When I was 21, my goal was to single-handedly kill a bighorn sheep. To prepare, I took most of the fall off to hunt, and I took a week before the season to explore the East Kootenay Mountains of British Columbia. Just before day break, I saw sheep on the back side of a huge ridge, and one of them was really nice. I decided to stay on the mountain all night and shoot the ram in the first hour of dawn. It was T-shirt weather all day, but then suddenly a winter storm came and several feet of snow fell. I was forced to walk back down the mountain to my tent.
I got up at 3 a.m. and waded through knee-deep snow back up. I looked towards the back of the mountain and sure enough, the sheep were still there. But to get down from this rugged peak and get into position for a shot, I had to slide down a slope. As I slipped, my clothes became filled with heavy, wet snow.
At the time, I was too focused on it to care. I made a precise stalk, got into position, and shot my ram. For the next fifteen minutes I was on cloud nine. It was the most incredible thing I’ve ever accomplished: tagging a bighorn sheep on a solo hunt.
Then I realized that I had hit him in a very difficult spot. As I began butchering and capping, I began to feel like I had bitten off more than I could chew. I cut off the bones from all the meat and covered the skull. Then I loaded up my stuff and started climbing the slope I had slid down.
The slope was so slippery, and my pack so heavy, that I would take one step up and slide back three steps. I had no way of getting back, so I started looking towards the valley. There was a stream that seemed to be flowing in the direction of my truck. I started descending into the valley, and as I lost altitude the snow became thinner, but more slowly.
That’s when I lost my balance. I slipped and rolled for several hundred meters – then flew off a ledge. I landed on my back in a deep puddle, drowning the herd and my entire body. Only my face was above the water. My already heavy pack – loaded with an entire sheep, my rifle, and my gear – was now filled with water. I couldn’t get up. I had to unbuckle the pack harness and climb out, then try to pull the pack out of the puddle. It was almost overwhelming, but I eventually got the hang of it.
I had to lose weight, so I removed the meat and placed it near a big tree as a landmark so I could find it again. However, there was no way I was going to leave that sheep’s head – I was going to leave my spotter before I could leave him, even though it would have been a safer trip without those heavy horns.
It was getting quite late in the day, so I wanted to climb to the tree line, where I could light a fire, dry myself, and warm up. I thought it was going to be a crappy night on the mountain, but I’d be fine.
I found a tree that had a lot of dry, dead limbs and I arranged to make a fire. I took my lighter out of my pack, hit the sparker, and it wasn’t working – it was also filled with water. I tried my backup lighter; This also will not burn. The sun had set, the temperature was below zero, and I was drenched. To make matters worse, I was wearing army surplus denim pants and a hoodie—too few layers, all of which was wet cotton. Without fire, I had to keep walking to stay warm. My night from hell had begun.
It didn’t take long for hypothermia to set in. It became so serious that I was sure I would not survive it. I started looking for a meadow to die so that a helicopter could find my body and fly it to my family.
Somehow, with a $20 headlamp as my only working tool, I just kept walking, one step after another, in the direction of where I thought the road would be.
Instead, I ended up in a box canyon surrounded by rocks. Because I had not been to the area before, I did not know that the creek was so intense. I was so wet and tired that at one point I was wading through a knee-deep stream. The seams of my pants were torn from my ankle to my crotch, and the pant leg was completely torn loose. I started rubbing really badly, so I took my knife and cut the rags. This left one of my legs free.
I started getting restless. The hypothermia was so severe that I almost fainted whenever I stopped to rest. But I never took off my pack, so every time the pack tipped to the side, the sheep’s horns would hit me in the head and wake me up.
At one point, I had to lift my legs with my hands to get them moving again. Every muscle in my body wanted to relax, give up, and fall asleep. Somehow I kept going.
I didn’t leave until I stumbled and fell face down on a bed of moss. My work is just done. With the weight of the pack lying on me on that moss, I finally felt at peace. I had found my sheep and lying there I was feeling warm. I could feel my organs shutting down and the life draining out of me. I knew it was over.
Then, out of nowhere, this little voice came into my head, “Hey, Cas. If you’re gonna die, die with your feet up.”
Still facing the moss, I shook my head a bit, looking for something to help pull me up. And I saw a tree that had been cut with an axe.
The sun was rising, and I was on the horse’s trail. This realization gave me new life because I knew it would get me back on track. At one point, while going down the horse trail, I had to make a sharp turn on a hill. I was so out of it that I thought I had made a mistake and was now going in the wrong direction, because I had fallen on a ridge overlooking the ocean. It took me several minutes to realize that I was actually looking at a valley with a fog-covered road.
About 20 hours after I started packing up my sheep, I took it back to my truck. It was an almost impossible situation to survive. I’m not an overly religious person, but there’s no doubt in my mind: There must be a higher power at work.
Read further: Miracle on the Tundra: How a Caribou Hunter Survived a 5-Day Blizzard
It took several days for my core temperature to stabilize, and several years for me to feel comfortable sharing this story. Since then I have single-handedly killed four more sheep, and guided over 50 hunters to their own sheep. But that ram will always be the most special.
I wanted to kill the ram so badly that I was ready to die for it. These days, I hunt smarter, I have better equipment, and I’ll never push it so hard again. I also keep a better fire starter that I make from Vaseline and cotton balls. I keep them in a waterproof container with several extra lighters and matches. You learn from your mistakes as long as you survive them.
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