Goat hunt story

[slatty]

For some rainy day reading! I'm a resident hunter in BC and am fortunate to hunt goats most years. I've never had a goat hunt without some sort of challenge / disaster / mishap. It's always an adventure. I thought others might enjoy reading my goat hunt story from this year. I had a goat tag in Interior BC this year, an area that I know, that I have hunted in the past. It’s a motor vehicle closed area requiring a hike or bike ride in to a camping spot / base camp, with further hiking / spike camping up to the goats. After not hunting solo for a few years, I wanted to hunt on my own this year to take some time with myself, and it was a good experience.
My personal rules for the upcoming hunt were to not shoot a nanny, and to not get caught out in the cliffs after dark (both are things that I’ve unfortunately done before).

1) Scouting (July 24-26)
Even knowing the area fairly well after 4 trips there, I was able to squeeze in a few days in July for a 30km through hike with my spotting scope and tent, hiking and glassing a ton. Found a new trail and accessed country that was new to me, saw 40+ goats, along with elk, mule deer and a young grizzly. Found a really nice spot full of goats, good access to water and camping spots, with a plan to return in September. Always worthwhile taking some time to scout an area.

Scouting camp

Clean july billy. 650 yards from the tent in moderate terrain!

Another billy from scouting

2) Hunt Round 1 (Sep 12-16)
All summer my mind was back in goat country. I was so excited to do this hunt and kept picturing stalking in on my billy, knowing that it never works out the way you plan. Not even close! With nice September weather I biked in with a light camp and 3.5 days of food. Endured a lightning storm the first evening that kept me from getting to where I wanted to, and spent a wet night in my tent on night 1, sleeping my clothes dry through the night, and feeling thankful that I decided to bring all synthetic clothes and sleeping bag for this hunt. The morning of day 2 was clear and cold and I hiked in and set up my tent and hung a food bag at my selected spot, and started hunting. A family of goats up above camp. I found a billy about midday, in moderately steep shale, and closed in. He saw me approaching him and moved up into some steeper terrain, and I was able to get to 200 yards below him. I was set up to shoot him standing on a rock pinnacle at 200yards, however I wasn’t certain I could retrieve him if he died in that spot. He moved up even higher after about a minute, and I decided to let him settle down, as it was only day 1. I hiked back to a ridge above my tent and was glassing this goat at sundown. I was sitting on this ridge about 100 yards above my tent when I heard a roar, and look down to see a mom grizzly and two cubs circling my tent down below. She was standing and her cubs were running wild. Right at this moment a big rockfall happened up above us, and this spooked her and they went running off. With the sun setting, I made the decision to roll up camp, grab my food bag, and hike out by headlamp. It’s not a big valley and I didn’t want to share it with a mom grizzly. I spent day 3 hunting a lower area, and with a storm coming in, headed home on day 4. Disappointment and “what ifs” filled the 8h drive back home. I was already forming a plan to get back there later in the season to try again, but was worried when I looked at a calendar and realized my next opportunity wasn’t until Nov 1, far later than I’ve hunted in the rockies myself. Gotta take what you can get though.

My goat camp (pre-grizzly visit)

The billy I chased in September

Where I was sitting on the first evening of the hunt, glassing goats. Left of the pond is my tent, and from here I saw the grizzlies at my tent.

3) Hunt Round 2 (Nov 1-4)
With the kids in bed after a night full of Halloween treats, I left the house at 3am for the 8h drive. I arrived at the vehicle closure in my least favorite weather, rain / sleet and 1C, right around freezing. I was packed heavier than my September hunt, with a lightweight hot tent, axe and big hand saw, and lots of warm clothes. I hiked in, pulling a wagon. I was actually hoping for more snow which would have made snowshoe or skiing in easier, but it was slushy and soft with poor snow coverage. I had a few hours of daylight left on day 1 after I set up my tent and spent it cutting and stacking some dry wood. Had a really hot fire in the hot tent and tried to dry out as much gear as possible getting ready for the hunt. The nights are long and cold in November, but sitting in the hot tent in the quiet mountain wilderness with a book made for some very pleasant evenings. I didn’t bring a cooking stove, but had a hot fire in the tent and boiled water morning and night, which worked just fine. Throughout the hunt I didn’t see any grizzly sign, but lots of rabbit and lynx sign as well as hearing wolves.
Day 2 I headed up to the goat bluffs about 5km from camp. Lots of families but wasn’t seeing billies. I snuck in on a family of 5 goats thinking there was about a 50% chance there would be a billy there on Nov 2. I got to <100 yards and lay there watching them set up for a shot for about 15min, but it was only nannies and kids. Still a pretty neat experience.


November goat camp

Man that hot tent is nice

Goat country

Big nanny

 

[slatty]

Day 3 hunted further up the valley and found two billies in a group together. I got to about 150 yards below them but couldn’t see them and I was running out of daylight so had to pull the plug and head back to camp. Two years prior I had to spend the night out in the cliffs with a dead goat in this area after running out of light and being cliffed out. I REALLY wanted to avoid that in November weather; I was prepared to survive the night but not with any sort of comfort. I was feeling satisfied and fulfilled that I’d given the area a good try and was planning to head home in the morning. Sitting in my tent that night I pulled an inreach forecast and it was clear skies for the next day. I decided to give it one more morning.

One of the billies I chased on day 3. Beautiful goat.


Day 4 I woke up an hour earlier than normal, heard wolves while drinking a giant pot of coffee and eating oatmeal, I was hiking out at dark, and was at my glassing spot right at daybreak. One of the carbon legs on my slik tripod broke off the day before, so I didn’t actually have my spotting scope today and was packed very light. It was a kill mission morning, or nothing. I picked up a group of goats in a different area and one was very large and had the position and posture of a billy. I pushed up through steep deadfall and an hour later was set up across a canyon, with a 230 yard prone shot at this bedded goat, with other goats feeding around. Not having my spotting scope and only having a 10x rifle scope on my rifle, I couldn’t convince myself with certainty that the big goat was a billy. I waited until the goats fed around the ridge then I side hilled over and came over the top of the ridge. I dropped my pack and took one step at a time, knowing they would be close. When I saw some white out of the corner of my eye to the right, I slowly sat down. A young billy fed out directly in front of me, and I shot him at 7 yards. He was a young billy and younger than I had planned to shoot, but it felt like a worthy goat for me given the circumstance and I was happy to take him. He wasn’t the big goat I was hunting, but he was the one that presented himself at 7 yards, so decisions had to be made. It was honestly awkward to shoot at such a close distance and I shot him through the lungs; in hindsight a high shoulder shot would have been better, and that's the shot i've used on my last goat. He tipped over and slid down towards a 500ft cliff that was just downhill of where I was.

My 230 yard shot across the canyon that I didn't end up taking. Big goat bedded in the clear terrain on the right.

Retrieval and pack-out
My goat slid down, and I saw him go over the edge of the cliff, but then silence. No big sound of a goat falling off a 500ft cliff. Hmm. I slowly walked up to the edge, and there was a crevice with a dead tree wedged into it, roots down. He stopped and was balanced on this dead tree. Shit. It was very sketchy, but just doable, to retrieve him. I was able to carefully climb down, there were good footholds in the solid rock. I tried to lift him and that wasn’t happening. I tied some 2mm guyline around his head and tried to heave him up from up above, but he was too heavy. I tied his head up to a tree up above with 100ft of line, to at least hold him in case he slipped off the log. There was a small ~2ft ledge beside where he was where I could stand solid while I worked on him, and I had to skin and quarter him right there. I was able to get off the legs, backstraps, hide, and as I made the last cut to remove the head, WHOOSH the carcass just dropped down off the log and down the cliff, bouncing off the walls and exploding down at the bottom. Boy that made me nervous seeing gravity take hold of that. I unfortunately lost the rib meat, heart, and tenderloins. I was so relieved to get all the parts up out of the crevice, cooling down, and into game bags and my pack. It was some really awful deadfall that I had pushed up through to get there, and decided to take a longer but milder route back to my tent, taking the chance on crossing some unknown terrain that looked ok. In the end I think it was the wrong choice, and stopping halfway to debone the meat and taking a couple short breaks, it was a 4-5h packout back to camp. From there it was 3 more hours to take down camp and hike out with my wagon and all the gear. I’ve never been so happy to see my truck, that was a long day.

The crevice my goat was stuck in

Here's the spot I had to butcher my goat in

It was a goat hunt of ups and downs, as always, but full of amazing experiences in the wilderness, enjoying the backcountry and seeing lots of game. Lots of stories for the hunting journal and the kids, and some meat and a beautiful hide at the end is a great bonus. It only takes a day or two to forget how awful parts of it were, and I’m already super excited to try again for a big billy next year. If you got to the end, hope you enjoyed it and thanks for reading.

 

[BAKPAKR]

What an incredible hunt! Congrats on the goat. Thanks for sharing the story and photos.