They’d heard reports of a massive ram — a potential state record — living somewhere out there in the rugged terrain of the Little Missouri National Grasslands in western North Dakota, but they didn’t see it until late that afternoon.
Days later, Nick Schmitz says he gets goosebumps just thinking about the encounter.
It was Friday, Oct. 31, the opening day of North Dakota’s bighorn sheep season, and Schmitz, of Grand Forks, had been lucky enough to draw one of the eight tags available in 2025 for the once-in-a-lifetime hunt.
Nick Schmitz of Grand Forks, N.D., holds up the head of the massive bighorn sheep ram he shot Friday, Oct. 31, 2025, in the Little Missouri National Grasslands of western North Dakota. The ram, which had a green score of 197 6/8 inches, is the unofficial new North Dakota state record ram. (David Suda via Brett Wiedmann / North Dakota Game and Fish Department)
Joining him was his dad, Jeff Schmitz, of Mekinock, N.D.; brother-in-law Tim Spicer, of Cavalier; and buddy David Suda, of Fargo.
Suda, who drew a bighorn tag in 2020, shot a 7-year-old ram with horns that measured 186 3/8 inches, setting a record as the highest-scoring ram ever taken in North Dakota.
Until Oct. 31, that is. Schmitz shot the unofficial new record, a massive ram with horns that green-scored 197 6/8 inches, a measurement that won’t be official until after the mandatory 60-day drying period.
“He’ll shatter (Suda’s) state record — probably by about 10 inches,” said Brett Wiedmann, big game biologist for the North Dakota Game and Fish Department in Dickinson. A certified measurer for Boone and Crockett, Wiedmann scored the ram.
Any ram measuring 190 inches or more is something really special, he said.
“I told (Nick), I said, ‘You arguably just shot the greatest hunting trophy in North Dakota’s history,’ ” Wiedmann said. “That ram is that special; I mean, he’s at the top — just an amazing animal.”
Snow and sleet
The weather on opening day morning “wasn’t that great,” Schmitz said — a mix of wind, snow and sleet — when they set out across the Badlands to see what they could see.
“Visibility wasn’t that good,” he said. “You couldn’t see over half a mile.”
A civil engineer for Blattner Co., Schmitz was hunting in Unit B4 — North Dakota’s northernmost bighorn hunting unit — west of Grassy Butte. They’d barely gotten out of the truck, he recalls, when Spicer spotted a nice ram about 300 yards away.
Unfortunately, the ram saw them, too.
“It was a pretty decent-sized ram,” Schmitz said. “We figured that it would have been a ‘shooter.’ It had a big body — really dark — I just saw really wide, massive horns. He kind of went and ran over the top of a hill and we lost him.”
Traipsing through the snow and sleet, they spent the rest of the morning trying to spot the ram with no luck. It was nearly noon when they decided to head back to the trucks and regroup.
“We ate some lunch, drank some water and refueled,” Schmitz said. “We were pretty wet from all the snow. We were a little tired, and our boots and feet were wet — we’d climbed quite a bit.”
They decided to take a midday drive closer to the Little Missouri River, spotting three or four rams with ewes, Schmitz recalls.
“It was pretty cool just to see their behavior,” he said. “And, of course, where they’re located, they’re on the side of a straight up-and-down cliff. It’s always fun just watching them.”
Since the weather had improved, they decided to spend the afternoon walking the ridges in search of a ram.
Excitement builds
About 4 p.m., they spotted the massive ram they’d heard about, near the bottom of a draw more than 300 yards away; the ram was with 11 ewes.
“I get down and I look through my binoculars and I can see the ram, and Dave (Suda) broke out his spotting scope so he sees the ram,” Schmitz said. “And I’ll never forget — this is when he just kind of looks back at me, real slowly — and he just says, ‘Nick, this is him. This is a shooter.’”
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By this time, Schmitz says he was “bent over, just like wheezing.”
“I just about had a panic attack … it’s all kind of coming together really fast,” he said.
Schmitz figures it took “probably 10-15 minutes” to get into a comfortable prone position. The rangefinder put the ram and ewes at 347 yards away.
“I’m just like, I need to settle down, calm down,” Schmitz said. “The sheep weren’t going anywhere, so I could take my time. The sheep had spotted us, but they were just like, ‘I don’t know what’s going on over there.’ They didn’t seem concerned at all.”
Schmitz took a “dry fire” without a bullet in the chamber of his .270 Winchester Model 70 Featherweight rifle. He had the time and wanted to do it right.
Even so, he missed on the first shot. The ram ran about 100 feet up the hill after the second shot hit and “maybe 10-15” yards more after the third before tumbling, Schmitz says.
“I was at the top of a ridge, they were on another ridge next to us, probably three-quarters of the way to the bottom initially,” Schmitz said. “They were down toward the bottom where I initially shot, and then they probably got halfway up (the ridge) to where he ended up dying.”
The excitement of what had just happened kicked into high gear after that, Schmitz recalls.
“It was just unbelievable,” he said. “It all happened so fast.”
The work begins
By the time they got to the ram in the rugged terrain, it was completely dark, Schmitz says.
Seeing the ram up close, he said, it looked “way bigger” than it had through the scope.
“Just the mass of his horns literally blew my mind,” Schmitz said. “Even in the dark, I couldn’t believe just how thick and massive each horn was.”
Then came the hard work — skinning and quartering the ram and packing everything out in the dark across the rugged terrain. It was nearly 10:30 p.m. when they got back to the truck, Schmitz says.
Finding an area with spotty cell service, Schmitz had contacted Wiedmann, the Game and Fish biologist, who met them in Grassy Butte after midnight. Wiedmann works closely with sheep license recipients both before and after the hunt, meeting them in the field to register the sheep and collect biological samples, age the animal, score the horns and insert a plug in the horn to certify it was taken legally.
It was nearly midnight, Wiedmann says, when he met Schmitz and his hunting partners in Grassy Butte. He knew the ram was big, but like Schmitz, he said it was even bigger up close than it had appeared through a spotting scope during annual sheep surveys.
“I’ve been following this ram around for about four or five years,” Wiedmann said. “When he was young, it was like, ‘Wow, that ram’s going to be something special.’ ”
The ram was 10 years old and weighed 264 pounds “on the hoof” on the scale Wiedmann had given Schmitz to carry along on the hunt.
“They worked their tails off to get him. I mean, they were hypothermic and wet and muddy,” Wiedmann said. “Where they got this ram, it’s the big nasty. I mean, it’s big, steep ridges. You can’t get around very easily back there.
“Most hunters aren’t even going to get to that ram, to be honest with you. You’ve got to really want it to get that ram, and they did.”
Exhilaration replaced exhaustion when Wiedmann measured the horns and tallied the score.
“This is Grassy Butte, 12:30 at night, the town’s shut down and we’re the only people there,” Wiedmann said. “I say, ‘Look guys, I’m just going to lay the score sheet down and then you guys can take a look at the score.’
“I laid it down and, of course, they’re all screaming and jumping. I’m surprised no one called the sheriff,” he added with a laugh.
There’s a good chance Schmitz’s ram will be among the top 10 rams taken anywhere in North America this year, Wiedmann says. The fact that Suda was along to watch his buddy break his bighorn record adds an even more amazing twist to the story.
“Just knowing somebody else that would even draw this tag is pretty rare in itself,” Schmitz said. “And then, asking them to come along and him being a part of the hunt, that is just over once in a million lifetimes, really.”
It’s hard to put into words, Suda says.
“I’m just happy I got to be a part of the record shattering my own record,” Suda said. “I wish I could put it all into words, but I can’t. To get to experience that type of hunt more than once in your life, it’s truly amazing. I feel very blessed.”
Suda says two of his buddies who live and work out west, Jens Johnson and Ryan Seil, deserve a lot of credit for the knowledge they’ve shared about the area and its rams, including the trophy Schmitz ultimately shot. They’ve taught him everything he knows about bighorn sheep, Suda says.
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“Shout out to those two guys,” he said — and Wiedmann.
“Without Brett Wiedmann’s work in North Dakota, we wouldn’t even have these animals to chase,” Suda said.
Schmitz is getting a full body mount of the record sheep. That presents another challenge, he says.
“I don’t know where to put it. My house isn’t big enough, so I’ve got to find a new house,” he said with a laugh. “We’ve got to figure that out, but man, am I pumped to get that back.”
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