Fairbanks woman first with a bow-and-arrow Grand Slam

"Where did I shoot it? Where did it go?" Norris said. "I saw the arrow leave my bow, but I never saw where it hit him.

"I heard it hit him; there's no mistaking that sound," she said. "Based on where I was aiming, I knew I hit him hard."

But the sheep was gone, swallowed up by the fog that descended on the mountains almost as soon as Norris shot.

"The last we saw of him was a glimpse of him going into the fog," said Norris.

Norris and her guide, Jake Fletcher, talked it over. The weather was deteriorating. It would be dark in two hours and they had a 1 1/2 hour hike back to camp.

"We didn't want to stay up there and (spook) him and have to go back through the mountains in the dark and fog," Norris said.

The decision was made to head back to camp and return the next day to search for her sheep.

Norris said a prayer.

HOOKED ON SHEEP

Crawling through fresh sheep beds hooked Norris, a 52-year-old Fairbanks realtor, on sheep hunting five years ago. Norris accompanied her husband, Ken Vorisek, on an archery sheep hunt in 2005 when she got her first whiff of what would soon become her new passion.

"The urine was so strong ... it hit your nose with such an ammonia smell," she said. "There's something about being in a fresh sheep's bed and slowly crawling up to look over a slope where a sheep is laying that's stimulating."

It was the 59-year-old Vorisek, an avid and accomplished bowhunter, who planted the Grand Slam seed in Norris' head after he accomplished the feat in August of 2004. The Grand Slam Club is a prestigious hunting club reserved for hunters who document the taking of four different North American wild sheep -- Rocky Mountain bighorn, desert bighorn, stone and Dall. It has been called the most prestigious hunting club in North America.

The fact that no woman had ever done it using a bow made it all the more enticing for both Norris and Vorisek.

The fit, petite Norris doesn't necessarily look like your average big game hunter. She stands 5-feet-4, weighs 127 pounds and has long brown hair and big brown eyes.

But she was the perfect match for the sinewy 6-foot-1-inch, 215-pound Vorisek. Both are intense perfectionists.

Vorisek made his fortune building houses, including the spacious home they share on Fairbanks' Chena Ridge. Norris makes her living selling them. He is a soft-spoken, no-nonsense kind of guy while she will talk your ear off, especially about bowhunting.

He proposed to her on top of a mountain while hunting sheep in 2003 and they have been climbing mountains and stalking sheep together since. They have gone on nine sheep hunts in the past five years.

"I tell people it was matter of boy met girl, girl met sheep and sheep died," Norris said.

Norris picked up a bow for the first time in May of 2005, shortly after her son died. She had accompanied Vorisek on a North Slope grizzly bear hunt and found it exhilarating.

She started shooting when she returned to Fairbanks. Shooting the bow was therapeutic, and she spent hours shooting at targets at Vorisek's house. She got proficient enough to pass the International Bowhunters Education Program test, which she did unbeknownst to Vorisek, who was away on another hunt.

From there, their relationship blossomed. Norris has shot sheep, moose, caribou, bear, deer, fox and other game while accompanying Vorisek on archery hunts. All the hunting they do is with bows.

"We like to be out there on the ground doing it; that's what we like to do," Norris said. "Sometimes you go out and don't even get a shot, but it's still fun.

"When you can actually close in on animal so you're smelling it, hearing it breathe, watching its eyes blink, I like that," Norris said.

DIFFERENT HUNTS

Not surprisingly, there is a story behind each of Norris' sheep.

She shot her Rocky Mountain bighorn, the first sheep in her Slam, on a frigid November day in Canmore, Alberta, at minus-27 F.

"It was bitter, bitter cold," Norris said.

Conversely, the temperature was in the 100s when she bagged her desert bighorn in October 2008 in Mexico.

"Three times I held back on that guy," Norris said. "He'd never present a shot. He'd just stick his head and neck out.

"We just kept scooting along the mountainside until we got a shot," she said.

Norris ended up shooting that ram from 14 yards, the closest shot in her Slam.

The Stone sheep she bagged in August 2009 in British Columbia required a seven-hour horseback ride just to reach camp. They rode another three hours the next day before leaving the horses and climbing another 1,000 feet to a spot from which they could see 28 different rams.

"We couldn't get down on them," Norris said. "We laid there for hours belly down watching them."

Suddenly, the sheep started moving toward her, but Norris' view was blocked.

"The guide told me, 'Don't shoot until you know it's the big one,' "she said.

Norris sat there with an arrow nocked for several minutes.

"My arms were shaking," she said.

When the ram finally appeared, it was 15 yards below her. All she could see was its back.

"I had to let him pass me to get an arrow in him," Norris said.

Her first shot was too high and ricocheted off a rock, spooking the ram. The sheep bolted and jumped to another rock directly in front of her about 25 yards away. Norris was about to release another arrow when the ram jumped again, this time to a rock maybe 30 yards from her.

"I put an arrow on him and shot," she said.

The ram bolted again and went into some rocks behind and below her. She and the guide sat there for an hour so as not to spook the injured ram. They eventually found the blood trail and followed the sheep into some trees. Confident the shot was legal, they returned the next day to find it because it was getting dark.

With three of her Slams in the bag, Norris set her sights on the fourth.

SLAM RAM

Her chance to complete her Slam came this year when she and Vorisek drew a party permit to hunt in the Tok Management Area.

While they weren't required to hire a guide because they are Alaska residents, they chose to anyway as a way to increase their chances of success. They were required to hire guides for the other three sheep Norris shot because they were non-residents.

They backpacked in 15 miles to get to the area they planned to hunt, arriving a day early to scout for sheep. The weather couldn't have been worse, with fog and rain every day.

"It was ugly," Norris said. "You couldn't see anything."

The sheep were about as cooperative as the weather. During three days of hunting, Norris and her guide didn't spot a single legal ram. Vorisek and his guide, meanwhile, had spotted a legal ram but couldn't get close enough to get a shot.

On the fourth day of the hunt, Vorisek told Norris to go shoot the ram he had been stalking. She hesitated but he insisted.

"She needed to get it done," is how Vorisek put it.

Norris and Fletcher went over a ridge top attempting to stalk the ram. They got within range but Norris' first arrow from 40 yards went over the sheep's back.

The sheep jumped down to a point about 50 or 60 yards away and Norris let another arrow fly. That shot went behind the sheep and ricocheted off a rock.

The ram disappeared again. When it appeared next 45 yards away, Norris could see it but Fletcher could not. It was staring straight at her.

"When I pulled back (Fletcher) didn't know what I was doing," she said. "I was talking to the sheep in my mind saying, 'You've got to turn; I can't shoot you in the chest.'

"I was looking at him straight in the eyes," Norris said. "I could see him blinking."

The ram finally turned its head enough for Norris to get a shot. She released an arrow from her Mathews compound bow. The sheep spun around and disappeared into the fog. Norris and Fletcher headed back to camp with the plan to return the next day to find it.

"All I was thinking was, 'Lay down and die,' " Norris said.

'I'VE GOT YOUR RAM'

It poured rain that night -- a sleepless one for Norris. The next morning, the fog was even worse.

Hunters and guides waited for a break that never came. They walked a few ridge lines and basins looking for the sheep but searching in such foul weather was futile.

The next morning was nasty once more, but the guides and hunters searched again. They split up and agreed to check in by satellite phone at 5 p.m.

Guide Cole Kramer reported the dead ram was on a ridge line.

"He said, 'I've got your ram' and I was screaming, 'Where are you?' " Norris said. "I just started running."

An elated Norris hugged Kramer, Fletcher and Vorisek, who had tears in his eyes. Norris even kissed the dead sheep.

"It was such a relief," Norris said. "The last thing you want to do is shoot an animal and not find it."

The 11-year-old ram's horns measured 36 1/4 inches with 12-inch bases, not a spectacular trophy but a respectable one that completed her Slam.

In addition to becoming the first woman to get a Grand Slam with a bow, Norris will become the 47th archery hunter to achieve the Grand Slam, according to Seth Campbell, the son of Grand Slam Club executive director Dennis Campbell who handles public relations for the organization and writes articles for its magazine, Grand Slam.

"For Anna to do this with a bow is an amazing accomplishment," Campbell said by phone from the Grand Slam Club headquarters in Alabama. "No other women have ever attempted it."

There are 1,596 Grand Slammers.

The horns from Norris' Dall ram will join the mounts of her three previous sheep on a wall in a trophy room at the couple's spacious house on Chena Ridge. Vorisek added the 20-foot-by-24-foot room several years ago to house his trophies, which include full mounts of a polar bear, musk ox and cinnamon black bear, wolf and lynx.

"I'm too cheap to do full mounts because they're too expensive," Norris said. "I can save that money for other hunts.

"I love to hunt, and I love to hunt sheep," Norris said. "Some people drive new cars every year. I drive a 2001 Subaru and go sheep hunting every year."

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Fairbanks Daily News-Miner outdoors editor Tim Mowry can be reached at 1-907-459-7587.