BC Mountain Goat Success!!

[Bigred323]

This was a hunt I booked fairly last minute for such a rigorous hunt, but I put in as much work as i possibly could’ve. Multiple days a week in the gym, plus weighted pack walks ranging from 2-6 miles and weighted stair walks just trying to prep for the rigorous Coast Mountains of BC. Dropped from 199 at the time booking to 183 because was a straight backpack hunt. Very intimidating hunt but something I really wanted to challenge myself as an outdoorsman.

Day 0-

Flew from Harlingen, TX to Dallas to stay overnight to catch an early flight from Dallas to try and get to Canada at a decent time. . Make the flight no issues. Stop over in San Francisco and get to Vancouver. I made it to Van no issues, but the geniuses in San Fran failed to load my rifle case AND pack. So instead of a 3 hour layover in Van, have a 9 hour layover and I make it to Terrace, BC at 1045pm. Decided to grab a hotel there instead of making a 3.5 hour drive through mountains at night with no cell service. Make it to my hotel and don’t get in the room till close to midnight because the cops are chasing a dude around the hotel and he jumps out of his room onto the roof and it happens to be on my floor and it’s on lockdown. Great start to the trip!!

 

[Bigred323]

Day 1-

Wake up at 5am and head north from Terrace to Stewart. It’s about 3.5-4 hour drive and you lose service for about 3 hours of it. Was a freaking beautiful drive but I was so tired from the night before, I had to pull over at a rest stop and take a power nap. Wake up and make it the lodge where I meet my guide, Scott Miller, his wife, Kayla, and our packer, Ryan. She whipped up a quick bacon and egg breakfast and I wasn’t sure if the plan was to head out right away or give me time to recoup, but that wasn’t a problem for long. As soon as a I finished breakfast, Scott said to load up my stuff in the truck so we could get a start up the mountains!

We make the drive to his concession and he goes over what our game plan is and that morning is all kind of a blur as I’m so sleep deprived. We park at the bottom of the mountain, have to get my pack and gear all packed up since I had just arrived from the airport for up to a possible 3-4 days on this stint and we start our ascent.

Word of advice to anyone going on a mountain hunt like this for the first time. LACE UP YOUR BOOTS CORRECTLY. IT IS NOT THE SAME TIGHTNESS AS WHAT YOU DO ON FLAT GROUND OR EVEN STAIRS. I destroyed my heels on day 1. What made it worse, I put leukotape directly over the hot spots and by the time we got to our camp and I got the boots off to let my feet breath and change the tape, peeled off my skin on the blisters along with the tape. To say I was a bit worried, was an understatement as I potentially had 9 more days to go.

Anyways, I hadn’t come this far to be a little wimp so trudged on following my guide wherever. Within the first hour or two, I quickly realized I was gonna be in for a butt whooping. The steepness of the ascent was like nothing I could have ever prepared for and in Addition to the lack of sleep was the apparent dehydration. About half up the mountain, I started experiencing the worst freaking cramps of my quads on both of my legs! Couldn’t freaking believe it. Multiple times was brought to my knees when both legs would lock up and drop me. Made the hike longer but I told them I was going to keep going behind them but I would just have to move little by little and take some extra breaks to stretch em out every once in a while. After about a few hours of hiking and a few thousand feet of elevation. Finally made it to the top and we set up camp. Relief and sleep came very quickly that night.

 

[mt100gr.]

Get all the bullshit out of the way early! Good luck!

 

[Bigred323]

Day 3-

Big day on the boots today. Wrapped up my feet with bandaid placed over the open blisters to salvage what was left of them. Bandaid with a couple of layers of leukotape did the trick. Kept our packs light so that we could cover some ground and get into some beautiful, although scary goat country. It is amazing to see what these things live in. What was even more surprising to me was the fact that behind a lot of our goat tracks we found, grizzly tracks were often on on those trials as well. Never crossed my mind that the grizzlies would be so high above the treelike but just like us, they were in pursuit of the goats as well. I went up and across stuff I would’ve never even thought I was capable of doing. Up sheer near vertical cliffs, across glaciers and snow drifts, and down skiiing down long downhills of shale, we looked and looked, but couldn’t turn any up. We found tracks everywhere, goat beds, goat hair, fresh tracks, even smelled them, but couldn’t turn up a goat to save our lives. Of course, I think the weather was too good for them as during the day, we had full sun and temps up into the 80s likely putting them into cliff beds where we just couldn’t see them. Late in the evening, we finally spotted our first goat. Even though it was just a white dot in the spotting scope about 2 miles away, I was just happy to finally lay my eyes on one

Also, got murdered by black flies this day.

 

[Bigred323]

Day 3-

Due to lack of goats we were turning up, our plan was to go up a really steep mountain just next to camp to be able to glass on the opposite side and assess if we could possibly walk the skyline of the mountain range between us and the goat we had seen the day before. Nothing like waking up and climbing a giant shale mountainside in the morning.

Once we finally got to the top, the skyline I thought that I could maybe walk, quickly turned into a no as you could see a large portion of the hike would be along a knife edge and I told Scott I would really like to make it back to my family lol. Plus, we didn’t know if it was a nanny or a Billy, so we all decided it was a no go. A little glassing session turned up 2 Nannies with a kid. The plan was to hike back down the mountain, pack up camp and head to lodge for the night before heading to another area, BUT the goat sighting pushed us to to explore further. The next mountain looked liked a nice downhill slope with what looked like a fairly simple ascent up the next mountain to take a peak on the other side. I remember saying “man I think we could do that in half an hour”…..About 1.5 hours into it, I realized we were wrong! The topography quickly changed once we got into the valley and we were found hopping between giant boulders and skating on ice covered with a thin layer of dirt. At least once we finally got to the top, we glasses 2 Nannies and 2 kids, but I knew it was gonna be hell getting back to the truck full packs and camp on our backs. By the end of the day, we fully crested 4 mountains. On the last one, I literally had to crawl on my hands and knees to make the last 30 ft or so due to the incline and the unwillingness of my feet to move. Once I made it to the top, we made the long slow trek down hill to the trucks but at least we got to go through a giant blueberry and huckleberry patch for some fuel. Even though I had nice warm bed, I didn’t sleep well that night because of body aches and largely due to the fact that I kept having of dreams of me tumbling down large rock faces with no end

 

[Bigred323]

Day 4-

Due to my body feeling absolutely tanked and still having a Possible 7 days left, I decided to take an off day at the lodge. Gave me time to get some actual rest since I had been running on fumes since landing and rethink my pack and cut weight on it as I hadn’t used a lot of the stuff I had taken up the first time and carried around unnecessary weight. Took a little day trip over to Hyder, Alaska to check Salmon Glacier.

 

[Bigred323]

Day 5-

Today is the day it all happens!

Wake up early, eat a good breakfast and pack for an expected 4-5 days. Plan is to hike a river drainage all the way up into a bowl to set up camp where we can glass and glass directly from hike. We figured due to the heat, maybe we needed to stay put a little longer and watch and see where the goats come out from as the sun sets and starts to cool off.

With packs loaded, we make the 8 mile trek up the river bed with probably 30-40 different freezing river crossings, a glacier or two, giant snow falls/land slides, through a super sketchy canyon and having to go around a big ol waterfall that sent up through some wet, steep, mossy stuff that pretty sure I almost soiled myself on . In total home takes up about 6-7 hours to get up there. I’m not even sure if it was actual quick sand or a gravel pit or something, but I stepped into some stuff that was freaking scary. The second I stepped into it, I was sunk up past my hips and think my pack was the only thing that stopped me from going further into it. Luckily Ryan was right behind me and helped pull me out of it.

Finally catch up to Scott and he had been glassing the various bowls for about 10-15 minutes. Hadn’t seen any goats so we start looking for a spot to set up camp when I hear him say “oh what the frick is that?? Oh shoot that’s a goat right there!”.

 

[Bigred323]

Day 5 Cont-

There’s a goat sleeping on a sheer side at 800 yards! We put the spotting scope on it but can’t tell exactly what kind a caliber goat it is because the sun is directly behind it, but can tell it’s a billy. We devise a plan and close the distance from 800 to 400 yards and set up for a prone shot off a pack. He was laying with his vitals covered with a large rock and was in no hurry to move. We watched him for an hour and waited for the sun to drop so that I could actually see him in the scope. Scott got a better picture of him and said he was a good, solid Billy, but if I was looking for a record breaker, this was not it. I told him if he was solid, I was perfectly happy with it so we decided we were going to shoot him for sure. After all the hard work we had done, I was not going to pass up a shooter Billy. After an hour, he finally stood up gave me a perfect broadside shot, put the crosshairs on his shoulder, slowly squeezed the trigger and CLICK!

FREAKING MISFIRE! Have never had one with this rifle. Couldn’t believe. Before I could rack another one, he does a 180 turn and lays down behind the rock again and takes a nap. Since he was sleeping, we decided to try and get closer and closed the distance to 300 yards. Another 30 min pass by and he still won’t budge from the rock. I realized we only had an hour of daylight left and with the move we made I could see more of his shoulder. I decided I didn’t want to screw this up and wait till dark and decided I was going to take the shot. Anchored, took a few slow deep breaths and BOOM! Impact. He started to get up and would’ve gone into some nasty stuff so I sent another one down range and solid impact. Still standing so loaded a 3rd and put another one right in the boiler room. He swayed for a bit, saw him coughing up blood, and then started the slide down the mountainside! HE WAS DOWN!!

We all jump up and hugs and high fives and we make our way over to him. He was a beauty. These are such magnificent creatures and to see one up close was just awesome. Aged him at 6 years old and horn length measured 9 and 1/4 with some solid bases. We get him all skin and quartered and go to set up camp and enjoy a nice relaxing night in the mountain watching shooting stars and satellites zoom across the sky while listening to some Creed. Was a great night!

 

[Bigred323]

Day 6-

After good nights sleep in the tent, we got up early to finish caping the head out and break down and pack up camp. By the time everything was all said and done, I know my pack was somewhere In the 80# range and each of theirs close to 100#. Luckily it was all technically “downhill” but we still had an 8 mile pack out back to the truck the exact way we came in. Back through the rivers, the snow and the canyon. Only took us about 8 hours and many breaks but we got it done! We only suffered a few injures including almost broken ribs (me), about a 7 ft fall straight backwards with 100# pack (packer) and a sliced finger almost down to the bone (guide) so all in all I think we came out pretty good from the ordeal

Seeing the truck was one of the greatest feelings ever! It was honestly such a bittersweet moment. I was sad that the hunt was officially over, but I was so damn happy I didnt have to go up another mountain! We covered almost 45 miles during out hunt!

I signed up for this hunt looking for a true mountain adventure and to see if I could push myself past my comfort zone and be successful. I found exactly what I was looking for and more and surprised myself in what I was capable of doing up there.

Thanks for reading! If anyone planning on one of these hunts wants some hard honest advice, hit me up! Would love to talk about what I learned.