This is going to be a long post. It was an amazing trip so I wanted to include plenty of details. I tried to write it out in a day-by-day account. A mountain goat has been a dream of mine for a long time. This hunt lived up to all the expectations I had. Mtn goat is possible to do diy, but getting a tag in the lower 48 is incredibly difficult. Knowing the odds were stacked against me I did a ton of research and 2+ years ago I booked a mtn goat hunt with Beaverfoot Outfitters in BC. Their operation is based out of Golden, BC a couple hundred miles north of Idaho and just west of Banff National Park. They have a ton of goats up there. This was a 10 day hunt. It was really important to me to book a 10 day hunt because of how difficult this type of mountain hunt can be. Another bonus was I was able to add on a high country mule deer tag for a very low cost. Early season high country mule deer is my favorite hunt. The outfitter told me they don’t kill many big bucks, but the opportunity was there if I was willing to work hard it may happen. I’m pretty good at hunting hard. I’m not always successful, but I give it my all.
I flew from ATL up to Calgary. I was picked up at the airport and we drove 3.5hrs west to Beaverfoot Outfitters hunting territory. My flight didn’t come in until 9pm. After clearing customs with my rifle it was a bit of a late arrival, but I was running on adrenaline and excited for the hunt.
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 due to some fires in other areas so our options were limited 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 from the morning again. He had dropped down 1000 to 1500 feet and was in a 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 was to go in the next morning and try to find him and see how good he was. If he was a shooter goat were going to try to kill him, if not we would hunt another bowl that was in the area he went towards.
We saw 6 goats total the first day. 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.
Day #2 was another great day. We saw 14 goats. A black bear and a grizzly. The grizzly was really awesome to see. Digging up marmots and just doing big bear things. He was XL. I’d never seen a grizzly before so this was definitely a highlight.
We weren’t able to find the big billy that was in that area the evening before. We hiked a ways up to a big bowl. We did find 2 smaller billies and a bunch of nannies and kids. I could have killed either of the billies, but I decided to pass on both of them. While up on top we had a nanny and a kid walk up to about 80 yard. She couldn’t figure out what we were. That was a really cool experience and the kid was super cute.
The weather was poor on day #3. We rode around some glassing when we could. We saw a few muley does and one small buck. Nothing much else happened.
On day #4 we hiked up into some brutal country gaining over 2500’ of elevation in about 2 miles. The hike in took 4.5 hours. The majority of that elevation was straight up a grown up avalanche chute. That night we saw 10 goats (one big billy), 5 deer, a couple black bears and a big grizzly. There was grizzly sign absolutely everywhere! One of the bucks we saw was a decent 4x4, but I decided to pass in hopes of finding a bigger buck or going after one of the goats. All the goats were in an unhuntable location that night and we didn’t have enough time left to do anything but glass before getting some sleep.
Day #5 was not enjoyable. We were fogged in all day and it was rainy and windy. We got a one hour break in the fog around 1pm. We actually found a group of goats with a nice billy and we were in a shooting location. We thought the goats would come up over the edge of the ridge and I was going to shoot the billy, but instead they went off the steep edge. We attempted to follow, but the fog reappeared and killed that plan. Friday night the wind blew hard and a thunder storm with very hard rain came through. That was a wild experience camping on top of the mountain that night.
On Day #6 the weather was nice, but the goats were no where to be found. Around 9am Chad spotted a big a buck with a few other bucks (including the smaller 4x4). I hadn’t gotten my spotter set up yet and I asked him if he was a shooter. He said “I think one side has 6 points!” I replied with “WHAT?!?!” The buck bedded down in a timber patch before I could shoot. We sat and waited and finally after 4 hours he got up and offered me a shot. I hammered him at 470yds. I shot him 2 more times at 495yds. All 3 shots were kill shots and exactly where I wanted them, but he was still standing so I kept shooting. He’s a great buck with matching double forks. He had a massive body that we guesstimated at 350lbs live weight.
Day #7 we hiked back into a gnarly basin about 3 miles in. 1/2 of that distance was up a creek climbing slippery rocks and trying to keep from falling. There were no goats to be found anywhere. It was beginning to get late in the hunt, but I was still determined to make it happen.
On day #8 we headed back out to the area we hunted the first couple days. We glassed 18 goats that morning. 3 or 4 billies. The two biggest billies were heading over a ridge into an area that is called High Lake. It’s the same area that we had the close encounter with the nanny and kid earlier in the hunt. We hiked all the way in and eventually found both billies. They were very high up on a sheer cliff face That would not allow us to hunt either of them. We watched them for a while in hopes that they would come down, but they never did. Both eventually crossing back over to the other side where they came from. We continued to hike up and around the back of the bowl covering lots of ground hiking higher and farther than we had the previous days, but we did not find any more goats that day. We battled tough weather that day. Sun turned to Snow, sleet, rain as we came down the mountains. We were tired, cold, wet and we didn’t get a goat. We weren’t quitting though.
On day #9 we went back to the same general area and glassed 12 goats that day. We only saw two Billies. One of the billies that I glassed that morning was heading over a saddle into what we felt was a huntable location. We also thought there was a good chance it was the big billy from the previous day. We hiked into another glassing location and glassed a group of goats that had one billy in it and a few other single goats here and there, but never found the big billy. We decided to hike up into the last area we saw him anyway in hopes of turning him up. This hike could also take us by the group of other goats that had the billy in it. We hiked all the way up and back into this high bowl and could not turn up the billy any where. It was pretty frustrating. We were hunting really hard and just were not getting rewarded in any way. We decided to head back out hoping that we would see the other group of goats that had the billy. Right as we came up to the edge of the saddle Chad glassed a small goat on the ridge about 500 yards away. We got behind a little mound of rocks and sat and waited. Eventually all of the other goats worked their way around the ridge and bedded. We immediately picked out the billy and got set up for a shot. After waiting for about an hour he stood and I made a shot at 460 yards. The first shot hit him, but was high. We discovered that was because of an up draft that was coming up the gulley between me and him. I made a very quick adjustment based on my first shot and the second shot was a heart shot. He immediately rolled 10 feet and then slid another 25 stopping about 2 feet from going down another 500 feet. I finally had my goat. The climb up to get him was an adventure, but we made it. Lucky we found a safer route down (I only almost died once).
My goat isn’t a giant by any means, but he’s an absolute trophy to me. We hunted really really hard. Chad told me he’s never hunted that hard with any hunter ever before. We lost 2 days because of weather, but all in all we hiked 51 miles in goat country before I finally got my goat. The stud muley in the high country was an amazing bonus. My mule deer pack out was brutal and my goat pack out was sketchy/dangerous to say the least. The hunt was everything I hoped it would be. It was a dream trip and a check on the bucket list.
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