North Dakota Hunter Shoots Pending State Record Bighorn Ram

“I had gotten a call from Game and Fish and wasn’t able to answer,” Schmitz told MeatEater. “Brett Wiedmann left me a message telling me to call him back ASAP. I was worried I’d done something wrong, even though I didn’t think I had. But when I called him back, he got right to the point and said I’d just drawn the hardest tag to draw in North America.”

In 2025, 21,221 hunters applied for the tag, making the draw rate 0.03%. Filled with “crazy excitement,” Shmitz soon called David Suda, a buddy he’d originally met back in high school. Suda happened to be one of the few people familiar with North Dakota bighorn, having shot the current state record after drawing the once-in-a-lifetime tag himself in 2020. Since then, Suda had heard of another massive ram in Western North Dakota.

“I have a bunch of buddies that work out there, and one of them sent a group chat a picture of this ram along the side of the road in the springtime,” Suda said. “So when Nick called and told me he’d drawn the tag, I told him the hunt was going to be something special.”

By opening day this fall, Schmitz had scouted his hunt area several times but hadn’t seen the giant ram. In the meantime, he and Suda ran into the hunter who’d bought the Governor’s Tag—and learned they were pursuing the same critter with the help of guides.

Schmitz was joined by Suda, his father, and his brother-in-law, Tim, on the hunt. That first morning, after parking the truck, they bumped a ram about 300 yards from the truck. It was snowing, and they couldn’t tell how big it was. They tried unsuccessfully to catch up to it.

The group switched spots and glassed up a group of sheep of seven or eight ewes and three or four rams. Tim, the brother-in-law, suggested pursuing one of the rams, but Suda encouraged Schmitz to hold out for a bigger one. It’s a good thing he did.

That evening, they went to another spot, which Schmitz describes as “good sheep country,” characterized by steep ridges. Suda had seen sheep there before. It was a difficult spot to reach, which Schmitz and Suda hoped kept some of the other hunters from being there. Suda, walking slightly ahead, spotted the ram first. Then Schmitz glassed it.

“He had 11 ewes to himself and seemed comfortable where he was at,” Schmitz said. “I was just looking at him and was amazed by the sheer mass. Out of all the rams we had seen, you could tell, like holy smokes, he had some serious mass to it…Suda turned to me and said, ‘this is the shooter.’ I kind of had a panic attack. I was bent over on my knees trying to control my breathing because the moment was just, boom, there.”

Schmitz soon got into position, using his brother-in-law Tim’s pack as a rest for his .270 Winchester rifle. He had a 345-yard shot. He got comfortable, dry-fired, then chambered a round. He took a shot with the ram quartering slightly away. Video footage shows it was a clean miss—just inches from the ram’s horns—but Schmitz didn’t realize it at the time, since the ram seemed to stumble on the shot. As the ram started jogging up hill and away, Schmitz fired another round, and then another.

“We didn’t know where he was being hit, but you could tell he was hurt at that point because he was slowing down,” Schmitz said. “Then he gave me a broadside shot, and I put the last round in my gun right into his shoulder.”

The ram went down, and Schmitz and his buddies started screaming and celebrating. Getting to the ram on the opposite ridge required a roundabout route in steep country, and by the time they got to it, it was dark. But they found the ram.

“My first reaction was, ‘Wow,’” Schmitz said. “Looking through the scope was one thing, but seeing the mass in person was unbelievable. It didn’t look real.”

Suda, too, was shocked by the ram’s horns. “I knew he was big from the pictures and the spotting scope, but he was way bigger when I got up to in person. I was blown away by his mass.”

That evening, Schmitz and Suda met up with Wiedmann, the NDGF biologist who primarily works with the state’s bighorn sheep population and coordinates with hunters who draw tags. Wiedmann told MeatEater that the state boasts trophy bighorn because of abundant forage and limited hunting opportunities. He’d been aware of the sheep Schmitz shot for several years.

“I first saw him when he was about 5 ½, and he just had such mass,” Wiedmann said. “I watched him year-over-year. I knew he was pretty nice, but when they dropped the tailgate to show me him, I was shocked. I was like, man, that ram is actually a monster.”

The ram was 10 ½ years old when Schmitz shot it. The horns had a length of 39 ⅞ inches, with base circumferences of 17 ⅜ inches. The ram green scored 197 6/8 inches, which stands to easily top Suda’s record sheep, which came in at 186 3/8 inches. For reference, the largest hunter-killed bighorn ram taped 209 1/8 points Boone and Crockett and was killed in South Dakota by Clayton Miller in 2018. After the 60-day drying period, Schmitz will get his trophy officially scored.

“I was blessed just to draw this tag and be able to go on this hunt. You’re one of the luckiest guys in the state just to be able to do that,” Schmitz said. “I knew I was going to be successful when I gave Suda a call and he said he would join and help out. I didn’t have any expectations of breaking a state record. That was all just bonus, man.”