It’s 2:25am. I’m awake. I don’t want to be, but I am. I have a really regular schedule at home and my body isn’t enjoying the time difference, lol. Anyway, I’ll work it out.
My first day was pretty great. My guide (Chad) and I started the day by seeing a pretty decent black bear while driving. It was smoky out so it limited our options a little bit. There is an area that Chad always likes to go first day because he usually sees goats. We parked the truck and began glassing and Chad immediately picked up a goat. It was all the way up in the stratosphere on the side of an incredibly sheer cliff. It was unhuntable. It looked like it was probably a pretty good Billy but in that location there was just no option to hunt him. It was still great to see a goat so quickly. After spending about 30 to 45 minutes glassing that area Chad said he wanted to hike into an area that has been good over the years. We drove a little ways parked the truck and hiked about 3 miles back into a bowl that wasn’t very smoky and allowed us to glass. We sat down for lunch and settled in for the afternoon. After about 90 minutes Chad picked up another goat bedded high up on a mountain side. We both agreed this was not a shooter goat (later determined it was a nanny)and it was also incredibly high once again. About an hour after this I picked up another goat on the other side of the bowl. This turned into 2 goats and then 4 goats. One of these goats was a small Billy, but also not something I was interested in going after. They were in an unhuntable location as well. As the day wore on that group of goats fed and worked their way down pretty close to an area that could be hunted but there was not a shooter Billy in that group.
Around 5:30 after 5 1/2 hours of glassing the bowl we decided to work our way out back to the truck glassing the different avalanche chutes as we went. The goal was to get back to the truck and then head back to the giant face where we had seen what we felt like was a good Billy that morning. We did not see anything on the way out, but when we got back to the big face we found that goat again. He had dropped down 1000 to 1500 feet and was in a lot lot better location. We watched him go over the backside of the ridge. We were watching him from a little over a mile away, but he was definitely the best goat we’d seen thus far. Our plan is to go in this morning and try to find him and see how good he is. If he’s a shooter goat we’re gonna try to kill him, if not will hunt another bowl that is in the area he went towards.
It looks like there’s some bad weather coming in later today and tomorrow. If I don’t kill a goat today our plan is after that weather passes to backpack into some deeper areas to spend a few days in there looking for a good Billy.
We saw 6 goats total. Watching goats all afternoon was really awesome. They are so cool. It also helped me get a lot better grasp on what I was looking for and the characteristics of Billies and Nannies. It was a great first day.