Well this is long overdue... and a long story but ill bold the good parts if you just want the details.
but this is the story of OLD FIFTY.........I often day dream about this old goat. We found him on a spring bear hunt we do in Oregon. Like most goats he stuck out pretty bad at 1000 yds, a white blob against the rocky rims of the river canyon. I love goats... most get a bad rep cause they aren't the brightest critters in the world. I convinced my buddy we should go get a closer look cause somthing just looked weird about him. We got to about 400 yds above him and put my little spotter on him and what do you know... a flipping GPS collar and a ear tag. The numbers were super faded and a spent a good hour trying to get the number off, the rain and fog and bad sun made it hard. Finally after looking at him a long time, full zoom on my camera... the number 50 stuck out. Was a pretty cool feeling, i knew he was old, just the way he acted and the fact that the number was virtually gone. This was day 2 of out 8 day trip... i was excited to get back to service and see if i could get some information from the local bio.
Fast forward a week and i finally heard back from a local biologist... i could tell that something was weird about the goat. The biogist wanted me to clarify that the number read 50... i sent him good pictures to confirm. He was very surprised.
Turned out this old billy was collared when he was 1.5 years . His collar ran out of batteries and they hadn't seen or got a ping of this goat in 7 YEARS. T
urns out this goat was 12.5 years old when i first ran into him. He was part of an initial transplant in eastern oregon in hopes to establish a hunt able population. Theres goats around, but numbers never grew enough to hunt them.
Fast foward to the next year bear hunting.. we all joked about looking for old 50 on this trip and never thought we see him again... We get back into the same valley we first spotted him the year prior... and what do you know a white blob not 200 yds from where he was last year. We put the spotters to him and orange ear tag and a gps collar.
OLD 50 Lives! another year older at 13.5... He looked no worse for wear. We spent a few moments staring at each... i filmed and he chewed his cud... after a short while he stood and walked out of sight.
Im excited to get back in there and see if he made it another year... if don't see him this spring going to spend some time looking for his remains.
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