About four years ago, I found myself on a sheep mountain in the Alaska Range, watching my young guide (well, younger than me, anyway) cape out the Dall ram I had just shot and taking in the experience. Ordinarily I would be most eager to remove the cape myself, but I wasn’t about to take the chance of ruining the delicate hide from what was, to me, the culmination of many years of dreaming and hard work—not to mention days of taxing climbing.