Fast forward to the successful 3 day hunt. We had gone up hunting the weekend prior and found some goats that looked intriguing, the only problem is they were almost 3 miles away as a crow flies, and in an area that was so rugged and nasty and beautiful, I dubbed the area “Narnia”. We cancelled our plans to camp and hunt where we had planned that weekend, and bailed out of that area with hopes to get a look at the goats we had seen from so far away the next day. Sunday we found ourselves looking down on a nanny, kid, and two sub adults 200 yards below us, and we turned up a good billy in the same basin, but I just didn’t have time to try and make a play.
We came back after 4 days away and tried to turn up something in the same basin that the goats were in just a few days ago. Finding nothing, we continued along the spine for a mile, peeking into several other little basins but found nothing. We worked our way back to the first basin, repeating the same process and just as we peered into the original basin, Justin found a small billy just 80 yards straight below us. After watching him for a few minutes we continued to the pass to open up more glassing area and a second goat appeared. “That’s a shooter billy” Justin immediately said, and I agreed. Without a doubt it was a mature, sway backed, deep chested, broad nosed Billy. With a ripping wind and the goat at 500 yards facing our direction all we could do was watch him lay bedded above a little cliff until dark.
It was a sleepless night on top of the mountain with the wind screaming up from the drainage below and over the pass we were camped on. 4:30am finally came and we packed up camp so we wouldn’t worry about the wind taking it off the top of the mountain while we were gone. We had breakfast, hung food back in the tree and started our hike back to the high pass to the highest basin in the area I called Narnia. We waited until 15 minutes after legal shooting light before we peeked over the pass. I wanted to make sure it was light enough to quickly identify the different goats that may be there in case it had to be a quick decision. With daylight, the wind had also finally slowed down enough to be bearable. We had just pulled our binos up to glass when we both said “goat”. Just below the cliff from the night before was our shooter billy. He was up feeding, facing away, so I slowly and quietly tried to fall off the top of the pass to get out of the wind and get within range. 75 yards down the slide I was finally able to prop up enough rocks and the pack to be able to get a shot that I felt fairly comfortable with. It was 429 yards and we were out of the wind completely, but it was still the most difficult prone shooting position I’ve been in. Justin was 30 yards above me filming through the spotter on the phoneskope and I gave him the thumbs up. I touched one off and saw some white hair fly, and then heard Justin say “high”. It appeared the billy had not been hit, but luckily he didn’t know where the shot came from, so after some quick communication with Justin I sent another round on its way and the billy dropped and slowly rolled into the rockslide below. I had my Billy!!!
After high fives and pure excitement and gratefulness, Justin said “so I didn’t get the shot”. He was pretty upset- ( it’s not the first time he’s done that to me! ). He said on the first shot, he saw my bullet create a hole/vacuum in the fur just below the top of the back of the goat.…I had barely missed him. Apparently it was a neat thing to watch because he was pretty upset about it but that was of no concern to me - although I made sure to bring it up, A LOT on the hike back out!! He was able to film a couple short videos as I was prepping for the shot, but his phone ran out of space for the video literally 5 seconds before I shot. When reviewing the video you could hear him saying “what’s going on” in response to the camera not working before the video cut off and I pulled the trigger. We made our way down to the goat and we immediately knew he was a special goat for that area.
We took pictures, enjoyed the moment, quartered him up, and dropped down a little further to get water and take in the incredible basin now named “Narnia” before the hike back up the cliffs and back to camp. On the way up out of the hole with the goat on our backs, above us on the skyline with nothing but blue sky behind it, was another goat watching us, like it was saying goodbye and hope to see you again. Little did we know……
All said and done, it was 6.5 hours of heavy packing to get out of there. 2 hours up and down back to camp with the goat, and another 4.5 hours and 4,300 feet down off the mountain and over all kinds of overnight blowdown across the trail to the truck with the goat and camp. Once back at the truck, we measured the goat and it was 9 7/8” on the long side and 9 3/8” short, with 5 5/8” bases. I had gotten everything I wanted out of this hunt and more.
BUT THAT WAS ONLY HALF OF THE EXPERIENCE!!
