Young hunter takes home bragging rights

It wasn’t easy, but 14-year-old Lacey Johns got her bighorn sheep last month.

The Columbia Falls High School freshman shot the big ram on Berray Mountain, in the Cabinet Range south of Bull Lake.

Accompanied by her mother Kimberly Johns, local hunting guide Rob Yoder and family friend David Overman, Lacey climbed up and down the cliffy west face of the mountain over and over again from Nov. 15 to 29.

“We climbed 2,500 and sometimes 4,000 vertical feet above the valley floor just about every day,” Kimberly said.

Some days were warm, but other days it rained, making the rocks slippery and dangerous. In places, waterfalls were frozen and half a foot of snow covered the slopes.

“We’d start up the mountain about 7:30 a.m. when it got light, reach a high point, glass the mountain for sheep, and then descend around dusk, using headlamps in the dark,” Kimberly said.

“I told myself, the faster you get up there, the sooner you get out,” Lacey said.

The sheep were in rut and herded together, Kimberly said. Lacey shot the ram with a .260 Remington from about 75 yards away.

“She made a perfect shot,” Kimberly said.

The group helped Lacey pack out the head, cape and meat. Kimberly said the plan is to get a full-mount trophy made and use the meat for steaks and pepper sticks.

“The guide said Lacey and I were the toughest women he’d ever met,” Kimberly said. “He said he’s guided men who were always complaining when it got tough.”

“I’d do it again,” Lacey said. “It was a real adrenaline rush.”

She said her gym teacher at the high school, Jessie Schaeffer, was quite impressed.

“I’d tell my friends to get into it,” Lacey said.

Lacey has hunted since she was 12. It was a hard decision for her to not play high school sports so she could hunt. But she loves softball and won’t miss next year’s season.

She comes from a long line of avid hunters. Nine years ago, the Hungry Horse News ran a story about her great grandmother Helen McLouth’s successful moose hunt.

Two years before that, the Hungry Horse News ran a story about her great grandfather Harold McLouth bagging a moose.

And the tradition continues. Lacey’s 12-year-old sister Kaylee, a student at Columbia Falls Junior High School, shot her first doe this fall.

“Kaylee wants to put in for a ram next year,” Kimberly said.