinking, what would he do?

And then, it didn’t matter.

“Holy shit, there’s an arrow in him!” I said.

The ram reeled and was instantly wobbly. I could see the life spraying from his wound. He was dead on his feet, his brain just hadn’t registered it yet.

Braden and I gathered our rats-nest of gear and made our way over to Joe.

“We can get off this godforsaken mountain now,” Joe said as he welcomed us.

It’s funny what hunters will say when success finally hits. This was perhaps the oddest I have heard so far, but there was a ring of truth in it that we were all feeling.

We could finally leave Mordor. I promised myself on the heavy hike out that I would never see this canyon again. I knew it was a lie, but my back and legs thanked me for the attempt.

// Fred Bohm