My first time visiting the Yukon was last summer before the Fishing Grizzlies of the Taku. Since then I was back again in November as the starting point of our Alaska Eagles trip. The landscape in this area are just stunning, so when I was given the opportunity to go up to the Yukon and actually spend some time photographing there (as opposed to just using it as a trip starting point), I jumped at the chance. This time, the plan was to spend a few days photographing Dall Sheep that call many of the mountain ranges in this area home.

Anyone that knows me knows that I prefer to photograph the large carnivores of North America (and as evidenced in my portfolio and journeys galleries). Going on a trip that wasn’t focused around these species was certainly a change, but I was up for the change.

I will admit heading into the trip, I thought I would end up with some decent images of Dall Sheep, but I really didn’t expect the calibre of images that I would get. The animalscape opportunities in this area were way better than I anticipated, and some of the best of all the places that I have visited. Instead of just shooting a Dall Sheep, you are really shooting landscape images with Dall Sheep in the image, and the landscapes were really quite stunning.

In addition to getting animalscapes, we were also able to capture images of a Ram that lost one of his horns (likely during the rut last year), which our wildlife guide said was really quite rare. We also got some cute images of moms and yearlings resting, and eating together. For just being there for two days, I was really impressed with the variety of images that I was able to capture.

Getting to the areas where these sheep live is really a physical challenge, especially while carrying all my camera gear (two pro bodies and multiple lenses including a 500). We were also dealing with really strong winds and melting snow conditions, but braving these conditions was worth it for the images that I came away with. These were not shooting from the side of the road, or set-up type of images, instead one location required almost two hours of walking in melting snow, and then up and down a pretty steep hill to get to the area where the Rams were hanging out.

This trip gave me a greater appreciation for the life that these sheep have to endure, sleeping on the edge of cliffs, battling winds, climbing mountains, and all the while trying to avoid the predators that also call this area home (such as wolves and wolverines). I know that Dall Sheep were born to live in these conditions, whereas my body clearly was not built to climb mountains. However I endured, and was able to capture some simply stunning images, that I could never have imagined before going on the trip. Having to work so hard for these images actually makes the images more valuable to me, and other than one other photographed (Brad Hill), no one will have these images, because we were the only ones shooting on the hillside these days.

At the end of the two days, I was really sad that I didn’t plan to spend more time with these guys, but when booking you think 2 days should be enough time with Sheep, right? I bet if I spent a week there I would have walked away with some very unique images, with each day offering something different.

To find out more about this trip, feel free to contact me at [email protected].