- Joined
- Jul 16, 2024
- Messages
- 406
- Reaction score
- 1,652
- Location
- LONDON
- Website
- www.johnrigbyandco.com
- Deals & offers
- 15
- Media
- 27
- Articles
- 22
In the second instalment of our Rigby Community in the Field series, we’re sharing the story of Jonathan Wright, who took his Rigby Big Game Rifle on a bucket list Dall sheep hunt deep in the wilderness of the Northwest Territories of Canada. To honour the talent and personality of the community member submitting their Rigby tale, every story in this series is presented in the hunter’s own words wherever possible.
Rigby Community in the Field: Jonathan Wright (a/k/a @Raskolnikov743)
Craig Boddington wrote that he “took [his] first wild sheep in 1973 with a .375 H&H,” and that he “would not even try to justify that one!” Upon reading those words, I knew I would take my first wild sheep with not only a .375 H&H, but with a .375 H&H Rigby Big Game. I had my reasons, but in short, I wanted his story to be a footnote in my own.
In January 2025, Werner A. and Sunny P. of South Nahanni Outfitters called with a cancellation. If I wanted the August 2025 slot, I had to put money down immediately. Without hesitation – or my wife’s permission – the trip was set: nine days in the NWT’s Mackenzie Mountains.
That left me seven or eight months to prepare. I trained hard, carried heavy packs, and cut weight from 288 to a serviceable (and muscular, as I like to remind my wife) 260 pounds.
When I arrived in Whitehorse, Yukon, I met my guide named Brent Sinclair. I told him, confidently, that despite my size, “I can move.” Walking with him through town proved that statement needed an asterisk. Brent moved like a caribou on a mission: long strides, eyes forward, never breaking rhythm. We were delayed in Whitehorse waiting for weather to clear so we could fly into South Nahanni’s NWT basecamp, and a few of us would walk to town with Brent. More than once we said, half-joking, “whoever gets paired up with that guy is in for it.” It was only a joke until I learned it wasn’t.
At basecamp someone started calling me “Big Jon.” I learned quickly it was affectionate, but it still stuck. Werner’s notes in the canteen read:
Hunter 1 – Kish; Hunter 2 – Milan; Hunter 3 – Tom; Hunter 4 – Warren; Hunter 5 (“Big Jon”) – Brent.
After the weather finally cleared, we flew in on a small Cessna. I sat up front beside the pilot, which in that country feels less like a passenger seat and more like an invitation to witness the whole operation. The mountains looked like a raised, jagged map. The rivers looked too cold to touch. And every time the plane shifted, I remembered just how far from ordinary life we were going. My Rigby was in its soft, navy case, and another hunter held it during the flight. When we landed, he said, in a thick Arkansas accent, “I need to see what’s inside this package: I’ve been thinking about it the entire trip.”
Out came my Rigby Big Game in .375H&H. There were nods, and a few jokes from guides – “moose or buffalo?” – but I had my reasons. One was simple: I’m not a marksman; and I know it. A .375 Rigby would force me to get close on sheep. And, if the country held grizzlies (it did), it comforted me to have what I felt was enough gun to deal with trouble.
There were other reasons, too. My non-hunting father used to ask, repeatedly, that I promise I’d never hunt around grizzly bears. I never made that promise. I told him only that if I ever did, I’d be as cautious as humanly possible. Sadly, last November 2024, while I was hunting whitetail in Michigan, my brothers texted me: “Dad had a stroke.” I cannot tell him this story today, though I hope someday I will.
And in May 2025 my mother died of cancer. We buried her in Virginia in June. Before this hunt, I hadn’t truly slowed down and faced her passing. Mom had a way of cutting through things. “Hang in there, Jon.” And “get what you want in life, Jonboy.” I wanted this sheep hunt. God rest her soul.
Before we headed out, we had the famous range time. Most hunters fired a handful of shots and confirmed their rifles at distance. Here are my confessions: I’d never shot my Rigby beyond 100 yards. I stepped up to the 200-yard target and sent three rounds. All high by three or four inches. With eyes on me and my pride pinched, I finally said, “I might need a little help.”
And then something happened that tells you a lot about sheep hunters. The crowd didn’t sneer; they moved in. A friendly village formed around me, spotting, advising, adjusting, steadying. Among them was Brent. “Mind if I take a couple shots, Big Jon?” he asked. I answered, “it’s not my wife, I don’t mind if you touch her.” That got a laugh, and someone said, “I’m borrowing that.”
I was the last to fly out. Before my buddy Michael left, he came into the cabin where I was pacing and asked if we could pray. We bowed our heads, exchanged quick words, and off he flew. I became the “last of the Mohicans,” a theme that would echo later.
Brent and I lifted into the mountains by helicopter and set a spike camp. Watching the helicopter disappear was surreal. I’d never been so remote.
The first days were work: long climbs, glassing, and more glassing. My body held up, which felt like its own quiet victory. Blueberries broke up the grind, and Brent’s pace never changed – steady, efficient, built for that terrain. I found myself repeating the same sentence as a sort of metronome, keeping panic and fatigue in their place. I adopted a phrase I spoke out loud: “one foot at a time…because two will kill you.” Day three we were socked in by cloud and rain. I spent the hours in camp satellite texting my wife, journaling, and reading my Bible, listening to rain drum on nylon and trying not to count days.
By day four, the pressure was real. I’d heard the words every sheep hunter wants to hear – “ram down” – coming in by satellite from camp. I also heard that three of the other hunters had gotten their rams. I was the last of the Mohicans, and I felt it in my bones. Day four we climbed hard, crossed a difficult rushing stream, and glassed for hours with nothing to show. Late afternoon I asked, “could the rams have moved?” Brent replied, “they don’t move too much, if they do not have to. But it does seem they’re just not here.”
To confess, I was borderline distraught. Brent said we’d try the area once more and then change plans. I complained to my wife via satellite texts; she was unsympathetic. I needed that.
That night, from his tent, Brent yelled: “Pack your bags, Pilgrim! We’re moving out.” My mood flipped. We packed in the dark, and when the helicopter came in, its rotors ripped at the little pocket of calm we’d made for ourselves. I remember looking back at that first spike camp, our small oasis, now about to be erased, and tearing up as the machine pulled us away from it. Then the mountains took over again, and emotion had to make room for the next move.
We relocated by helicopter, and Werner himself met us. He pointed to a far mountain and said, “Kill a nice big ram, way up there.” Distance in the mountains is deceiving – what looks close, is far.
Day five we set off early. Brent glassed sheep in the distance. “They’re slowly moving upward,” he said. “And we’ve got a pretty poor approach.” I asked about our chances. “It’s all we’ve got. We’ll get on them.”
We climbed, crossed the ridge, and eventually had to work around the backside with its crags, boulders and shifty footing. I asked, “isn’t this treacherous?” Brent answered, “it’s the only way to the sheep, Jonathan.” First time he’d used my full name. I knew we were in serious territory.
When we finally eased into position, Brent whispered: “Keep very low…about 15 of them down there, many, many eyes.” The band was below us. Too far for my comfort. “Lean on your back,” he instructed, “rifle on chest, and just slide down the mountain until I stop.”
We settled high above them at about 250–300 yards. Two rams stood out. One older, one younger. The younger had fine lamb tips, “but he’s not as old,” Brent said. So, I settled on the older ram.
After fifteen or twenty minutes, the ram finally started to get up and move about. My heart raced, but my breathing stayed steady. Brent confirmed the distance at about 250 yards, a shot I’d never taken in my life, but my Swarovski scope was fit for purpose. “Place the crosshair right at the top of his back,” he said, “not on him, but just above his back, like you’re going to graze one of his top back hairs.”
After Brent’s “any time now,” I breathed out and squeezed. The .375 Rigby filled the bowl of that valley. “You got him,” Brent said. “You sure?” I asked.
“Yep, but you got him in the gut. He’s going to go down.”
“I don’t like the gut shot,” I said. “I want to take him out.”
“If you’re on him, then go ahead – just make sure you’re on him, not any of the others.”
Shot two went high. Shot three went high. Brent stayed calm. “Let’s put one more in there…aim at the middle of his body, dead center, Jonathan.” Again, the full Christian name.
I breathed, wrapped my finger around the trigger, and pulled.
“HeheHeeeee!!! Thank you, Lord… I told you, you weren’t going home without a sheep,” Brent shouted, and we hugged like brothers. Then we both cried. “Happens to me every time,” he said.
I watched the younger sheep run up to the downed ram, as if checking on him, before they fled. It’s a small thing, but it hit me hard. For years they had probably known that old ram. He had probably known them. Then, in a matter of seconds, the whole arrangement was altered, and they vanished into that country like it had never happened.
When we reached the area and approached him, we could see he was a big ram. But to our real surprise, he was huge. I’d taken what I would learn was a 160 cumulative ram, a dream Dall sheep for any hunter, much less a first-time sheep hunter.
I will not bore you with the rest: the pack out, the weight of that ram on my back and in my thoughts, the stories back at camp, and the small rituals that follow a hard-earned animal. I will say this: I ate the sheep heart, mixed in with boiling water and mountain-man beef stroganoff, because it felt right to do so. I also went on the two days’ (“unsuccessful”) caribou hunt that followed, because I still had time left to hunt and because, after sheep, you feel like anything is possible. And yes – there was the grizzly bear that walked 50–75 yards from my tent one evening while Brent was taking his own ‘constitutional’ – a reminder, delivered without drama, that we were visitors in somebody else’s country.
On my final night in Whitehorse, I returned to the Golden Pan Saloon and met an older sheep hunter. We spoke for a couple hours over steak and Yukon beverages. Then he asked, out of nowhere: “When you got your ram…did you cry?”
I smiled. “Yea I sure did. Why or how did you know to ask me that?”
He said, “figured you did. A lot of us do.”
Since then, I’ve thought about sheep, we sheep hunters, and our connection. I’ve never cried over a deer, an African antelope, or a cape buffalo. But something is different about the sheep.
Maybe it’s something in our DNA. For some reason, God has always known that we relate to shepherds and sheep more than any other animal. From Abraham and Jacob to sacrificial lambs, to King David, Psalm 23, and the lamb of God, the Bible is prolific in its employment of sheep and shepherd analogies. The list is endless.
Rigby Community in the Field: Jonathan Wright (a/k/a @Raskolnikov743)
Craig Boddington wrote that he “took [his] first wild sheep in 1973 with a .375 H&H,” and that he “would not even try to justify that one!” Upon reading those words, I knew I would take my first wild sheep with not only a .375 H&H, but with a .375 H&H Rigby Big Game. I had my reasons, but in short, I wanted his story to be a footnote in my own.
In January 2025, Werner A. and Sunny P. of South Nahanni Outfitters called with a cancellation. If I wanted the August 2025 slot, I had to put money down immediately. Without hesitation – or my wife’s permission – the trip was set: nine days in the NWT’s Mackenzie Mountains.
That left me seven or eight months to prepare. I trained hard, carried heavy packs, and cut weight from 288 to a serviceable (and muscular, as I like to remind my wife) 260 pounds.
When I arrived in Whitehorse, Yukon, I met my guide named Brent Sinclair. I told him, confidently, that despite my size, “I can move.” Walking with him through town proved that statement needed an asterisk. Brent moved like a caribou on a mission: long strides, eyes forward, never breaking rhythm. We were delayed in Whitehorse waiting for weather to clear so we could fly into South Nahanni’s NWT basecamp, and a few of us would walk to town with Brent. More than once we said, half-joking, “whoever gets paired up with that guy is in for it.” It was only a joke until I learned it wasn’t.
At basecamp someone started calling me “Big Jon.” I learned quickly it was affectionate, but it still stuck. Werner’s notes in the canteen read:
Hunter 1 – Kish; Hunter 2 – Milan; Hunter 3 – Tom; Hunter 4 – Warren; Hunter 5 (“Big Jon”) – Brent.
After the weather finally cleared, we flew in on a small Cessna. I sat up front beside the pilot, which in that country feels less like a passenger seat and more like an invitation to witness the whole operation. The mountains looked like a raised, jagged map. The rivers looked too cold to touch. And every time the plane shifted, I remembered just how far from ordinary life we were going. My Rigby was in its soft, navy case, and another hunter held it during the flight. When we landed, he said, in a thick Arkansas accent, “I need to see what’s inside this package: I’ve been thinking about it the entire trip.”
Out came my Rigby Big Game in .375H&H. There were nods, and a few jokes from guides – “moose or buffalo?” – but I had my reasons. One was simple: I’m not a marksman; and I know it. A .375 Rigby would force me to get close on sheep. And, if the country held grizzlies (it did), it comforted me to have what I felt was enough gun to deal with trouble.
There were other reasons, too. My non-hunting father used to ask, repeatedly, that I promise I’d never hunt around grizzly bears. I never made that promise. I told him only that if I ever did, I’d be as cautious as humanly possible. Sadly, last November 2024, while I was hunting whitetail in Michigan, my brothers texted me: “Dad had a stroke.” I cannot tell him this story today, though I hope someday I will.
And in May 2025 my mother died of cancer. We buried her in Virginia in June. Before this hunt, I hadn’t truly slowed down and faced her passing. Mom had a way of cutting through things. “Hang in there, Jon.” And “get what you want in life, Jonboy.” I wanted this sheep hunt. God rest her soul.
Before we headed out, we had the famous range time. Most hunters fired a handful of shots and confirmed their rifles at distance. Here are my confessions: I’d never shot my Rigby beyond 100 yards. I stepped up to the 200-yard target and sent three rounds. All high by three or four inches. With eyes on me and my pride pinched, I finally said, “I might need a little help.”
And then something happened that tells you a lot about sheep hunters. The crowd didn’t sneer; they moved in. A friendly village formed around me, spotting, advising, adjusting, steadying. Among them was Brent. “Mind if I take a couple shots, Big Jon?” he asked. I answered, “it’s not my wife, I don’t mind if you touch her.” That got a laugh, and someone said, “I’m borrowing that.”
I was the last to fly out. Before my buddy Michael left, he came into the cabin where I was pacing and asked if we could pray. We bowed our heads, exchanged quick words, and off he flew. I became the “last of the Mohicans,” a theme that would echo later.
Brent and I lifted into the mountains by helicopter and set a spike camp. Watching the helicopter disappear was surreal. I’d never been so remote.
The first days were work: long climbs, glassing, and more glassing. My body held up, which felt like its own quiet victory. Blueberries broke up the grind, and Brent’s pace never changed – steady, efficient, built for that terrain. I found myself repeating the same sentence as a sort of metronome, keeping panic and fatigue in their place. I adopted a phrase I spoke out loud: “one foot at a time…because two will kill you.” Day three we were socked in by cloud and rain. I spent the hours in camp satellite texting my wife, journaling, and reading my Bible, listening to rain drum on nylon and trying not to count days.
By day four, the pressure was real. I’d heard the words every sheep hunter wants to hear – “ram down” – coming in by satellite from camp. I also heard that three of the other hunters had gotten their rams. I was the last of the Mohicans, and I felt it in my bones. Day four we climbed hard, crossed a difficult rushing stream, and glassed for hours with nothing to show. Late afternoon I asked, “could the rams have moved?” Brent replied, “they don’t move too much, if they do not have to. But it does seem they’re just not here.”
To confess, I was borderline distraught. Brent said we’d try the area once more and then change plans. I complained to my wife via satellite texts; she was unsympathetic. I needed that.
That night, from his tent, Brent yelled: “Pack your bags, Pilgrim! We’re moving out.” My mood flipped. We packed in the dark, and when the helicopter came in, its rotors ripped at the little pocket of calm we’d made for ourselves. I remember looking back at that first spike camp, our small oasis, now about to be erased, and tearing up as the machine pulled us away from it. Then the mountains took over again, and emotion had to make room for the next move.
We relocated by helicopter, and Werner himself met us. He pointed to a far mountain and said, “Kill a nice big ram, way up there.” Distance in the mountains is deceiving – what looks close, is far.
Day five we set off early. Brent glassed sheep in the distance. “They’re slowly moving upward,” he said. “And we’ve got a pretty poor approach.” I asked about our chances. “It’s all we’ve got. We’ll get on them.”
We climbed, crossed the ridge, and eventually had to work around the backside with its crags, boulders and shifty footing. I asked, “isn’t this treacherous?” Brent answered, “it’s the only way to the sheep, Jonathan.” First time he’d used my full name. I knew we were in serious territory.
When we finally eased into position, Brent whispered: “Keep very low…about 15 of them down there, many, many eyes.” The band was below us. Too far for my comfort. “Lean on your back,” he instructed, “rifle on chest, and just slide down the mountain until I stop.”
We settled high above them at about 250–300 yards. Two rams stood out. One older, one younger. The younger had fine lamb tips, “but he’s not as old,” Brent said. So, I settled on the older ram.
After fifteen or twenty minutes, the ram finally started to get up and move about. My heart raced, but my breathing stayed steady. Brent confirmed the distance at about 250 yards, a shot I’d never taken in my life, but my Swarovski scope was fit for purpose. “Place the crosshair right at the top of his back,” he said, “not on him, but just above his back, like you’re going to graze one of his top back hairs.”
After Brent’s “any time now,” I breathed out and squeezed. The .375 Rigby filled the bowl of that valley. “You got him,” Brent said. “You sure?” I asked.
“Yep, but you got him in the gut. He’s going to go down.”
“I don’t like the gut shot,” I said. “I want to take him out.”
“If you’re on him, then go ahead – just make sure you’re on him, not any of the others.”
Shot two went high. Shot three went high. Brent stayed calm. “Let’s put one more in there…aim at the middle of his body, dead center, Jonathan.” Again, the full Christian name.
I breathed, wrapped my finger around the trigger, and pulled.
“HeheHeeeee!!! Thank you, Lord… I told you, you weren’t going home without a sheep,” Brent shouted, and we hugged like brothers. Then we both cried. “Happens to me every time,” he said.
I watched the younger sheep run up to the downed ram, as if checking on him, before they fled. It’s a small thing, but it hit me hard. For years they had probably known that old ram. He had probably known them. Then, in a matter of seconds, the whole arrangement was altered, and they vanished into that country like it had never happened.
When we reached the area and approached him, we could see he was a big ram. But to our real surprise, he was huge. I’d taken what I would learn was a 160 cumulative ram, a dream Dall sheep for any hunter, much less a first-time sheep hunter.
I will not bore you with the rest: the pack out, the weight of that ram on my back and in my thoughts, the stories back at camp, and the small rituals that follow a hard-earned animal. I will say this: I ate the sheep heart, mixed in with boiling water and mountain-man beef stroganoff, because it felt right to do so. I also went on the two days’ (“unsuccessful”) caribou hunt that followed, because I still had time left to hunt and because, after sheep, you feel like anything is possible. And yes – there was the grizzly bear that walked 50–75 yards from my tent one evening while Brent was taking his own ‘constitutional’ – a reminder, delivered without drama, that we were visitors in somebody else’s country.
On my final night in Whitehorse, I returned to the Golden Pan Saloon and met an older sheep hunter. We spoke for a couple hours over steak and Yukon beverages. Then he asked, out of nowhere: “When you got your ram…did you cry?”
I smiled. “Yea I sure did. Why or how did you know to ask me that?”
He said, “figured you did. A lot of us do.”
Since then, I’ve thought about sheep, we sheep hunters, and our connection. I’ve never cried over a deer, an African antelope, or a cape buffalo. But something is different about the sheep.
Maybe it’s something in our DNA. For some reason, God has always known that we relate to shepherds and sheep more than any other animal. From Abraham and Jacob to sacrificial lambs, to King David, Psalm 23, and the lamb of God, the Bible is prolific in its employment of sheep and shepherd analogies. The list is endless.
Last edited by a moderator:
