Hairy Beasts and Smell Korns

[Stone_Ice_1]

Friday comes along and I pick up my youngest from school and my youngest and I head down to goat camp. He is super excited as he doesn't get many trips with just him and I. We drive through the park on the way there and the only stop we make is at a couple of spots where you can usually spot goats. We spot a few along the cliffs at Barronette Peak in the usual spot.

We are in a bit of a time crunch to get there and get camp set up with enough time to do a little scouting trip so he continue on. I am concerned there may be people where I want to camp but I had a couple of spots as options. We slowly make our way to where I want to camp and sure enough, there is already a group here. So we go down the road just a bit farther and find a flat spot I had found the weekend before during the scouting trip. We set up the canvas tent and get everything unloaded just in time to get a quick trip around the area on the 4 wheeler.



The sun beaming off these cliffs every evening we were there was beautiful. You may recognize these cliffs as the ones I had spotted the mature Billy the previous weekend. This way the kids and I could hunt around camp and even watch the cliffs from camp during the day to see if he would show up again.

 

[Caseknife]

Great story so far, I will check back in a few days, keep it coming.

 

[Stone_Ice_1]

My youngest and I spent Saturday riding around on the four wheeler, exploring a few roads I hadn't had a chance to drive and looking for goats. I also talked to multiple tag holders in the area, including once group that was camped at the trailhead I eventually planned on heading in to. If they were camped at the trailhead I wasn't worried about them hunting where I wanted to. I did talk to one guy with horses that was heading into the drainage I was most interested in. He said he would be at the very lower end of the drainage and I wasn't planning on going down that far. Of the 12 tag holders I probably talked to 8 or 9 of them that day or the next. Many of them weren't even really hunting yet as they wanted to wait for better hair on the goats.

So the youngest and I scouted all day and he enjoyed it while we waited for the rest of the crew to get to camp.



View from camp during the late morning.



We saw lots of wildlife including this guy. But unfortunately we did not spot a single goat all day. I talked to one guy that had seen a group of 4 or 5 nannies and kids but that was it.


My son enjoyed some of the very rough and steep roads that we bombed around on all day.


I even ran into a group that was hiking in for a bison hunt. A nice family and they had drawn one of the 5 wilderness bison tags and were hiking into the area to explore with the idea that they would come back with around 12 horses to carry in/out camp and hopefully a bison. I can only imagine the undertaking it is to do a wilderness bison hunt with the size of those animals. Would be a fun hunt but nobody can expect to draw that tag when there are only 5 of them.

That evening the rest of the crew arrived and we were all primed for opening day of goat season the following morning. I had a plan that involved taking my oldest son out with me in the morning to hopefully find a goat near camp.

 

[Gulf of America]

Great story so far, I will check back in a few days weeks, keep it coming.

FIFY

Come back next week for the next 4-hour stretch of this amazing adventure.

 

[Charlie Bob]

Why not try a holiday in Sweden this year ?

 

[Stone_Ice_1]

I forgot to mention that on Saturday morning my son and I spotted two individuals headed with loaded packs head up over the ridge near camp. They went directly over the highest peak just to the right of my picutre of camp above. I could not tell if they were hunters or not but assumed they were. I couldn't believe where they were headed. You could tell one guy was experienced and knew where to go but the other was just following his buddy. I guessed they were looking for the same billy I had seen the week before and were headed into the next drainage to look for him. After talking to most of the tag holders it was apparent that a good portion of the hunters were aware of this particular billy. He apparently had been hanging out next to where I was camped for most of the summer.

We spotted these two later scaling over the top of another peak up the ridge a little farther. Several other goat hunters were standing with me when I pointed them out and we couldn't figure out what they were doing. It was some steep stuff they were traversing though.

 

[Stone_Ice_1]

The next morning my oldest son and I got up before first light and hopped on the four wheeler to get a little closer to the cliffs near camp, in case a goat was around. There were 2 mule deer walking around camp when we got up and headed out. We did the short drive to the base of the cliffs and started walking from there. As it got light, there didn't appear to be any goats around. However we couldn't see all of it from any one vantage point so we spent some time climbing around the rocks and getting some different views.


Still nothing spotted so we back to the four wheeler to go to an overlook that looked into another valley and check that out. After some time I spotted some aimals near a ridge int he distance. From such a distance and in the low light it was hard to tell but eventually determined they were bighorn sheep off in the distance. There was about 15 of them. Probably the same group I had seen the weekend before. They were in some crazy steep stuff that was more goat country than what I would call sheep country.

By the time we were done scoping out that valley it was mid morning and already warming up. We headed back to camp for some hot breakfast as you can see this was a super hard hunt. I also knew the youngest would want to go out for a bit. It was a beautiful day and shortly after breakfast we were all angling for the only shade to be found in camp.





The afternoon I took a drive with the youngest. No goats spotted and after talking to many other hunters nobody else had seen anything either. It was warm so I wasn't surprised there wasn't much activity. We spent most of the day relaxing in camp and keeping an eye on the cliffs but nothing popped out.

In the evening I took both sons up to the overlook we had seen the sheep from in the morning.



From this location we spotted all sorts of animals. The bighorn sheep were still in view. There was a herd of mule deer just below us and from this vantage point we spotted 7 different moose. But NO goats!

The ridge in the picture above that is above my sons is the one the 2 guys had walked the previous day. When we got back to camp I was told that the two guys had come back from the way they went. Apparently the folks in camp could see them take one step down a rock slide and then slide about 10 feet before they took another step with rocks falling everywhere. My buddy that had shown up was getting concerned that he was going to be the greenhorn in a similar situation when we took off the following day for the backcountry portion of the trip.

 

[Big Sky Guy]

Back in April I found out I drew a special Bull elk permit for Montana after 17 years of putting in. This is one of the premier tags in Montana and the area is quite well known and rhymes with Smell Korns. If you can't get it from that, I can't help you. I have a statistics background and my analysis before the season, even with 17 points only had me at about a 3.6% chance of drawing this tag so I was ecstatic. While I knew this tag was not what it once was, living right next to the district, I always put in with the idea that some day I would get to hunt those mountains I can see from my living room. I have never hunted the district, always staying out of it because personally I don't want to hunt a district that I can't even shoot a big bull if I do happen to see one. It is also a thing for me that I just generally stay out of the district to allow the people that do draw these tags their best chance at a quality hunt. So I started reaching out to friends and others that I knew had hunted the tag recently, some of those folks were people on this forum and had plans of scouting all summer to learn the district and where I wanted to hunt.
View attachment 356618

My scouting started pretty much the next day, even though it was April and bulls wouldn't have much if any kind of head gear. Its a solid 8 miles according to google from my living room to an area that holds elk but I was able to spot a few from my perch out my front window. My original plan would be to do a fair amount of scouting, including putting out several game cameras during the summer and determine what kind of bull I would be looking for during the season. I hunt both the archery and rifle seasons so I would have ample oppurtunities to chase elk in those hills. I also started clearing my schedule up a bit and making sure I didn't schedule anything during the fall. For example I planned on coaching my youngest in football this year for 3rd grade flag football but that would have to wait until next year.

Then at the beginning of May I had a work trip that sent me to Detroit. When landing and first getting to my hotel I remembered that today was most likely the day the moose, sheep and goat tags results would come out. Once again I knew from my analysis before the season that I had about a 12.3% chance of drawing any one of the Big 3. Part of me was hoping that this wasn't the year as I was already starting my planning and scouting for elk. Laying on the bed of the hotel I pulled up the results and with 14 points it said "Successful" for mountain goat! I could not believe it, matter of fact I went back and double/triple/quadruple checked the results. Sure enough I had basically a once in a lifetime elk tag and a once in a lifetime goat tag in my pocket for the same fall. One way or another this was going to be an epic fall, whether it was crash and burn style or hunter hero style.

My goat district is a district with very few roads and mostly a backpack style hunt. This is the exactly kind of tough backcountry hunt that I wanted for a goat and the reason I applied for this particular district. Originally I had hoped to have a summer of scouting and backcountry flyfishing as part of my goat plan. But with 2 premier tags I wasn't sure how much of this was going to become a reality. I have never hunted goats or had any of the Big 3 tags so the excitement I had was pretty astronomical. My first step was to purchase and read the big "A Beast the Color of Winter" and learn as much as I could about goats. I did know that I wanted a mature Billy, even though it is technically an either sex tag.

I’m most curious about your stats math since you seem to have a background in that. Everything I understand the odds remain below 1% for everything limited that has antlers/horns. My guess is you didn’t account for other applicants bonus points? Don’t be giving me that much false hope. I’ll PM you article discussing this unit specifically.

Edit: Here is the thread that discusses what I was thinking of:

FWP Bonus Point Sketchiness

I wonder what would actually happen if MT scrapped the bonus point thing. I wonder if the high point person's odds would actually go up after all of the crying and hand wringing over the terrible loss, and a bunch of people who feel invested said to hell with it. The max point resident guys...

www.hunttalk.com

 

[Dr. samuel_284Win]

The next morning my oldest son and I got up before first light and hopped on the four wheeler to get a little closer to the cliffs near camp, in case a goat was around. There were 2 mule deer walking around camp when we got up and headed out. We did the short drive to the base of the cliffs and started walking from there. As it got light, there didn't appear to be any goats around. However we couldn't see all of it from any one vantage point so we spent some time climbing around the rocks and getting some different views.
View attachment 360307

Still nothing spotted so we back to the four wheeler to go to an overlook that looked into another valley and check that out. After some time I spotted some aimals near a ridge int he distance. From such a distance and in the low light it was hard to tell but eventually determined they were bighorn sheep off in the distance. There was about 15 of them. Probably the same group I had seen the weekend before. They were in some crazy steep stuff that was more goat country than what I would call sheep country.

By the time we were done scoping out that valley it was mid morning and already warming up. We headed back to camp for some hot breakfast as you can see this was a super hard hunt. I also knew the youngest would want to go out for a bit. It was a beautiful day and shortly after breakfast we were all angling for the only shade to be found in camp.



View attachment 360308

The afternoon I took a drive with the youngest. No goats spotted and after talking to many other hunters nobody else had seen anything either. It was warm so I wasn't surprised there wasn't much activity. We spent most of the day relaxing in camp and keeping an eye on the cliffs but nothing popped out.

In the evening I took both sons up to the overlook we had seen the sheep from in the morning.

View attachment 360309

From this location we spotted all sorts of animals. The bighorn sheep were still in view. There was a herd of mule deer just below us and from this vantage point we spotted 7 different moose. But NO goats!

The ridge in the picture above that is above my sons is the one the 2 guys had walked the previous day. When we got back to camp I was told that the two guys had come back from the way they went. Apparently the folks in camp could see them take one step down a rock slide and then slide about 10 feet before they took another step with rocks falling everywhere. My buddy that had shown up was getting concerned that he was going to be the greenhorn in a similar situation when we took off the following day for the backcountry portion of the trip.

Beautiful pictures! Enjoying your story as I had the same tag in 2022. Selfishly wishing that a friend or family member of mine draws so I can return to this landscape with goats on the mind

 

[Stone_Ice_1]

As it happened our camp was pretty much right in between where we had seen the two separate grizzlies the weekend before. This is a known grizzly area and so we were being careful with our food and all the requirements of being in grizzly country. My buddy was sleeping in his vehicle while my 3 kids, me and the girlfriend were all in the tent.

As I've mentioned on Hunt Talk before I have cochlear implants and can't hear ANYTHING at night because I don't sleep with them in. I sleep quite well and over and years during my backpacking trips I have woken up many times to evidence of animals being right next to my tent while I was obliviously asleep.

In the middle of the night I get awoken by somebody vigorously tapping me. Then a light comes on and I can see my girlfriend sitting up and pointing in the direction outside the tent. I immediately sit up and get situated so I can hear. She was sleeping on one edge of the tent and her head was in a corner. She told me she could hear some sniffing and breathing noises right next to her head outside the tent. She thought she was dreaming it but then something poked the tent and pushed at her. She pushed back and it pushed back. I asked if it felt like a big animal or a small one. She didn't know.

I had specifically put a very high powered flashlight in the tent for just this kind of circumstance. By now everybody is awake and I start making noise to let whatever animal is out there know that we are in here. I am searching for the flashlight and after a few minutes of tearing the tent apart I am informed by one of my kids that they had it out by the campfire. Well if you have kids, you know that it never got put back in the tent. We do have a couple little headlamps in there. So I take one, open the tent up, take a quick look around and don't see eyeballs or anything and proceed to go get the high powered flashlight. After getting to it I shine the light all across the hillside and don't see eyeballs or an animal anywhere. My buddy is also up as he saw the lights on and said he hadn't heard or seen anything.

There is of course lots of discussion about what animal it could have been. When we wake up in the morning to go on our hunt the same 2 deer that have been around camp every morning are out there. My guess is it was one of those 2 mule deer but we will never know.

 

[Stone_Ice_1]

Monday morning we do a similar hunt that we did on Sunday, looking around the nearby area for the billy I had seen the previous weekend. No luck and no goats spotted at all. It being Monday we did another quick morning hunt and then headed back to camp to help tear it down. I also had to fully pack my Mystery Ranch Marshall for the backcountry hunt. I had been using my Eberlestock for the scouting and day hunts from camp.



It took a while to get camp all packed up and my gear all ready to go for the trip. We sent the girlfriend back towards home with the kids while my buddy and I finalized packing. My plan was to leave my truck near where we had been camping and take the four-wheeler in to the trailhead. It is a very steep and rough road to get in there and I didn't want to have to do it with the 4-wheeler in the back. My buddy had driven the road a few times the last 2 days to scout it and decided he was going to take in his Jeep all the way to the trailhead. He was a bit nervous about it, but he was up for the adventure, and this was just step one of several new things he would be tackling on this trip.

So the trip in to the trailhead went smoothly and was uneventful. We talked to the goat hunters that were camped there, and the report was nobody had shot a goat yet and very few had been sighted. They were getting frustrated and to put it nicely were not the most cordial hunters we saw on the trip. The good news was they were not hunting where I planned to go into.

This was the part of the trip I was excited and the kind of goat hunt I wanted. A backcountry trip where my camp would be about 3 miles in and we would be hunting farther in from there.

 

[Stone_Ice_1]

The hike in was rather uneventful. It was another very warm day so it felt strange to be technically be hunting in shorts. We didn't see any goats on the hike in. About halfway in, and just after we left the trail we could hear voices ahead of us. Two guys were coming down from the ridge we were headed up to.

Both of these guys turned out to be very friendly guys from Wyoming. Neither had the tag but their buddy, who they had left in the drainage we were headed to had a tag and would be going further down the drainage. They informed us that they had watched the tag holder from the group that was camped at the trailhead shoot his goat. It was apparently a 2.5 yr old billy that they shot on top of a cliff and it fell about 1,000 feet before it stopped. What horns it had were just nubbins by the time it came to a complete stop. But this was good news to me as it meant one less goat hunter in the area. They also informed us that in the morning the cliffs at the head end of the drainage had a nanny and two kids on it and that a bear had walked through their camp the night before. When they told me where they had put camp I wasn't shocked.

So we continued up the hill. My buddy at this time was getting a bit nervous as we were approaching the ridge I had been telling him about for weeks now. I was a bit nervous also as I hadn't done it with a full pack. We got to the top of the ridge and that is where it gets interesting. Its a straight drop off to your right and is really steep off to the left. There is a bit of a goat trail on the very top that made for the easiest walking but you had to get used to the heights. I was mostly just concerned about one 15 foot stretch or so.

After getting over the initial nervousness/shock of where you are walking it gets easier. The ridge is a beautiful walk with great views and it is a clear day in every direction. We slowly walk the ridge, taking our time and making sure to not make any mistakes. Then we get to the stretch I was concerned about. At this spot it is straight down on your right about 1,500 feet and on your left is a very steep wash. There is about a foot wide "path" right at the top. I had walked around it on my scouting trip by going down the wash a bit. The problem was footing is really sketchy here. My plan was to do that again. With a pack on that proved to be a scary 15 foot stretch where I was holding on to the hillside by just by what felt like a toe and maybe a couple fingernails. My buddy determined the best way to go was crawl across the 1 foot path at the top. We both made it across but neither one of us was happy with our method of getting across it, knowing we had to go back across to get back to the truck.

Not far after this is the head of the drainage I wanted to hunt. Sure enough, there were 3 goats on the cliffs above it, a nanny and two kids. We dropped down the ridge and I had a spot in mind about 1,000 feet elevation down that I thought would be a good camp spot that I believed there would be water nearby. We got down there and there was a small creek about 150 yards from where I camped so this would be perfect.

We spent the evening glassing the cliffs for other goats, watching the nanny and two kids criss cross all over the cliffs, hanging out food about 100 yards from camp and getting everything set up. About halfway through setting up the tent I kept smelling huckleberries and couldn't figure out why. Then I started looking around and all the brush that we were camping in was huckleberries. The brush was only about 6 inches high and the berries were about the size of a pinhead but moving around in them made the smell come up as we smashed them. I wasn't too pleased we were in a huckleberry patch but looking around there really wasn't anywhere to get out of it.

Just before it got dark I spotted a group of goats about 2.5 miles down the drainage. There were 5 or 6 of them. From this distance I couldn't tell for sure if any were billies but with a group that size I was guessing they were nannies/kids. But we were just excited to be seeing goats with a big hunt planned for the next day.

 

[Stone_Ice_1]

That evening I had realized that I had neglected to bring my range finder. This was a serious bummer as I knew with a goat there is a decent chance at a long shot (not true long range as I have never fired a shot at an animal over 500 yards). As mentioned before I had switched bags for the backcountry permit and I knew exactly where my rangefinder was in the other bag...but it wasn't doing much good there.

So I slept pretty good that night and was excited for a full day of goat hunting when I got up. It was just barely starting to get light as I got sat up in my one man bivy. I put in my ears so I could hear and could immediately hear a sound that was no good at all....rain, and lots of it. I unzipped my tent to take a look around and everything was absolutely soaked. I learned from my buddy later that it had been raining for a few hours at that point. Nothing like some serious rain to dampen the spirit. I love hunting in snow and cold, but rain can just be miserable. So I slowly start getting my stuff together and as it gets lighter I notice that I can't even see the cliffs next to me or anywhere down the valley because of all the fog. It is absolutely socked in. These are the types of rain clouds that look like they could hang around for a couple days. There was nothing in the weather report about this. And it is even worse for goats because you need to be able to see long distances, nobody wants to hike up several thousand feet just to look around and see nothing but fog.

My buddy is not stirring but there is not reason to wake him, not much hunting is happening right now. I had told him what my plan was in the morning, just across the valley was a ridge that I wanted to go sit on that would give me a good view of most of the valley. I planned to sit on that with my spotting scope and find some goats. You can see this spot from camp easily. So I got some food from the bags we had hanging and grabbed all my gear and headed over to the ridge in the rain. It is probably a half mile hike over there as you drop down and then back up to get to it. On my way I can see the fog starting to lift ever so slowly. The other good thing is the wind is picking up so I am hoping it will blow out of here.

I sit behind a rock on the ridge to be out of the wind and start glassing, I still can't see down the valley but I can see the nearby cliffs the nanny and 2 kids were on last night. I can't find them or any other goats. Slowly I can see further down the valley and before long I can see all the way to the end. The skies parted and it looked like this:



You would never know that 30 minutes earlier it looked like I was going to have to endure 2 days or more of rain. About this time I see my buddy climb out of his tent and look over at me. I give a wave and I can see him gathering his stuff up. He heads over to me but I did notice he never went and got any food at our food tree.

I keep looking for goats with no luck. There doesn't seem to be anything in the valley. After 20 minutes or so my buddy gets to me and we both look. We spent an hour moving up and down the ridge to look at some of the valley from slightly different angles. Doesn't seem to matter, there is nothing to spot. My buddy is still in his pajamas, he has a cotton t-shirt and sweats on with a rain jacket. I tell him we are going to need to head down the valley to get a better look at some spots. He wants to go to camp and get his better clothes and some food. About the time he has put on his backpack and takes about 2 steps towards camp I spot a goat.

It is one single goat by himself about 2 miles down the valley. Even from this distance I am fairly certain this is a mature billy. My buddy asks me what I am going to do, I tell him I am headed to the goat so I ask if he wants to meet me somewhere or what he wants to do. He says he isn't going to miss this, he is coming with me. There was a discussion about how much of a hike this would be and that he doesn't have any food for the day. He doesn't care, this is what he came for!



The yellow circle in the picture is where I spot the goat, he is feeding towards the valley that goes up behind the ridge just in front of that spot and we are going to lose sight of him soon. I figure we can follow the creek most of the way and then use that last ridge as cover to get to him without him seeing us.

But keep in mind this is BIG country, that's farther and a a lot steeper than it looks.

So off we go to get a better look at this goat.

 

[Caseknife]

Think that classifies as blind dedication in your hunting partner's part. Beautiful country

 

[HappyCamper]

Great recap so far! I’m nervous for your friend on this next stretch of the story though. Shaping up to be a miserable day

 

[txco]

Awesome detail so far, keep it coming

 

[Stone_Ice_1]

As we drop down the ridge we are glassing from we lose elevation and the goat disappears from view behind the ridge. It is a long walk of not knowing what the goat is doing or where it is heading. You can't see it in the pictures but there are many, many small creeks and ravines that come down into the main creek at the bottom. Each of these you have to climb down, cross the small wash and hike back up the other side. This whole are being burned many years ago there is of course dead fall everywhere. It makes for a long hike but we made good time as I didn't want to give the goat much time to move too far. As we lose elevation I can visually see the plants getting taller, there being a lot of lush undergrowth and things changing more and more to a riparian habitat.

On the way there, one of my cochlear implants starts beeping at me. This is not good. It means my battery is about to die and all my spares are back at camp! After about 15 more minutes it dies. I let my buddy know that I can only now hear in one ear. He gives me a look of dread but I tell him that the other one should be fine as I just replaced the battery in it the day before. But he wasn't relishing the thought of walking around bear country and they guy with the gun can't hear anything.

We then get far enough that I decide it is time to cross the main creek and head up the ridge the goat had disappeared from. This is a south slope and much thinker than the one we had been on. There are regen pine trees and it is really thick and brushy. The ridge is also a lot steeper than it looks when we get to it. The farther we drop in elevation the more animal sign I am seeing. When we head up the ridge I start seeing elk sign everywhere and before long I can smell them, there is some around somewhere here. There is also bear sign everywhere. The huckleberry bushes are now knee high and my buddy and I are snacking on them during every rest we take. We go farther and farther up the ridge and we still can't see the goat again. I don't know how long it had been since we spotted him but probably around an hour.

We get to the top of the ridge and the vegetation opens up a bit. I spot the goat and he is feeding across the hillside just below the cliffs and in the lush green vegetation that is here. I get him in the scope and confirm he is in fact a mature billy, we are in business! He is feeding in a bit of a clearing, there isn't a lot of newly growing trees or even old ones. There is a thick area of trees just off to his left. He is still too far to shoot. I don't know exactly how far because the rangefinder was back at the truck. I was cursing myself for forgetting it. But if I had to guess I would say he was 700-800 yards off.

We are behind some vegetation and after checking out the terrain and my options in front of me I tell my buddy to wait behind me and I will start making my way forward. It is fairly open on this side of the ridge and I'm concerned the goat will see me and spook. I start making my way forward and when I do I see the billy has turned around and he is heading back down the valley towards where I had first spotted him. He doesn't look at me and keeps feeding that way so I move forward another 100 yards or so. There is piles of bear scat right in this area all over the place, every 15 yards is another giant pile.

 

[Stone_Ice_1]

The billy continues to move, he is moving faster now back down the valley. The way the countour of the little side valley is I am not getting much closer to him as I push to him. I make it to the bottom of that valley and start working my way up his side of the valley. I try to use the thicker area of trees that were to his left to disguise myself from him. However he starts looking my direction and knows something is up. I start pushing up the hill a little faster, I need to get a little closer. It is super thick walking through this stuff, but most of it is only about head high. The huckleberry patch in here is phenomenal. Huge brush with huge berries that are just packed. Makes me wonder if that is what he was eating.

The billy is now getting out of dodge. He isn't running or anything but knows something is wrong and is headed back to where I spotted him. I keep pushing up the hill to try and close the gap. At one point he gets to a crevice in the cliff wall and disappears from my view. I think this is my chance so I move forward fast. I make it a ways and he pops out just uphill from where he went into the crevice. He is now right at the base of the cliffs. I am breathing hard from trying to get up the hill. I have my shooting sticks out and try and set them up in the thick brush. The goat is turned broadside and looking at me and I estimate he is about 300 yards from me. I realize this is my chance right here.

I get him in the scope but between the shooting sticks not being setup exactly as I would like and breathing so hard I can't keep it steady enough. The moment ends without a shot fired and he goes into his crevice again. He disappears from my view and every once in a while I get a quick glance of him in between the rocks in the crevice. He is higher up the mountain now and too far to shoot. But at this point I can see him walking back and forth inside that crevice in the rock. I don't think he has a way out unless he comes out the bottom. Then I see him get a run at it and try and scale the cliff to his right. He doesn't make it and falls back in the crevice. He gathers himself and tries it again, another fail. On the 3rd attempt he makes it and is now moving aroudn on the cliffs. Even if I was close enough to shoot at this point, his fall from there would be too treacherous. I sidehill towards him a bit, my buddy is about 200 yards down the valley in the bottom of it. As I am sidehilling I can see the billy moving back and forth across the cliff. I only get glimpses of him here and there because being on the same side of the hill as him makes it hard to see him. I start heading back down to the bottom of the valley where my buddy is. I haven't seen the goat in a while and think he may have gone over the top or around the ridge.

I meet my buddy and we climb the short distance up to the ridge that he had walked behidn from our vantage point 2 miles up the valley. The goat is no where in sight but as we are discussing what to do next I move us behind a good sized tree in case he makes an appearance. The billy has gone around the cliff ridge to the other side. He are standing there discussing what just happened and what we should do next. Then my buddy says, "Hey, is that him?" Sure enough he had come back around to out side of the ridge he was on. He is near the top of the cliffs and looking down. Way too far to shoot and standing at the top of the cliff. We wait to see what he does. After about 5 minutes he finally moves. He is coming back down!

He slowly makes his way down the cliff again and we realize he is headed back to that crevice in the cliff wall. He gets above it and then does this ridiculously athletic drop into the crevice that only a goat can do and disappears.

We can't see him, but he can't see us either. So I start looking around for a place to get set up. The ridge we are standing on is about as close as you can get to him. So we move down a bit to spot where there are a couple of decent sized trees and I get my shooting sticks out and the gun set up. My buddy is next to me while we use the trees as a bit of cover if he comes back out. If he comes out the bottom of that crevice I will have a shot. At this point we are quite a bit lower in elevation than him on the opposite ridge. So I am shooting up at probably a 40 degree angle. It is quite a ways but when I get the gun up and hold it steady I think it is doable distance wise, once again chastising myself for forgetting my range finder.

At this point my heart is thumping pretty good, cause I believe he is going to come out the bottom of that crevice any moment. A minute goes by, 2 minutes, 5 minutes, and nothing. This is when I realize that crevice and the rock right at the exit of it is where I had spotted him from 2 miles away. I think this spot might be his home and he could be bedded in there. It is hard to describe this crevice/cave he is in. It runs all the way up the cliff wall and I can see a little ways in it from where I am sitting. But after watching his actions the first time he went in there, I know he has to come towards the bottom of it to get out. I tell my buddy it is just a waiting game now. It could be 5 minutes, it could just before dark. It is 12:30 PM at this time.

 

[Caseknife]

Talk about a cliff hanger.......

 

[Stone_Ice_1]

So at this point I make sure to get comfortable. I have my shooting sticks propped up, gun on it and ready to go. Brush and sticks cleared away and my shooting sticks firmly planted in a comfortable spot. This is going to have to be a shot taken while sitting since there is a downhill slope here on my ridge and we are looking up at a steep angle. I have a foam pad that I always sit on out and my pack off and under the tree next me. My buddy is sitting under the tree next to me and we start waiting. Looking at the distance and through my scope I feel confident in the shot and believe it to be around 350 yards. If he comes out I know this is going to happen fast, especially if he turns and starts to go up the cliff again. It is past lunch and normally I don't eat an actual lunch when I am out hunting all day, I just snack through lunch and get a decent dinner. I have lots of snacks in my pack but since by muddy doesn't have anything to eat it is going to have to be for 2 of us. I also don't want to each much because I don't want to be busy chowing down on something when this goat comes out. The only time I walk away from my sitting position with the gun right in front of me and pointed up the hill is when I have to pee.

An hour goes by and we can see another storm moving in on us. The clouds get darker and darker and we can hear thunder rumbling in the distance. Slowly but surely we watch as the storm comes up the valley and over the mountains in front of us. Remember my buddy is only wearing a cotton t-shirt and sweats that he slept in. He does have a rain jacket with him. This storm looks and sounds like a doozy and before long it is a classic Beartooth mountains afternoon thunderstorm with wind, lightning, rain and hail. It hails on us hard for about 20 minutes. I eventually moved away from my spot and had to take cover under the tree a bit. My buddy has his rain jacket on and is trying to keep his legs covered also. I have a rain jacket and much better clothes than he does but in a storm like this you are going to get wet. I am just concerned at how long this rain/storm is going to last. But after about 40 minutes of rain it clears off again as if nothing had even happened, except the hail that is everywhere on the ground around us, some of it good sized.

Another hour goes by and my buddy says, "Hey, what is that over there? That orange spot?" And me being a hunter know that orange out here only usually means one thing, another hunter. I don't see what he is looking at and after a while I finally see it. On the ridge the goat is on but way down below it and to our right is a hunter. He is sitting behind a log with what looks like his gun out and looking up to where my goat is. This is not good, I know he wasn't there before the storm. We have lots of conversations on what to do. Should we go talk to him? Did he actually see the goat? Does he know where the goat is or does he just know its up there somewhere? Does he see us? He had to have seen us. While I didn't have orange on, it was on my pack right next to me and the orange just happened to be facing right in his direction. My buddy is also wearing a white t-shirt. The hunter is quite a ways from us so hiking over there would take some time. Eventually after having talked about it for 30 minutes we decide to stay put. The guy hasn't moved. Looking at his location and where we are I realize we are in a better position. I can see up into the crevice a little ways and with the angle the other hunter is sitting he won't be able to see the goat until it comes completely out of the rocks and I'm not sure he will be able to see it until it walks down into the opening below that. We both appear to be a about the same distance from the spot where I know the goat is, he might be just a touch farther.

So now I know that I have to be fast for 2 reasons when he comes out. One so he doesn't go back up into the cliffs, and secondly to make sure the other hunter doesn't get him first. This is not a problem I wanted to deal with on a backpack hunt where we are currently about 5 miles deep.

After about another hour we see the hunter moving around. He appears to be packing up his bag and before long he gathers all his stuff and heads up and over the ridge that he is on into the next valley. I'm not sure if he determined that maybe the goat went that way or what, but either way he has left. Its a weight off my shoulders as a problem I don't have to worry about anymore.

You would think that in all the time sitting here watching this cliff I would have a picture of this area and view we had looking up at this cliff, but not a single one taken by either of us.

Another hour goes by and I am starting to get worried that maybe there is a back way out of this cave. Maybe we were dreaming it that a goat went in there. I am also worried that it is getting closer to the end of the day and we have a decent hike to get to camp.

Another hour and at some point during the day we realized that both of us had left our good headlamps in the tents. I had a cheap walmart one with me as a backup and then a backup flashlight in my bag. My buddy has no lights whatsoever. The only other option we would have is the light on our phones in the case of an emergency.

Another hour and it is now about 6:30 PM. My buddy gets restless and says he is going to get up and walk up our ridge a bit. He goes about 40 yards away and is using his binoculars to scan the cliff and valley. He then goes a few yards farther and is using a tree to keep him concealed and before long I can hear him whisper that he can see the goat from there. All he can see is the head.