Dad and I went down to central California to shoot some pigs, and while we were there the ranch owner told us he had a few exotic rams roaming the property, and if we saw one we liked we could take it for an additional fee. We ended up both getting our pigs the first evening, and on the way back to the ranch house we ran across a large Texas Dall ram that had a Barbados ram hanging with him. Dad took the ram with his rifle, and I took the Barbados with my 45 colt Blackhawk.

The Barbados was just kind of hanging around with the Dall and was acting weird, so I tried to sneak as quietly as I could through the scattered oaks. I ended up getting around 50 yards from the Barbados, got set up, shot, and saw that my shot was high, waaay too high. I checked the pistol before we left for the trip so I thought wow I must have just jerked the trigger, took my time, Barbados didn't run very far, got back on it and fired... same place way high. The Barbados took off running but was struggling, ranch owner got on him with the binos and said he had a bad front foot for some reason, not related to my first two shots. We were able to get back on him a ways around the hillside and I got ahead of him in the oaks. Based on the ranch owners estimate of how high my first shots were I aimed roughly that much low and fired. Now it was too low, I broke its front leg and clipped the brisket and it went down. I got up slightly closer and it tried getting back up, but now that I had a better idea of where my shots were going versus where I was aiming I waited until I could see it in the tall dry grass and shot it in the head from 30 yards.

I had handed my backpack with my pistol in it to the landowners girlfriend when we had originally got in the UTV when the hunt started and asked her to carefully tuck it into the corner of the bed between the other packs since we were primarily rifle hunting. After the Barbados was down finally, I asked the ranch owners girlfriend if she felt like my bag had gotten bumped before she handed it to me when I started to stalk the Barbados the first time. She responded "Oh wait your pistol was in there???, when the pigs took off after you shot your boar with the rifle and we drove up that steep bumpy hill to get ahead of them so your dad could shoot one out of that group, that backpack was rolling and bouncing all over the UTV bed here for the better part of 30 minutes, I didn't know your pistol was in there, I thought you had it up front with you, sorry!..."

So when we got back home, I checked the pistol at the range, and yep, it was way high and slightly off to the left. I was just so confused with the Barbados because when I checked the pistol before we left I could bounce soda cans at 25 yards with it. Needless to say the 225 XPB @ 1500 fps was effective through the rams temples, and the bullet was not recovered. Since I was trying to guesstimate somewhat where the gun should hit on the fly, the shot to the head happened as the ram was turning to try and run, so the bullet went right through the center of the horn before going through its head and exiting. Looks like I will be getting a different holster so it is more comfortable riding in the UTV so I'm not tempted to tuck it in my backpack, lesson learned!!!


Eric.