29. Mountain Goat---British Columbia

The mountain goat is an extremely tough, durable animal, living in precipitous, rugged high mountains along the western Canadian coast, inland in portions of the Canadian Rocky Mountains, and south into Montana, Idaho, Utah, and Colorado. Mountain goats rely on their agility and eyesight to escape predators, and exist in some of the harshest terrain in North America. Both sexes have horns and this makes identifying the sex a bit difficult.

HUNT DESCRIPTION

The mountain goat was harvested in British Columbia in 2006. My guide and I boated up a river for two hours and stayed on a long lake in a very comfortable trapper’s cabin.

The first morning of the hunt we spotted this goat bedded on the mountain above the lake. The hike up the mountain took four hours and was very difficult. Being 66 years of age at the time didn’t help, but the cost of such hunts, plus my teaching job, prevented me from doing this at an earlier age. As we approached the goat, he stood and walked off the large rock where he’d been bedded. My guide held my belt as I leaned over the edge of the rock and took a 25-yard shot that was almost straight down. The shot was a little back and he walked almost 300 yards before he died. The terrain was dangerous and it took me two hours to reach the goat. After taking photos and skinning and quartering the goat, it took us eight hours to descend and reach the boat. It was by far the most difficult bowhunt I’d ever done. But what an adventure.