Super Triangle: A Hunting Story

In the summer of 2018, I was getting ready for a once-in-a-lifetime trip: a two-week Mediterranean cruise with 21 members of my wife’s family. Her grandmother wanted one big family adventure, and I felt incredibly fortunate to be along for the ride. We stopped in Chicago for a few days before flying to Spain, and that’s when I got a call that didn’t seem real.

“Hi, is this Scott?”

“Yes…”

“Congratulations, you’ve won the Montana Super Tag for elk.”

I nearly dropped the phone. This had to be a prank. The Montana Super Tags are the ultimate lottery for big game hunters: $5 per entry with unlimited entries, one tag per species, each letting the holder hunt anywhere in the state during any legal season, even in districts that take decades or lifetimes to draw. I buy one ticket per species every year as a donation to conservation. That’s $25 I never think twice about. Winning? Never even considered it.

But the call continued.

“Actually, sorry, we made a mistake. You didn’t win the elk tag... you won the Big Horn Sheep Super Tag.”

I froze. I’m an elk hunter through and through, but a sheep tag? Not just any sheep tag, but the sheep Super Tag? That’s one of the most coveted big game tags in North America. The equivalent at auction, the Governor’s Tag, can go for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Some years, the winning bidder has even bought out the Super Tag "pot" so a family member could join the hunt. And here I was, a regular guy, with one ticket, one!, and my name had been drawn.

Cue the disbelief from fellow hunters, fwp employees, and outfitters. Most assumed I was some billionaire who bought out the ticket pool. Watching jaws drop when I said I spent $5 was part of the fun.

Here I was, holding a once-in-a-lifetime tag, boarding a flight to a once-in-a-lifetime European vacation. Most of my downtime on the cruise was spent researching sheep units. I was recently married and didn’t want to spend weeks away from my incredible wife, so I had to make the most of just a couple weekends. Unlike elk or deer hunting, where folks guard their honey holes, the sheep hunting community rallied behind me. With no competition, people wanted to help.

I scouted several “sleeper” spots in western Montana. Plenty of beautiful terrain, but nothing that got my heart racing. Then I turned my attention to the Missouri Breaks, a place I knew well from elk hunts past, and one of my favorite places in the West. It's also home to some of the biggest rams on the continent.

Archery was my dream. Rifle was my reality. I wasn't going to let pride cost me a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

However, there is a 15 day archery hunt for sheep before the rifle season begins and I made the most of it. I chased rams across the crags and coulees. I had a great stalk on a group of 15 rams but couldn’t get a clean shot on the mature one. One landowner I knew had a ranch leased to an outfitter. Once their clients filled their tags, he offered access. One of the guides agreed to take me out for a day, for just $500.

We set out at first light. Within an hour we spotted a nice ram. But as we stalked in, the ram unexpectedly circled toward us. He popped up just 30 yards away. My bow was strapped to the guide’s pack; I had my rifle in hand. I whispered, “Let’s try the bow.” But by the time I got it unstrapped, the moment passed.

We chased that ram for hours but couldn’t get a shot. Just as the sun was setting and we were about to call it, I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. Two rams, bedded in the basin below. One of them was an absolute stud, bigger than the one we’d spent all day chasing, but he busted ran around a corner into a larger bowl that we knew we could get a shot into. We ran the ridges to get in place and snuck up behind a large rock. I dropped prone and lined up the shot. One clean shot. Then another to anchor him. He dropped. I couldn’t believe it, 185 ½ inches of full curl perfection. Boone & Crockett. A dream I didn’t know I had fulfilled.

But the story doesn’t end there.

Two Weeks Later – Same Triangle, New Tag

Two weeks to the day, I was 15 miles southeast, back in the Breaks with my dad chasing elk. He had just taken up archery two years prior at age 68. We hiked hard all day. At times I thought I might have to carry him out. Finally, we spotted a herd with a nice bull.

We made a plan. My dad, exhausted, looked at me and said, “Go get him.”

I moved swiftly along the ridges while my dad watched, to cut them off at the top of the next draw. I sprinted across a 200-yard silt flat, silent underfoot, and reached a bush where I hoped to cut them off. It worked. Minutes later, the bull stepped out. 320 inches of antler. One arrow. Down.

In two weeks, I’d harvested a trophy sheep and a trophy elk, just 15 miles apart.

Fast Forward to November – One More Hunt in the Triangle

It was late November, and my wife, who’d only hunted once before, asked to join me for a “real” hunt. “Don’t hold back,” she said. “I want the full experience. I want an adventure”

I had just the thing.

We set out to a new area I’d been studying on maps, about 15 miles west of where I’d shot my elk, and 15 miles southwest of my sheep. The perfect third point in a triangle. The weather? Brutal. -6°F. And it required a river crossing in waders.

Joined by my buddy Ty, we crossed the frigid water and climbed into the hills. Deer were everywhere. Finally, we found a unique buck with gumball-sized bulges in the middle of his antlers. As we coached her on the shot, she cut us off:

“When can I just shoot already?”

Ty and I laughed. “Whenever you’re ready.”

She was. One shot. One buck down.

As the shot echoed, a big 5x5 with a kicker jumped from a nearby bed and into the next draw. We scrambled to the ridge top and got in position to take a shot. I missed. Then missed again. My wife had out-shot me on her first hunt. Finally, on my fourth shot, I connected. My biggest mule deer to date.

We got back to the truck to find my dad smiling ear to ear. Thinking he was excited for us, but He’d just tagged the biggest whitetail of his life. Just a short easy walk from the truck.

One Season. One Triangle. Four Species.

A Bighorn ram. A 320” bull elk. A unique mule deer. A mature whitetail. All harvested within 15 miles of each other, in a single unforgettable season.

The "Super Triangle" was more than a hunting season, it was a perfect alignment of luck, grit, family, and the wild beauty of Montana. It’s a story I’ll never forget, and one I doubt I could repeat in ten lifetimes.