Jim Zumbo's Desert Ram Disaster

When Editor-in-Chief David Draper suggested I write a few columns about some of my high-adventure hunts, it took me only a half second to come up with this one. It involved some profoundly serious mental, physical and personal issues—like burning my buddy’s pickup to a crisp, hiking unexpectedly 25 miles in the 105-degree scorched desert, and never seeing a single desert bighorn sheep on a hunt where I’d drawn a tag against all odds.

The first bit of bad news was shared by wildlife officials during the mandatory orientation prior to the hunt. A serious drought evidently caused sheep to hang out at scarce waterholes, springs and seeps in the vast southern Utah desert. There were no electronic devices in those days to pinpoint water sources. We found some small oases on maps, but they were dry when we located them. We had to rely on miles of hiking in the blowtorch desert heat to find tiny seeps and springs. The few we found had ancient sheep tracks around them.

I hunted the first week of the season with a pal who was in good shape. I was in my 30s and welcomed the desert challenge, but I had no idea how tough it would be. We hiked and glassed from dark to dark every day, climbing over, under and in between endless rock formations. Taking a break meant sitting on a ridge, wiping the perspiration from our eyeglasses and picking apart every bit of landscape with our binoculars, expecting to see a ram. I never gave up hope. Every time I hopped over a rocky rim to look into a new drainage, I’d imagine my ram out there waiting for me. Didn’t happen.

I planned on spending a couple days at home and then returning for the rest of the hunt. Bad move. While driving I heard a news report on the radio about an outfitter killing the last grizzly in Colorado with a handheld arrow. Since I was working full-time for Outdoor Life magazine, I called the editor in the New York office. He wanted the story pronto, so I spent a week in the Alamosa hospital interviewing the outfitter who was badly mauled. The nurses allowed me to talk to him only a few minutes every day. As it turned out, the outfitter survived, the grizzly was, and remains, the last in Colorado, the editor liked the story and I lost precious time from my sheep hunt.

Double-Time

Doug McKnight joined me on the rest of the hunt. He owned a sporting goods store in St. George, Utah and was an avid outdoorsman. He’d been in the area before but that was during normal years when droughts weren’t an issue.

Again, we spent every minute of daylight crawling around rocks, hiking into new areas and expanding our search. In places, we could look down and see sprawling Lake Powell shimmering in the desert. We wondered, tongue in cheek, if the sheep were maybe down there, and considered finding a way down, but it appeared that the 300-400 foot cliffs were not human friendly. Rappelling down wasn’t an option.

With a few days left Doug suggested we drive into a valley as far as we could, then make a last ditch effort and spend the rest of the season bivouacking and living in the rocks. Doug’s truck lurched, slammed and slid down a rocky road that required me to guide each tire over rocks. At the bottom the truck got stuck in a blowsand wash. We worked for hours in the intense heat and managed to get it out.

A few minutes later, while taking a break in the shade of a small tree, we saw black smoke and flames coming from the underside of the pickup. Despite our efforts to put it out the vehicle burned to the ground while we watched helplessly from a distance as 30-foot high flames engulfed and destroyed the pickup. We figured we’d somehow ruptured the gas line in our efforts to get the truck out. Perhaps the hot muffler caused the fuel to ignite.

Engulfed

Totally dejected, we hiked two dozen miles to camp in the night and drove my truck back to pick up the gear we were able to recover. The hunt was over. We were despondent, devastated. I drove Doug home and when I returned to get my camper, I saw a note on the door. An outfitter we’d met wrote that his hunter killed a ram and another ram remained bedded close by. He drew a rough map. I drove like a madman to the spot and arrived just before shooting light was over on that last day of the season. I saw a coyote on the gut pile and no ram.

I learned that of 17 hunters, only two rams were taken. I had excitedly called Jack O’Connor when I initially learned I’d drawn a tag. He was excited for me. Now I dreaded calling him back, as he requested. The hunt from hell was now a memory, never to be forgotten. My dreams of killing a desert bighorn were just that—dreams.

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