Body size will be notably bigger, heavily muscled, and the old ones walk stiff legged with a determined purpose — while the youngsters will make way, giving old warriors room.

Story and photography by Shane Jahn

After a full day of careful glassing with our binoculars, we had only spotted a couple of young aoudads. No doubt others were near, but the rugged country just north of Big Bend National Park was keeping them safely hidden and out of view.

A writer could wear out a thesaurus describing the inhospitable beauty of this stretch of Chihuahuan Desert. Serrated mountain peaks, palisades of rim rock, serpentine stalks of thorned ocotillo and a plethora of other native cacti make up the stunning landscape. Midday for much of the year is hotter than the hinges of hell and the blue northers of winter can turn the desert bitterly cold. Folks either love it or hate it, with very few who teeter in between. I happily fall into the first category.

My wife, Jill, youngest daughter Collins, and the family pooch, CC, were hunting with Atticus Freeland on the Chalk Draw Ranch in southern Brewster County. Our little entourage made it very difficult to take off afoot over ridges and rocky hillsides. Much of our time was spent moving the pickup from one vantage point to the next and picking apart the rock-studded slopes with binoculars. We planned for Jill to take a respectable ram once we found one, as she had bought the hunt at a local school fundraiser.

Late afternoon of the second day of hunting brought us along a rough ranch road below a mountain ridge with a distinct rim rock outcropping. Just to the western side of the pinnacle lies a saddle on the horizon.  In that u-shaped depression stood an aoudad ram, chaps flowing in the breeze.  Atticus spotted him first and directed my eyes to his location several hundred yards away.

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