Patience Please, Another Goat Story

[Gerald Martin]

In my earlier post about my goat hunt I mentioned how goats are one of my all time favorite animals.
I've been holding out on you guys. I've got one more goat story to share. On this hunt I was able to get a lot more pictures I've got some time tonight and I'll try to tell the tale. I'm a slow typist so exercise some patience.

Unlike MT Miller who shows some sympathy for the guys who only want to see trophy pics and posts those early in the game, I have no sympathy and you'll have to suffer through all the others to get to where I'm going.

 

[Big Fin]

Get'em up GM, we want to see 'em.

 

[mtmiller]

Nothing quite like a DIY goat hunt. Looking forward to seeing and hearing more about your hunt.

 

[Gerald Martin]

This is Rick Farthing. Rick is my good friend and neighbor, a master taxidermist. We've been good friends for several years but hadn't done a lot of hunting together. I had called Rick on day the drawing results from the 2008 moose, sheep and goat were posted online. I hadn't drawn a sheep tag and wanted to see what he had done. He made the comment about how he never draws anything and doesn't bother to check online most years. I told him to check it out and hung up the phone. It wasn't a minute later till the phone rang and Rick was estatic with the news that he had drawn a goat tag for our local area.
I consider the tag in our area to be a great tag, there's lots of goats, decent access and the goats can be hunted right up through November most years. The only problem is the long odds to draw the tag. The odds are like 1 in 80 or 90. I had never bothered to apply for our area, almost every other unit has better draw odds. But he had the tag!
With a long season and our hunting area only an hour from home we knew he was going to have a great hunt.

 

[Gerald Martin]

sorry for the delay guys, I'm having problems getting all my pics sized properly and the uploads keep failing.

 

[Gerald Martin]

Our hunt took place in mid October. This is goat country.

 

[Gerald Martin]

I was along as video man, pack mule, moral support and just for my own fun. Rick had done a lot of research and talked to a very knowledgeable guy by the name of Don(sorry last name evades me just now) that lives in Libby, Montana. Don has spent a lifetime among these goats and was a wealth of knowledge about their habits and how to know a mature billy when we saw one.
With all the information Don gave us Rick and I boiled it down to two points. Look for a lone animal with a "horse" face. Hence our personal quest became a hunt for a "horsefaced" billy.

Glassing up goats.

 

[Gerald Martin]

Our plan was to do day hunts from the house. Mid October can be rainy in this country and rain and fog are a goat hunter's nightmare. We tried to pick days when nice weather was forcasted and did okay most of the time.

Our first days hunt concluded with seeing a bunch of nannies, kids and two possible billys on the mountain that is in the middle of the previous post. The goats were nearly a mile away and we didn't even try a stalk. Another bit of wisdom Don had given us. Never start a stalk after 3 PM unless you want to spend the night on the mountain. We left the area mid afternoon and made a short side trip out to look for a black bear on the huckleberries.

We actually spotted a bear at the bottem of this basin as we were looking for goats. Rick and I agreed that that bear would probably die of old age. Its a lot further down there than it looks.

 

[Gerald Martin]

First days hunt was nannies and kids. Second day's hunt plan was to head for the mountain where we saw all the goats and check out one goat in particular that we had nicknamed Dirty. On day one we were so far away we couldn't positively identify sex of the goats but one of the animals tended to hang a couple hundred yards from most of the goats and had dirty flanks. We were guessing this goat to be a billy, most likely not fully mature and wanted to get a closer look.
Day two dawned with fog, fog, and more fog. It looked like it was going to be a wash for the day. The fog did make for some neat pictures.
Rick's son-in-law, Anthony, joined us for day two.

 

[Gerald Martin]

The fog finally burned off around 9 a.m. and we spotted the goats. They were on the same ridge as before, but they were on the move. We picked our way through the boulder fields and thick timber until we were within 700 yards of the goats. That took us nearly three hours. In that amount of time the goats had climbed to the top of the mountain, crossed over to the backside, made their way down the opposite ridgeline and then crossed over the face of the mountain, almost making a complete circle. The goats were fearless when they were on the move, often running across rock faces that I wouldn't cross with climbing gear.

 

[Gerald Martin]

The yellow line symbolizes the path the goat took in the three hours it took us to follow the red line. The goats started on the right side of the mountain and ended up on the top of the left side of the mountain.
I think we saw about 16 goats that day. We were almost positive two were billies but even if they were there would have been no way to keep a goat from falling off the cliff, if Rick could have gotten close enough for a shot.

We still hadn't found any solitary goats with a "horse" face. Don had told us this time of year the older billies will often stage within several drainages of the nannies and kids, waiting for the rut. Our next plan was to take a several day backpack trip into the drainage beyond where these goats were.

Anthony and I glassing for goats.

 

[Gerald Martin]

Some more scenery from our first two days.

 

[Gerald Martin]

It was a week until the weather and our schedules allowed us to take our backpack trip. The basin we were headed into had a washed out road we that were were able to wheel a game cart along for two miles. From there we hiked another two miles to get to our campsite beside the lake.

 

[Gerald Martin]

On our hike in we got side tracked when I glimpsed a big chocolate bear feeding on huckleberries. He was in some tall brush and we never saw him long enough to be sure of his identity. I was sure enough it was a black bear and not one of the occasional grizzlys that commonly use this drainage, that we set up and tried to call the bear out of the brush into the open where we could see him. It didn't work and we never saw the bear again.
Just before we made it to the lake we glassed a lone goat 600yds away on a cliff. He was bedded and as hard as we tried to make him a big billy, both Rick and I agreed he still looked "cute" and was an immature billy. Don had told us we would know when we saw a big goat and so far we hadn't seen any goats that we knew instictively were big.
Goats are such a hard animal to judge because their body size varies greatly. All you have to go by is the proportions on that animal and if the goat has a small body his horns will fool you. Likewise a big bodied goat's horns can look small.
We didn't mess with that goat and went to the lake to set up camp. After a Cup-O-Noodles we set up the spotting scope and went to work.
It didn't take long to find a single goat working his way down off of the cliffs and coming down into the valley floor. This goat was undoubtedly the biggest goat we had seen yet.
We had an hour until dark and the goat was less than a mile away. After some quick discussion we were going to try and make a stalk. Before we could get our gear on and go the goat stopped feeding and headed into the cliffs. We knew we'd never catch him and rather than blow him out with a hasty stalk, we settled in for the night and made plans for the morning hunt.

 

[Gerald Martin]

Between the after dinner coffee and the anticipation of the hunt neither Rick nor I got much sleep that night. I thought I was bad, I got about three hours but Rick said he didn't sleep more than about 1/2 an hour. We were up two hours before daylight and ate a leisurely breakfast of instant oatmeal and some more coffee.

The trail around the lake was in full view of where the goat had been the night before. We wanted to get arround the lake before daylight so we would have some cover when we saw the goat.

Hiking always takes longer when you are in goat country, especially if you are trying to be quiet. We made it to the end of the lake just as dawn broke and started working our way up the valley floor.

Some scenery from that morning.

 

[Gerald Martin]

Soon after daylight, I spotted a goat on the right side of the valley. The goat we had seen the night before was on the left side of the valley and 700 yards from where this goat was. We didn't think it could be the same goat but weren't sure.
Looking carefully through the spotting scope we both agreed that once again this was a "cute" faced young goat.We left that goat watching us from three hundred yards away and continued up the valley floor.

I meant to post the goat picture that was in the previous post here. This is the same goat.

 

[Gerald Martin]

We hadn't gone two hundred yards further up the ravine when I saw yet another goat on the right side of the valley. He was only about two hundred yards from the valley floor and was in a direct line from where the goat we had seen the nigth before had been.
When Rick put the spotting scope on him the first words out of his mouth were. "Now there's a horse-faced billy." This billy was a night and day difference to the other goats we had seen. He had long "panteloons" of hair hanging from his front legs. When facing straight away he was thick and wide across is back end and his color appeared to be more creamy than white. His horns were thick and long and in less time than it takes to read this paragraph Rick had pronounced him, "Big enough."

I should mention that our hunt had taken on a bit more drama and pressure the further it went on. Rick's step-dad, Al, was terminally ill and wasn't expect to live much longer. Rick knew that when Al died his hunt was over, he'd have to go back to Oregon for the funeral and help take care of his mom.

On top of that it was October 19 and the weather had been deteriorating rapidly. We had been getting a lot of rain the past two weeks and all it would take would be for a cold snap with a bunch of snow and we would have an extremely tough time getting to where the goats were.

The billy was about 500 yards above and ahead of us. We didn't have much cover so we moved whenever he was feeding or was facing away. He was in a perfect spot for recovery so Rick wanted to get his shot before the goat moved into the cliffs to bed. We got to within 380 yards before we ran out of cover. To get any closer we would have to move out into plain sight and the goat had been slowly moving off as we had stalked closer. He was only about 50 yards from the cliffs, once he got in there he would almost surely fall and get broken up like my goat had done. Rick was confident he could make a clean kill and set up for the shot. I ranged the goat and called out the yardage. "385 yards, but wait until I tell you before you shoot." I wanted to make sure my video camera was steady and focused before I gave him the green light.

To my horror as Rick was focused on shooting the goat, I was so excited I couldn't find the goat in the viewfinder of my video camera. I knew he wouldn't take long to shoot and I was scared I was going to miss getting the shot on video. "Don't shoot! Don't shoot!" I hissed at him. Then, I found the goat and got him in focus, just to in time for him to move from his perfect broadside position and take several steps. What happened next was so serindipitous that it almost seems unreal.

We had two hard winters previous to this hunt and the deer and elk had suffered serious winterkill in this area. We hadn't even seen a deer track the previous day and now the only mule deer we saw the whole trip, came bouncing out of the brush, into the same screen on my camera and stands there 15 feet above the billy. Rick can't see the deer because of the narrow field of view on his scope and I'm afraid a pass through might hit the doe. "Rick! Don't shoot that doe!" "What?" was his reply. He thought I had a few loose screws at this point. The goat took a couple more steps. "I'm going to shoot," Rick whispered and I knew that it was time for me to just shut up and try to catch the action.

Recreating the shot-

 

[Gerald Martin]

Rick's shot was right on target and hit the goat through both scapula, double- lunging the billy. The goat hit the ground instantly and Rick let out a yell you could have probably heard back at camp.

The deer was still there watching the goat when it died. Rick still hadn't seen it. As the goat died it relaxed and rolled about thirty yards down the mountain. Only then did the doe run off. "Where did that deer come from?", Rick asked me. Then it made sense what I was trying to tell him about not shooting the deer.

Good shooting Rick, now let's go look at your goat.

 

[Gerald Martin]

It took us over an hour to cover the 380 yards to the billy. I'll make you suffer through some more scenery before you get to see the goat.

 

[Gerald Martin]

Rick's goat was all he had hoped for and more. His goal was to take a mature billy. He wanted to try and find a goat with at least 9" horns and was hoping for 9 1/2". His goat measured 9 3/4" on one horn and 9 7/8" on the other. I forget the circumfrence measurements. We think the goat was between 7 and 9 years old. The growth rings were so tight it was hard to tell.

Here's the "horse- faced" billy.