MT Mountain Goat Update

[Point Creep]

Congrats Matt!

 

[Dinkshooter]

Now that is a beast the color of winter. Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

 

[noharleyyet]

Awesome pic.

 

[shoots-straight]

Way to go Matt.

 

[El Jason]

That's a great looking goat!

 

[Devil Diver Down]

Congrats on a cool looking goat, Critter.

 

[WV Hunter]

Great photo. Looks like a good one

 

[IdahoRob]

Way to go! That is one of the coolest pictures I have seen and tells a great story without words.

 

[thecrittergitter]

Well fellas, I'm going to try to tell this story as short as I can but there are some things that just can't be missed So here we go.

Second trip in for Goats:

My knee was still in pretty rough shape earlier last week but my buddy Greg offered to take a day off work and take me in on the horses to try to find that billy that had been shot and wounded by another hunter. It wasn't the goat I was after this year but he was a dang nice goat and I didn't want to see one go to waste so off we went to find him.

After a few hours of riding in the bitter cold, we stopped to make a fire and glass for him. It took a little moving around and glassing but we finally found him. Unfortunately he was already dead. I was pretty dang bummed out because I really hate to see an animal wasted, especially a mountain goat.

Other than the dead one, 9-10 hours of glassing couldn't produce another goat.....So a skunked trip. Huge thanks though to Greg and Ben for taking the day off work to try and help me out. The horse pretty much saved my knee that day. Couple pics from the day though.

 

[thecrittergitter]

Well, this is going to take a few posts but I'll try to keep it as simple as possible.

Trip #3 into goat country:


I was really hoping that this was going to be my last trip into goat country so I could focus on my moose from now on. Quite honestly, the criteria for me on this goat tag was number 1....... wait for good hair, number 2.....find a mature billy over 4 yrs old, horns on a goat to me, all look about the same so horn size was last on the list....

Going into this trip, my mindset was that number 1 was already met, all I needed to do was find a mature billy in shooting range and we were gonna be giving him a ride home in the Stone Glacier pack

We started packing in from about 7,000 feet and a couple hrs before light. Starting in snow about ankle deep made us think we wouldn't be too bad up on the top as we were headed for 10,000- 10,700 ft. We were wrong on that by the way.......

Once we hit timberline, the wind started whipping like crazy, looking straight up the hill for the next 1500' looked miserable. Almost enough to not want to push forward. But everybody put on their big girl pants and up we went

 

[thecrittergitter]

Once we hit the top, we figured we would get camp set up and split up so we could could cover more ground. with nearly knee deep snow, it was far tougher getting around than we expected and hoped. THankfully the wind dropped a bit and it cleared up nice. Unfortunately no goats spotted and very few tracks.

Here are a few pics of the "Hilton" on the mountain

 

[thecrittergitter]

Forgot the pics

 

[thecrittergitter]

And after 50+ mph winds all night, the vestibule was apparently a bad place to leave my boots for the night....Yep, they are in that snow pile on the right.

 

[thecrittergitter]

Back to 3 pm on Sat night. We were sitting and eating some lunch on top of a ridge glassing when Rich says...."There's a goat"! As grim as it had been, I responded with, "yea right".....and kept eating He says, no really, and its definately a billy all by himself. I peeked in the spotter and sure enough, there he was. We were a long way away and we had to act fast. We packed everything up and took off hauling butt as fast as a guy can in deep snow. We cut the distance in half and set up the spotter again. Yep, we both agreed that it looked like a mature billy but we couldn't really size the horns from there, but it didn't matter. We had 3 hrs of light left and probably 2 to get there, I had seen enough to know I was going to kill this goat if I could just get my hobbly azz over there.

About two hours later we cut his tracks and new we were close. Apparently very close because about 50 yards down the tracks, this guy explodes out of the tree well 15 yards in front of me. I hammered in a round and asked Rich, is he a shooter!?? Really just confirming it was the same goat. He had the words about half out of his mouth when the goat stopped one last time to see what we were before heading to the cliffs. Now or never was what hit my mind and bang! I look up and the goat tips over backwards and slides down the hill to a stop. Walking up on this thing was quite a feeling. He was actually bigger bodied on the ground than I realized they were. I was pretty happy to find out he was as we thought for being a mature goat, for sure 5.5, maybe even 6.5 yrs old. Will see what the biologist has to say today.

 

[thecrittergitter]

And I can't thank these three guys, Matt, Rich, and Ben enough for giving up their last weekend of archery season to help me out in far less than Ideal conditions. Good friends are worth their weight in gold when things like this come up. They all took as much weight off me as possible so I could get around easier on my knee.
Thank you guys for helping make this happen because I couldn't have done it on my own.

Here is the team!!

 

[hk_willow]

My goodness, what a great story and goat! You earned it for sure, so happy for you!

 

[MinnesotaHunter]

Awesome Goat, Critter! Way to push through on that one!

 

[El Jason]

Nice photo with the homies. That billy has an outstanding coat. Well done.

 

[BuzzH]

Way to stick with it...and congrats on a great goat!

 

[thecrittergitter]

And no way to forget the real work in this trip. But the stone glacier packs worked flawlessly on this packout! One piece of gear that will be sticking with me for a long time! Great job Kurt on designing a great packing lightweight packpack!