By STEPHANIE BUNKER
Moapa Valley Progress
Longtime residents of Moapa, the Staley family are avid hunters. This year, two of the Staley brothers drew the coveted Big Horn Sheep hunt in southern Nevada. Larry Staley drew a tag in area 244 around Arrow Canyon. His brother, Riley, drew his tag in area 268 in the Muddy Mountains.
Larry began preparing for his hunt shortly after finding out about his tag. He was out searching for rams at the beginning of June and continued to scour through the canyons in the scorching heat of the summer. During that time, he spotted two really nice rams that he nicknamed Big Boy and Black Eye.
“Black Eye had a black indenture in his left horn that made it look like an eye,” Larry explained.
Big Boy lived up to his name and was a trophy-sized ram.
Larry would have taken either one of these two rams, but his number one pick was, of course, Big Boy. “I had seen him on the hoof and got some video of him,” Larry said. “The second I saw him I knew he was the one I wanted.”
Now that he had discovered the rams and had them chosen, he just needed to locate one of them during hunting season.
When the season opened, the Staley family and friends were there in full support. Every day Larry hunted, he had five or six people out helping him. He sent them out in all directions scouring the hills for some big rams. A time or two, they found a decent-sized ram and would look them over and deliberate. In the end, Larry wouldn’t settle for anything smaller than Big Boy or Black Eye.
The hunt opened on Tuesday, November 20, and the party hunted hard for five days. Larry said he was up at 4 a.m. and wouldn’t go to bed until nine or ten at night, staying up to prepare for the following day’s hunt.
Meanwhile, Larry’s brother, Riley could only hunt for his sheep on the weekends. So on the morning of Thanksgiving, Larry took a break from his hunt and the Staley crew focused on Riley’s.
They headed out to the Muddy Mountains and as soon as their dad, Garen, pulled up his binoculars he found a pack of rams high on the mountain. They were about seven hundred yards away, feeding on the land. They determined there was a ram in the herd big enough for Riley to shoot, so Riley and Larry hoofed their way over and got to within 430 yards.
“Riley laid down prone to get set up for a shot,” Larry recalled. “He took a few minutes to get his composure and then he made a heck of a shot.”
Riley dropped the ram within 45 minutes of first light. Riley’s ram scored 162 inches.
When they finished celebrating, gutting, and skinning Riley’s sheep, they went back to Larry’s area and continued hunting. When they didn’t find the shooter he was looking for, they went back home and had Thanksgiving dinner that evening.
The following day, the group was out again. They found a herd of eight rams, but none of them were what Staley wanted.
“I was getting discouraged not seeing the rams I wanted,” Larry said. “I had planned on taking two full weeks off from work to hunt, but my dad was worried because I was hunting hard every day. He was afraid I would get burned out and settle for a sheep I didn’t want.”
Garen suggested that Larry go back to work on Monday and take a break from hunting for a day or two. Larry seriously considered that suggestion. But on Saturday morning they went out again. The group split up to sift through as much of the area as they could. Larry went into a canyon and saw four rams.
“They had a lot of length but they didn’t hold their mass,” he explained.
Larry had just picked up his bag to move on when hunting partner Kyle Leavitt told him he might want to come and take a look through the glass.
“As soon as I looked through the spotting scope, I knew it was Big Boy,” Larry said.
His friend Jared Dimick had seen Big Boy as well and confirmed it was him. Kyle stayed on the spotting scope and tracked the ram while Larry and Jared made their move up the wash to get closer. The ram spotted the party and started moving up the hill, eventually going over it.
When the ram crossed over the top, Larry radioed his dad and told him their plan and to make sure he kept an eye out for the ram. Five minutes later, Garen radioed back and said he could see the ram. From where Larry started his hike to the top of the mountain was three-and-a-half miles up steep terrain. It took him an hour to reach it. By that time, Garen couldn’t see the ram any longer, he could only see some ewes bedding down.
They knew the rams had to be just out of their vision in the area. Their options were to either wait for the rams to stand up or to push them out. They decided to start walking toward the ewes, and when they got within seventy-five yards, the ewes took off running. In response, Larry and Jared started moving at a quicker pace.
Soon Jared spotted the rams on the northern side of the canyon. Larry threw down his pack, laid down, and took the shot at 120 yards. The ram took off over a hill and disappeared.
“You hammered him,” said Larry’s buddies who were watching. “He is down!”
And the celebrating began! Larry had harvested a monster ram that scored 178 inches.
Garen watched the whole scene play out before him in a spotting scope from his place down at the road.
“The whole thing came full circle,” said Larry. “When I was seventeen, I watched my dad shoot his 173-inch ram through a spotting scope from the road.”
Larry was so thankful for all of the support he was given by friends and family. “John Hunt was the guy that took me into the area and showed me what I needed to look at and how to judge a sheep,” said Larry. “Through all the scouting, he was there.”
“It was stressful and we put in a lot of hiking miles but it was well worth it,” said Larry of his fairy tale hunt. “It turned out like I wanted. It was challenging but very rewarding.”
