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The Midnight Troubadour
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Hunter: Guinn D. Crousen
Score: 208 3/8
Year: 2000
State: Luscar Mt., AB Nowadays, the vast majority of bighorn hunters wait a lifetime for their shot at hunting a massive ram. Pulling the coveted tag is akin to winning the lottery. Unless, of course, you've already won the proverbial lottery and can afford to buy yourself a tag for $200,000, which is how Guinn Crousen came about his world record sheep. Don't stop reading just because he had to pay six figures and hire at least three guides to put him on the world record ram that happened to live on a mine in western Alberta. The hunts and the stories do get much better, with the "common folk" waiting a lifetime for a tag and shooting the ram of a lifetime. In all fairness, Crousen still had to hunt and kill this amazing ram. Here's how it all went down. After shelling out $200,000 for the Alberta Minster's Tag, Crousen did his homework and knew he wanted to hunt Unit 438, an area between Jasper National Park and Cardinal River Mine known to hold colossal rams. He hired a guide who phoned him the minute the big rams started to rut. They began moving and rutting around November 7. Crousen arrived from Texas on the ninth. For two weeks, Crousen and his three guides hunted for a big ram. One ram in particular was spotted, safely shielded from the hunters as he stayed on mine property. Finally, after two and a half weeks, the guides watched the drive to mate get the better of the old ram. He came off the mine, and Crousen was waiting for him. With the boundary stakes still in sight, Crousen killed this ram with his .270 Weatherby Magnum.
Hunter: Fred Weiller
Score: 208 1/8
Year: 1911
State: Blind Canyon, AB This has to be one of the craziest tales about a head that I've ever heard. In the early 1900s, Fred Weiller supplied meat to the men who worked on Alberta's first oil well in western Canada. With his Model 1894 Winchester .30-30, he shot one very large and old ram. Weiller knew the ram was special so he saved the horns to mount on the wall of his ranch house near Blind Canyon, four miles from where he killed the ram. Friends, hunters and family members of Fred's commented on the ram and suggested he get it measured. He wouldn't hear of it. When Fred died, the old ranch house was abandoned. A family member who lived two miles away went to check on the house one day around 1964. There she found the old home had been vandalized and the ram's head was laying in the mud in the front yard. A neighbor and amateur taxidermist cleaned up the head, and it was finally allowed to be sent to the Boone & Crockett competition. But the new owner, Clarence Baird, was leery of sending it to Pittsburgh for official scoring. He finally agreed to ship the head, but on its journey it was caught in the middle of a railway strike and lost! It turned up in a warehouse in Buffalo, NY and Baird would not let the ram out of his sight again–not even for the thousands of dollars o
