The Invention of the Grand Slam Killed Sheep Hunting, According to Jack O’Connor

ONE AFTERNOON in August 1946, I was riding along the bottom of a canyon cut into the rolling tundra of northern British Columbia by a little creek named after Billy Nevis (pronounced Neeves), an old trapper. With me was my outfitter, the dean of the Stone-sheep guides, the late Frank Golata. Beside me rode a rather plump little doctor of exactly my age, who practiced medicine in the small Illinois town of Carlyle.

I was on my first hunt for Stone sheep. Dr. Wilson L. DuComb, my partner on that trip, was on his second.

Like all sheep-hunting nuts, Doc and I loved sheep, lofty peaks, high ridges, chill breezes, bright skies, and wild country. In those days, most American hunters could take sheep or leave them alone, and we were members of a very small fraternity.

Until that day I had never laid eyes on a Stone sheep, but I was excited because we were beginning a long packtrip that was to take us back into the wilderness country at the heads of the Musqwa and Prophet rivers. Later in the hunt, we pitched our tents in the same spot where, in 1936, L. S. Chadwick had camped when he took the world-record Stone, the greatest sheep trophy ever collected in North America, and one of the greatest taken anywhere in the world.

Nevis Creek, a noisy, shallow stream with occasional deep pools full of lazy Dolly Varden trout, fishtailed back and forth from wall to wall of its canyon. I suppose we had to cross it 30 times that day as we rode downstream toward the Bessa River.

We were a long way from mountains, but sheep like canyons almost as much as they like mountains, and I was almost expecting to see some Stones. We had seen tracks.

Presently, Golata pulled up his horse and pointed. Possibly 225 yards ahead and maybe 250 feet above the creek, seven Stone rams lay on a ledge, calmly watching us. In those days, the limit on sheep was two north of the Prince Rupert line of the Canadian National Railroad. If one of those rams turned out to be good enough to collect, I already had a good chance to score. If I did, I could be more particular on the next one.

I got off my horse to glass them and sat down in the sand with a scope-sighted .270 across my lap. All were typical Stone rams with gray heads and necks, brownblack saddles, black tails, and white rumps. All were old. The one that caught my eye was an ancient sheep with heavy, broomed, close-curled horns-a type about which I have always been sentimental. He was an excellent ram, and on that 45-day trip I saw few better.

Uphill from the sitting position isn’t the steadiest way in the world to shoot, but the crosswires looked pretty good when I touched off the shot. All the rams jumped to their feet and took off down the ledge, but after running 30 or 40 yards, the ram I had shot at tumbled off the ledge and fell right into Nevis Creek with a tremendous splash. He had been hit a bit far back.

That was my first Stone. I got another on that trip that was No. 10 in two record books. I didn’t know it then, but that Nevis Canyon ram had made me the fourth or fifth hunter ever to collect all four varieties of North American sheep — bighorn, desert, Stone, and Dall. At the time, I had no idea whether I was the fifth or the five hundredth, but I did know that I was fascinated by sheep and by sheep hunting.

The term Grand Slam was fastened to the feat~ my good friend, the late Grancel Fitz, New York writer, OUTDOOR LIFE contributor, advertising photographer, big wheel in the Boone and Crockett Club, trophy hunter, record compiler, and student of hunting literature. In about 1949, Fitz wrote an article called “A Grand Slam on Sheep” for True magazine. It concerned a successful hunt he had made for Dall sheep in the mountains surrounding Kusawa Lake in the Yukon. The Dall he got on that hunt completed his collection of all four varieties of North American sheep. Previously, he had shot a good desert ram in the Cubabai Mountains of northern Sonora, a bighorn in Alberta, and a Stone in northern British Columbia on the Prophet River downstream from where L. S. Chadwick shot the No. 1 Stone. It was almost the same place where I collected the ram that ranked No. 10 for a time.

Fritz was a seeker after records. Another of his ambitions was to collect an example of every species of North American big game. He accomplished the feat, but it was expensive and took much labor and time. The idea of collecting one each of every variety of big game found in any country or on any continent brings me down with an acute attack of the vapors. For example, I have about as much desire to bump off a tapir or a musk ox — or for that matter, a woodland caribou — as I have to collect a giant Costa Rican banana-eating fruit-bat — if there is such a thing.

In his “Grand Slam” article, Fitz said the legendary the Grand Canyon of Arizona and in the Sierra Rosario in Sonora about 70 years ago. When he got bighorns I cannot say, but he collected many Stones and Dalls in the Yukon and Alaska and, I believe, in British Columbia. He was the author of a book called The Wilderness of the Upper Yukon, the definitive book on the distribution and color variations of the thinhorn sheep. The book contains a chart showing the color variations of the sheep in various areas. In have hunted in several sections of northern British Columbia and also in several parts of the Yukon, and I have found that the book is uncannily accurate. Every sheep hunter should have a copy, but it is out of print, difficult to find, and expensive. For years, I have been trying to get publishers to reprint it, but I have had no luck.

Related: A Classic Dall Sheep Hunt in the Yukon, From the Archives

Sheldon was a Yale graduate and became an official of the Chihuahua & Pacific Railroad in Mexico from 1898 to 1902. From 1904 until 1908, he did practically nothing but hunt and study sheep in the Yukon and Alaska. His book, The Wilderness of Denali, tells of a year he spent among the mountain sheep of Mt. McKinley. He was instrumental in the establishment of McKinley National Park. Sheldon was the greatest American sheep hunter, but he was not a gun nut. He used only one rifle, a Mannlicher chambered for the 6.5 x 54R cartridge, which was used in service-cartridge form by Holland and Rumania. The ballistics were modest-a 160-grain bullet at a muzzle velocity of 2,300 feet per second.

By modern standards, old Charlie ·was a pretty bloody guy. If he got the drop on a bunch of rams, he often did-in every one of them. In all, he shot 500 to 600 head of North American game with his rifle. This total included 70 to 80 grizzly and Alaska brown bears. Almost everything he shot at was killed with one carefully placed bullet. Sheldon, I believe, made a fortune on some gadget he invented for railway cars, and he was able to go and hunt where he pleased. He was not a choosy head hunter. As far as I can tell from reading his books, he never in his life shot a 40-inch ram. He died in 1928 when he was only 61.

The second man to take all four varieties of this continent’s sheep, Fitz wrote, was Colonel Wilson Potter, a wealthy Philadelphian with whom I exchanged a few letters in the last years of his life. The good Colonel shot, among other things, the antelope that was for a time the No. 1 pronghorn and is now tied for No. 2. Col. Potter wrote me that he shot this antelope in 1899 in the desert north of Oracle, Arizona, in an area where I have hunted jackrabbits. coyotes, and quail. When I moved away from Arizona in 1948, there were still a good many desert mule deer and a few antelope there. Curiously, Potter’s great buck was a desert (or Sonora) antelope, a species that generally does not grow large horns. I know that Potter hunted desert sheep in Sonora. possibly the same year he shot the antelope. He may well have hunted desert sheep in Arizona as well. In 1899, there were manv sheep in most of the mountains around Tucson.

The third man to collect the four species was Dr. Wilson DuC0mb, general practitioner from Carlyle, Illinois, who was my companion on that hunt for Stone sheep in the Prophet and Musqwa River country in 1946. He had hunted in that general area with Golata previously. At that time, he had no idea he was the third man to achieve the Grand Slam. He had completed it in Mexico, hunting with the late Charlie Ren sometime during World War II. Through connections in Mexico City, I had got him his license. The late Ernst von Lengerke, a New Yorker who was a partner in a Manhattan sporting-goods store called Von Lengerke & Detmond and which was absorbed by Abercrombie & Fitch, is listed as the fourth person to get all four species. Grancel Fitz listed me as the fifth. Actually, von Lengerke and I completed the slam at almost exactly the same time and may actually have done it the same day, he in the Yukon, I in British Columbia. When Fitz wrote the True article that started the whole Grand Slam business, he did not know about Dr. DuComb, but he soon corrected the omission. Fitz himself is No. 6. My old pal, the late N. Myles Brown, a pneumatic-tool tycoon of Cleveland, Ohio, my beloved companion on several fine hunts, was the seventh. He got his desert sheep in the Sierra del Chino in Sonora on a hunt I arranged for him. No. 8 was Herb Klein, who completed the slam with my old friend George Parker as a guide in the Sierra Blanca of western Sonora on a license I got for him through the influence of George Pasquel, member of a noted and influential Mexico City family. The late Red Early went along on that hunt with Herb and became the No. 9 Grand Slammer. That was in 1951 or 1952.

I tell all this for the sake of the record. Someday. a scholar may want to dig through the files of OUTDOOR LIFE to do a book on the history of North American sheep hunting.

When Grancel Fitz wrote that piece on his Yukon hunt and coined the phrase “a Grand Slam on sheep.” he knew not what he wrought. The accomplishment struck hundreds of hunters as being the most-prestigious caper a big-game hunter could pull off. Various stories and articles in outdoor magazines publicized the Grand Slam. It became the Holy Grail of American hunting, and dozens of hunters started working toward it. Now well over 200 people claim to have shot all varieties of North American sheep. I am convinced that the term Grand Slam and the attendant publicity have made the mountain sheep the No. 1 North American trophy. In my time, I have written a good many stories of sheep hunts and articles on sheep. Some of the boom in sheep hunting may well be laid on my doorstep. I hope that when I arrive at the Pearly Gates, old St. Peter does not hold it against me, but if he does, I will not argue. I’ll simply bow 1ny head, turn around, and go down below where I belong.

Bob Housholder, an Arizona writer and part-time sheep guide, has formed a club with membership restricted to those who have made the Grand Slam. He keeps the records and sends out several newsletters a year. Members are entitled to wear a shoulder patch showing the head of a Dall ram and the legend “Grand Slam—North American Sheep.” One taxidermy firm has created a gold pin with four sheep heads alleged to represent the four species. Membership in the club is supposed to be a matter of great prestige, and some lads who have fallen into the clutches of the law for poaching desert sheep pleaded their desire to belong to the club. I am a dues-paying member myself, since I like to keep up with sheep-hunting gossip.

All this hoopla is very sad. I wish Grancel Fitz hadn’t started it. The old-timers hunted sheep because they loved sheep, because they wanted to be up on those high wind-swept ridges where they shared the ground with the sheep, the grizzly, the hoar-y marmot, and the soaring eagle. When they brought back a trophy, they were not seeking mere prestige — they were bringing back memories of icy winds fragrant with fir and balsam: of the smell of sheep beds and arctic willow; of tiny, perfect Alpine flowers, gray slide rock, and velvet sheep pastures. The old-timers had sheep and sheep country in their blood.

In his last years, my old pal Myles Brown suffered a stroke and could hardly get around. Nevertheless. every year he went to the Yukon mountains he loved so much, hired a pack outfit, set up camp in beautiful sheep country, drank in the smells of willows and water, and watched the sheep with binoculars and spotting scope. I know how the old-timers felt because I knew many of them and am now one of them myself. I am sure that many young sheep enthusiasts also feel the same way. Any mature ram is a trophy of which a man can be proud, whether or not it is listed in the record book. Those wrinkled horns are a record of the ram’s life and his loves. his good times and bad, his feasting and his starving in the wild high places.

Today, alas, some sheep hunters apparently care little for sheep and even less for sheep country. They are after glory and prestige, and the sooner they get the tiresome business of hunting over with and slap those ram heads on the wall, the better they like it. It took me well over a decade, but I enjoyed every minute of it!

As shooting editor of OUTDOOR LIFE, I got many letters every year from hunters who wanted a Grand Slam. I had to discourage most of them. The feat becomes tougher and tougher to accomplish. Permits for desert and Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep are difficult to get, sometimes impossible.

Back in the days when I was hunting desert sheep, I could always get a special permit. I had influential Mexican friends. In Mexico, if you know the right people or have a lot of money, you can get a permit to do many things. I didn’t have any money, but I did have friends in Mexico and at the University of Arizona, who could put in a word for me. I also know the Sonora sheep country and knew enough Spanish to get buy.

I must pause here to tell a story. A rich European of my acquaintance found himself in Mexico City some years ago. He decided to see if he could get a sheep permit. He went to the proper office, saw the man who could issue special permits, and told him he would be glad to donate $500 in American currency to the official’s favorite charity if the permit were issued. The official indignantly refused the poorly disguised bribe and told the European sportsman that he was an honest man. The European was a man of the world. He sighed, dug down deeper, came up with $2,500, and asked the official if a donation of that size would interest him. The official pocketed the 25 C-notes and wrote out the permit.

For the would-be Grand Slammer, the desert sheep is the toughest nut to crack. For the past several years, Mexico has held an open season by special permit in certain areas in Lower California. A few legal rams are also taken in Sonora. The permits are very expensive.

Arizona has a pretty fair desert-sheep herd, with the animals scattered over dozens of dry rugged ranges, and a concentration in a couple of federal reserves. In 1971, the heaviest ram ever taken in Arizona was shot within sight of Tucson in the Santa Catalina Mountains. Arizona issues only a small number of permits, and nonresidents are eligible for only 10 percent of them. In 1971, there were 915 nonresidents who applied for the quota of eight permits. However, since the time Arizona had its first desert-sheep season about 20 years ago, 86 nonresidents have surmounted the desert-sheep hurdle there. Today, a nonresident’s chances of drawing a desert-sheep permit in Arizona in any single year are less than 1 in 100.

Nevada has a fair herd of Nelson’s desert sheep, but there are dozens of applicants for each permit. Perhaps symptomatic of the situation in Nevada is a new regulation put into effect for the 1972 season. It appeared this way in The Bighorn Bulletin: “Commencing with the 1972 sheep season, every person killing a desert-bighorn sheep shall have their tag validated and the skull sealed by personally presenting the skull and head to the fish and game [department] within five days after the sheep is killed. It is unlawful for any person to have a sheep in his possession without the department seal permanently attached to the horn. Any bighorn sheep taken legally prior to the 1972 season are exempt.”

California has a sizable population of desert sheep but has never had an open season. With antihunting sentiment so strong in California, I am sure that the sky would split open and game-department officials would be torn asunder by wild horses if a limited open season on sheep were recommended Utah has some desert sheep but no open season. In New Mexico. hunters have taken a few desert sheep from the Hatchet Mountains in the southwestern part of the state, and also a few Rocky Mountain bighorns.

All in all, the chances of being able to collect a desert bighorn are about as good as a man’s chances of being elected president of the United States or winning the Irish Sweepstakes. Actually, an individual probably has better odds on becoming a movie star or inheriting a million dollars.

The bighorn situation is better — but not much. Colorado has a considerable number of bighorns, but nonresidents are not permitted to draw for sheep permits. Idaho has somewhere between 2,000 and 2,500 bighorns centered in the area of the Middle Fork of the Salmon River, one of the roughest pieces of country on earth. For a good number of years, any resident or nonresident who had a general hunting license was allowed to hunt sheep after buying a special permit for a nominal fee. Rams were badly shot out. and Idaho has gone back to issuing limited numbers of sheep permits. Wyoming has a pretty fair sheep herd, and 25 percent of the sheep permits are reserved for nonresidents. The Wyoming sheep country is very lovely, and there are excellent sheep outfitters and guides in the state. I have shot only one Wyoming bighorn, but I have seen a good many rams when hunting elk there. Once I shot a big six-point bull, and two fine rams I had not seen came tearing around a point. The rams and the bull had been bedded down on the same shale slide.

Montana has a few very tough areas where anyone can get a permit to hunt sheep and also some areas where trophy rams are reasonably plentiful and permits are not too difficult to get. Montana borders the area in southwestern Alberta and southeastern British Columbia that has produced the largest bighorn heads and the heaviest sheep. An acquaintance of mine who is young, tough, and an experienced sheep hunter, shot a 43 1/2-inch bighorn in Montana last year, and I heard of another ram that went 44 around the curves and will place among the top 10 in the records.

Washington has made successful transplants of California bighorns from British Columbia into various sections where similar sheep were once present but had become extinct. However, the chances of anyone’s getting a Washington bighorn permit are about as good as his chances of hitching a ride on a spaceship to the moon. In 1971, there were approximately 3,500 applicants for 27 permits to hunt Washington bighorn.

The status of the bighorn in Canada is better than in the United States but not much better. In 1972, for the first time, sheep hunting by nonresidents is prohibited in the southern half of the Alberta Rockies. The species is preserved by the great string of parks along the crest of the Rockies. Beginning with Glacier Park in Montana next to the Canadian border, there is Waterton Park in Alberta, then Banff and Jasper. The best bighorn trophies taken today are rams that have matured in these parks and are shot in open country outside their borders. Elsewhere, the Canadian Rockies are in a frenzy of exploitation — oil exploration, lumbering, grazing. Roads have been thn1st back into the mountains, and wherever the automobile and the meat hunter can go, the sheep are soon shot out and eventually disappear.

I have seen many horns of two, three, and four-year-old rams tacked up on barns in British Columbia and Alberta. About a decade ago, British Columbia lost a large proportion of its bighorn herd because the forestry department leased out the winter bighorn range for grazing. When the snows came, the sheep went down to their traditional range and starved. The man who wants to make a Grand Slam is going to find a trophy bighorn tougher and tougher to come by.

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The so-called thinhorn sheep — the Stone and the Dall — present fewer problems, but northern British Columbia, the Yukon, and Alaska are developing rapidly. A railroad up the Rocky Mountain trench in British Columbia is under construction, and the route is right in the midst of the Stone-sheep country. New roads in northern British Columbia and the Yukon are making new areas accessible to automobile hunters.

Today, most trophy hunters are flown in to one of the many lakes in the Stone and Dall-sheep country. They often hunt sheep the same day they arrive. Many of them, alas, want to get the unpleasant business of hunting in the boondocks over with as soon as possible. Because of ease of access from the great number of lakes, these northern sheep are vulnerable.

The plane has cheapened and revolutionized sheep hunting. It is against the law to use a plane to scout for sheep, but I am told the law is commonly ignored. I have also heard of many instances in which small planes with doughnut tires have landed hunters on smooth ridges above the sheep. Then the guide and hunter hunt down. Later the plane picks up men and trophies.

The use of helicopters is even worse. The desire of instant big-game hunters to knock off a trophy ram and get the hell out as quickly as possible has given rise to the price-tag system of hunting. It is particularly prevalent in Alaska. The outfitter guarantees a ram or a grizzly for a flat fee, usually substantial. Go in, get the trophy, get out. Bingo! It’s just like buying a steak or a can of corn in the supermarket. Price is plainly marked, and satisfaction is guaranteed.

Seeking the prestige of the Grand Slam has given rise to a tremendous amount of lying, poaching, and cheating, particularly as regards the desert bighorn. One year I went to the annual award dinner of the Boone and Crockett Club. One of the prize-winning trophies was a very good set of desert-ram horns on a very small scalp that had been stretched to the limit in mounting. It was obvious that the skull had been picked up somewhere and a taxidermist had stretched the scalp of an immature ram over it. How the judges could have been fooled, I’ll never know. I have seen several such mounts. A prominent taxidermist has told me that a high proportion of desert-sheep trophies sent to him for mounting by various outfitters were picked-up ram horns with scalps from ewes or immature rams.

One famous trophy hunter, who has now passed to his reward, is listed by Householder as having more than one Grand Slam. After his death, this man’s best friend told me that the man had never shot a desert bighorn. When he hunted desert sheep, he sent his guide up with a rifle, and the trophies were brought down for his approval. Desert sheep hunting is very hard work!

In another case, an acquaintance of mine told me of two magnificent rams he had taken. He described the hunts in breathtaking detail. Some years later, I chanced to run into the outfitter and guide who had taken him out. I innocently inquired where this mighty hunter had polished off those splendid old rams. They laughed so hard they almost fell off their bar stools. One head, they told me, was a pickup that had been given to him by an old trapper, and he had bought the other from an Indian who had found the ram where it had been killed by a spring snowslide.

The poaching of desert sheep is widespread. I am told that it is not common in Arizona now, but back in the 1920’s and 1930’s, it was routine for the lawless to hunt Arizona sheep for trophies and meat. One Arizona outfitter advertised Mexican sheep hunts in those days, but in Sonora the rurales (mobile police) were looking for him. As a consequence, he told his clients they were in Mexico but did all his hunting in Arizona. One citizen of California has bragged that in recent years he has shot several desert rams in Arizona along the lower Colorado River.

Another Grand Slammer, who has more than a few dollars, knocked off his desert bighorn in Utah. Even today, Nevada game officials believe poaching significantly limits the number of Nelson’s desert bighorn.

A man who has long been in the desert-sheep-poaching business is Hugo Castellanos, a Mexican national, who until recently lived in a suburb of San Diego, California. In December 1971, Castellanos was arrested by officers of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. An Associated Press story with a December 16 Los Angeles dateline quotes the Service as saying that over the years, Castellanos had taken 200 sheep-poaching American hunters into Baja California. The latest word is that Castellanos jumped bail and is now operating from the Mexican side of the border.

I know one man who completed his Slam with Castellanos. I understand that Castellanos guaranteed every client a trophy. In order to be able to do this, he kept Mexican hunters out in the mountains. They shot rams and brought the heads and scalps to Castellanos, who had a warehouse on the Mexican side. If the client didn’t manage to shoot a ram, he took one of those heads home. The fee was $1,000 for the first head. If the client wanted to be a “real” desert-sheep hunter, he could get a second head for S500 and a third for $250. That’s merchandising!

Such high jinks have been going on for a long time. Way back in the early 1930’s, I knew a Mexican who lived in the Sonora village of Sonoyta. He made a doubtful and precarious living by smuggling dope and Chinese and by running off an occasional cow and selling the animal on the American side. He also shot big rams for a Los Angeles taxidermist, who came around once a year to pick them up.

The most-famous example of barefaced poaching of desert sheep was revealed by the Swanson case in California. Swanson, a California taxidermist, took trophy-hungry hunters out to poach rams in the Anza-Borrego State Park and other isolated areas in the California desert. His fees were high. Swanson pleaded guilty. He had good bookkeeping records, and a considerable number of hunters had their desert-sheep heads seized and paid fines. One of Swanson’s clients, who had just completed a Grand Slam was about to receive a prestigious award that goes to outstanding big-game hunters. It was learned that state as well as federal authorities were going to put the arm on him at the award ceremony. He landed in California, but he was warned. He turned around and went back to the place he had come from.

Bob Housholder, keeper of the Grand Slam records, tells me that over 200 people have presumably collected all four varieties of.North American wild sheep. It is a Big Deal! Several have now had the honor of knocking off all four varieties in one season. That’s a pretty breathless operation and requires a lot of rushing about, but it can be done if the hunter has sufficient scratch. I noted that seven women had taken the Grand Slam.

I heard somewhere that one lad of 17 or 18 has done it all within one season, I believe.

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Of the 200 or more Grand Slammers, Bob Housholder tells me that 60 have completed the slam with Arizona rams. Where did all those other desert sheep come from? No vast number have come legally out of Mexico, and certainly not all hunters who took legal desert rams have taken the three other varieties of sheep.

I love sheep hunting! I love sheep country from the hot, barren mountains of Sonora to the slanting sheep pastures far above timberline in northern British Columbia and the Yukon. In the days when hunters packed in to wilderness areas, climbed, sweated, looked over enough sheep to get outstanding rams and shot their own, I thought it the greatest field sport in the world. It is still a great sport, but the instant sheep hunters out for prestige and the crooked outfitters out for the fast buck are making sheep hunting stink pretty bad around the edges.

This story, “The Grand Slam Caper,” first appeared in the January 1973 issue of Outdoor Life.