Cooper Mcfadin and Courtney Purvis recently made a 4-mile hike up a west Texas mesa in Brewster County, south of Alpine, in pursuit of aoudad. A diamond ring also made the trek uphill in Mcfadin’s pocket. On their 4-mile descent, they both carried rams on their backs, while the diamond ring rode on Purvis’s left hand. Not only did they double up on mature aoudad rams, but they also got engaged.
McFadin said he had originally planned to propose to Purvis later in the year on an upcoming elk hunt in September.
“I had just picked up the ring that I had made for her, and we were talking about when she might have some time off from work in the upcoming months,” Mcfadin said. “She told me that due to unforeseen work obligations, she likely couldn’t make an elk hunt in September and wasn’t sure how soon she would know about being able to go on a trip and miss multiple days of work. Hearing about this pretty much canned my original plan, so I decided I needed to come up with plan B pretty quick.”
Mcfadin knew Purvis had always wanted to harvest a west Texas aoudad, and his mom was able to connect him with one of her good friends in the Alpine area.
“My mom’s friend invited us to come over there for the weekend to her ranch,” Mcfadin said. “She knew I was trying to do something special to propose and sent me a picture of the mesa on her property. She told me that the aoudad might be hit or miss, but the sunset views would be spectacular. That was good enough for me, so we made plans to head that way.”
Mcfadin said they started glassing the mesa on the property in the morning and were able to locate a herd of aoudad fairly quickly. They took a break for lunch, then loaded up their packs to hike up to the top of the mesa and hopefully get within range of a couple of rams.
“Once we got to the top of the mesa, I realized there was a knob that would give us a good vantage point,” Mcfadin said. “We moved to the top of the knob and sat down to start glassing.”
They had been sitting on the knob and glassing for about an hour and half or so, and the sun was slowly sinking.
“I finally noticed a big herd of aoudad about 900 yards away,” Mcfadin said. “We started making a plan to stalk in closer to them. Then, as I stood up, I spotted a bachelor group of four rams right below us, just down from the knob we were sitting on. I told Courtney to get ready to take a shot.”
The rams fed out away from the knob and had no idea that Mcfadin and Purvis were there. Mcfadin sized up the group of aoudad, and decided the lead ram was the largest of the four.
“He turned broadside at about 40 yards, and she made an excellent shot,” Mcfadin said. “The ram ran 10 yards and fell over. She immediately handed me the gun, and I was able to make a good shot on one of the other big rams. We watched him go down and were overtaken with excitement. The celebration began.”
They recovered both aoudad and got set up to take photos with their rams. Both aoudad were just shy of 32 inches. After posing for pictures, they caped out the rams.
“By the time we got them caped out and strapped to our packs, the sun was just starting to set,” Mcfadin said. “It was the perfect lighting, and that’s what I was waiting on. The sunlight started turning orange, and everything around us from the top of the mesa just looked gorgeous.”
Mcfadin told Purvis that he wanted to take a photo with the sun starting to set before they got all hot and sweaty from packing out their rams. He set up his phone, but instead of setting it to take a photo, he started recording a video.
“I told her the real reason for dragging her up to the top of that mesa in heat of the summer, wasn’t really to harvest an aoudad,” Mcfadin said. “Then I dropped to my knee and proposed.”
Purvis was completely surprised.
“It couldn’t have worked out any better,” Mcfadin said. “I really had no expectations of harvesting a ram. To double up and get engaged made for an unforgettable memory that we will both never forget.”
