Elevation here is about 16,000 feet in Tajikistan's Pamirs. It's November and very cold and snowy. The author's rifle is wooden-stocked with blued steel, but under conditions like these, synthetic and stainless would make more sense.

Synthetic stocks can be repainted (if you care). Most of my wood-stocked rifles carry gouges that can be disguised but are too deep to repair. Synthetic stocks are also definitely more stable while weather in high country is anything but stable. In late summer and early fall, rainstorms and snow squalls are common, and on later hunts snow is almost a certainty. Walnut stocks can get totally ruined and may swell and change zero. Synthetic stocks shrug off the weather, and for the same reason stainless steel or at least rustproof metal finishing is also better than blue. One of these days I'll start following my own advice on a more consistent basis.

SCOPES AND SIGHTS
O'Connor believed a fixed 4X was all the scope needed. Such a scope saves gun weight and is indeed adequate for most shots. Also, O'Connor hunted in a time when variable scopes were considered (with some justification) unreliable.

Here I must disagree with the master. Modern variables are extremely reliable, and I want the added confidence I get from plenty of magnification for those occasions when it's necessary to stretch out a shot. On the other hand, I don't want to saddle myself with a really heavy scope. So I tend to strike a happy medium by using variables between about 2.5-8X and 4.5-14X. In this kind of hunting the added weight and bulk of a 30mm tube really isn't essential since little sheep hunting is done in poor light. In the early morning you're usually still climbing, and when the light gets dim it's time to get off the mountain.

Obviously, scopes for mountain hunting must be rugged and reliable. If you take a fall, chances are the scope will get bumped. A good scope can actually take a tremendous knock without coming out of zero, but that supposes equally rugged and reliable rings--and for darn sure it can happen. In Wyoming in '98 we finally spotted a bighorn ram after 11 days of very hard hunting. The ram was far enough away that I actually fired a shot at a stump to check zero before beginning the stalk. This is not always possible, but if I've been hunting hard for a few days without a shot, or if I've taken a spill, I like to at least check boresight (a laser boresighter is a great idea). None of what I think of as my "mountain rifles" has auxiliary iron sights, so I do trust good scopes and mounts, but if there isn't a spare rifle in camp, it's a good idea to bring a spare scope set in rings just in case.

GUN WEIGHT
I have struggled up sheep and goat mountains with extremely heavy rifles. My 28-inch-barreled 8mm Remington Magnum weighs at least 11 pounds, likewise a 7.82 (.308) Lazzeroni. There have been times when the capabilities of both rifles were welcome, but that's just too much gun weight on a mountain. At the other extreme, it is quite possible to get accurate and adequately powerful rifles down to little more than five pounds. Lightweights in this class are OK for the deliberate, supported shot that's the norm, but I find them whippy and hard to control for the occasional "take it or leave it" unsupported shot. This is especially true when you're breathing hard, and in the mountains, you always are.

So I think Jack O'Connor had it exactly right. He wanted an accurate, flat-shooting rifle that weighed--scoped and all set to go--somewhere in the neighborhood of seven to 7 1/2 pounds. You bet!

On horseback hunts you can sometimes get away with a bit more gun weight; just don't forget that, sooner or later, you're going to have to tie up the horses and climb.

THE BOTTOM LINE
The .270 WSM I took to Tajikistan and New Zealand in the past year was a Winchester M70 Featherweight; with 3.5-10X Nikon scope it weighed just a bit more than 7 1/2 pounds. The Kimber M8400 I carried in the Yukon last August weighed a bit less than 7 1/2 pounds with a 2.5-8X Leupold. Both were wonderful to carry, both had all the capabilities I need in a sheep rifle, and neither kick me into next week (or cut my forehead) when I have to shoot from a cramped position.

Both of these rifles, by the way, are walnut stocked. This is proof positive that stock design is almost as important as material when it comes to weight. All things equal, a trim, classic-styled wooden stock sans cheekpiece weighs just a few ounces more than most synthetic stocks. Kimber's Montana rifle in stainless and synthetic does weigh a full pound less than its walnut-stocked rifles in identical calibers, but the Montana also has a blind magazine, so a fair amount of the weight reduction comes from less steel.

After 30 years of at least occasional sheep hunting in a lot of different places, I find the mountains seem to be getting steeper and higher. I won't carry heavy rifles anymore, but to my thinking, a few ounces aren't worth quibbling over. I want a sheep rifle light enough to carry all day but heavy enough to hold steady. It needs to be in an accurate, flat-shooting caliber between .270 and .30. Optimally, it will shoot an accurate bullet that opens fairly quickly, wears a good variable scope with an upper range of 8X or better, and if it has all these things, I also won't argue over stock material or metal finish. I don't think Jack O'Connor would disagree too much.