Brother in-laws 2018 Montana Goat Hunt

bdales30

New member
Joined
Feb 19, 2013
Messages
10
Location
Polson, MT
When my brother in law told me he drew a Mountain Goat tag for Montana unit 314 I was probably more excited than he was even tho I wasn't the one that would be pulling the trigger if we were to find a goat. Don't get me wrong he was super excited too but I have always dreamed of being part of a Mountain Goat hunt. It figured he would draw the tag this year because him and his wife were expecting their 2nd child to be born smack dab in the middle of the hunting season in late September early October making getting away to do as much hunting as we would like to put into this hunt a little more difficult. Plus me being a helicopter pilot primarily flying on wild fires makes it difficult for me to get away until fire season ends. But to make a long story short we were able to get into the high country with little Goat experience a number of times early on. The weather was great and the country we hunted more amazing than we imagined. We eventually were able to find many goats in those early hunts but were mostly nannies and kids and the rest were in some of the narliest locations you could imagine. We literally could not find a safe way to accesss most of the goats we saw. As time passed the weather in the high country quickly started to change and we knew our time to even access Goat country was ticking away. We don't have access to horses or anything. My brother in law made a few trips without me and reported that the snow was quickly piling up. We made a plan to put everything we had into a hunt (Oct. 13th) last weekend with a foot of snow already up there and a winter storm warning for the mountains on Saturday. We figured it might be our last really good shot at it. Plus his son was born a week ago so he was needed at home more as well. Me, him and our cousin set off early Saturday morning into the Gallatin Range amidst a knarly blizzard. We hiked near vertical slopes scaling cliff shoots in knee deep snow trying to get up as high as we could. Made it up to about 9200ft by noon but it was snowing and blowing so hard we couldn't see more than 100 yards. So we decided to make a fire and warm up and see if the storm would break later in the day. After 3 hours of standing around the fire and conditions not getting any better we decided we better start walking somewhere if we were to have any chance of getting a goat. We headed down the main knife ridge for about a mile until we got cliffed out and couldn't go any further so we decided to start side hilling back off the ridge and slowly making our way down to try and get out of the cliff terrain before dark. We were tired, cold and defeated and because of the heavy cloud cover and snow, dark was setting in sooner than expected when we finally came across a set of tracks! Our first Goat sign of the day. Soon after we found a fresh bed behind a rock out cropping with very fresh tracks leading away from it. We must have jumped it out of its bed. As I was looking down examining the bed and tracks my cousin quickly said there's one! He caught a quick glimpse of a goat rump as it went around a cliff band and out of sight. We grouped up and made a plan to get in a position for hopefully a shot. Knowing goats don't usually go far like a deer or elk might when spooked we made a plan to sneak about 500yds to a rock out cropping that was just above where the goat went out of sight. With Haakon ready shoot we snuck over and peeked over the other side. At first we didn't see anything but then I noticed an off white body standing in the trees and excidily said there he is! The spot he was standing in was in an old burn and riddled with downed burned trees every where. We could see parts of its body but didn't have a good look at its head. We wanted to make sure it was a Billy. Luckily we had spent lots of time before hand studying what to look for to determine a Billy from a Nanny. The goat stood like a statue for a good 20-30 minutes not moving or knowing we were there. We were able to get glimpses of his head here and there through our binos to get enough information to determine the tell tail signs of a Billy and were excited to without a doubt determine it was in fact a Billy. Light was fading fast so we knew something had to happen soon but Haakon stayed patient waiting for the Billy to take a step and give a good unobstructed shot. Finally the goat made its move but went over a rock ledge and out of sight. Crap, we thought we had missed our chance, but wait there he is Rial said, he re appeared about 100 yards away. This it, now or never! Haakon took his time, found his mark and broke the high country silence with the crack of a gun shot that echoed through the canyon. The goat hunched up, he's hit but still standing, hit him again we said, hit him again! Another shot range out and the goat calapsed and slid about 10 yards in the snow. We cheered and high fiveed and hugged like we had just won the super bowl or something. It was a surreal moment and such a relief! All the work and stress that went into a tag like this was rewarded. We made our way over to him and took a moment to take in what had just happened and admire such a majestic amazing animal. It was a great feeling but there was also that feeling of sorrow for taking the life of such a majestic animal. We said a few words and thanked the goat and wished him a happy journey to the lush green mountains in goat heaven that he now inhabits. As a sign of respect I like to put grass or food in the mouth of any animal I take or am part of taking so they have a full belly on their journey to the after life. By now it was getting very close to dark so we took our pics and started breaking down the goat so we could get to heading off the mountain because we were in a bad spot to be going out in the dark surrounded by cliff bands. We got him loaded in our packs but daylight was long gone so we carefully made our way off the mountain by headlamp light. That was a tense time because we didn't know for sure where we would be able to make it down off the cliff bands. And the head lamps only give you about 20 yards of visibility plus it was snowing and blowing again. After about half a mile of side hilling above the cliffs we found a spot we figured we could get down but didn't know for sure and luckily we did. We made it back to the trailhead and truck 4 hours later at about 11pm. We unloaded our heavy packs thanked the goat again for contributing to our amazing experience and had a couple celebratory Busch Light hunting edition beers and recounted what just happened. Never has a beer tasted so good! That is by far the hardest, sketchiest most amazing hunt I've ever been a part of and we loved every minute of it! Sorry for the long story.



IMG_5291.jpgIMG_5320.jpgIMG_5319.jpgIMG_5321.jpgIMG_5317.jpgIMG_5318.jpg
 

Attachments

  • IMG_5318.jpg
    IMG_5318.jpg
    86.5 KB · Views: 613
Incredible hunt, pictures and great write-up. Thanks for sharing JBS
 
As my kids would say when they were little......"too scared for me". Ya'll are nuts climbing chutes in the blizzard, hopping around cliff edges, etc, etc.

Congratulations!
 
Congratulations! That was a great story with great photos. I shared a Montana goat hunt with my brother and a friend and that has got to be my most memorable and toughest successful hunt.
 
Awesome hunt one my dreams are made of maybe some day. Congrats on a great hunt in tough conditions.
 
MTNTOUGH - Use promo code RANDY for 30 days free

Latest posts

Forum statistics

Threads
110,805
Messages
1,935,062
Members
34,883
Latest member
clamwc
Back
Top