You’re not getting any younger. If a mountain goat is your dream animal to hunt, you need to start applying for a tag while you can still climb the mountains they inhabit. I’d been hearing these words from my son for the last few years. In Idaho, if you put in for one of the trophy game species, like goats, then you are excluded from applying for any of the other big game species. I hated the thought of throwing all my eggs in one basket with 3% odds of drawing, but he was right. I wasn’t getting any younger! At 57 years old, I put in for goat for the first time.
A couple of months later, I couldn’t believe it when I received an email from Idaho Fish and Game with the news that I had beat the odds and drawn a goat tag. Planning began in earnest from that point. I hit the phones and called biologists and conservation officers from the Fish and Game. I also used my membership at Huntin’ Fool and was able to reach out to a fellow member who had drawn the same tag many years before. He gave me valuable intel on the unit and where to start scouting. I made several scouting trips into the area through the summer but never found what I would deem a mature billy. By the time the opener rolled around, I was nervous but also bursting with excitement as my once-in-a-lifetime dream hunt was happening.
I was joined in camp by my son, Tyler, and our two hunting buddies, Travis and his son, Blaine. The three of them would be bowhunting elk in the timber while I hunted goats above timberline. The first day of the hunt, I hiked into a large basin with mountain lakes that hold goats in the peaks above. I didn’t see one goat and got a nasty blister on my heel. Not a great start to the hunt.
For the next couple of days, I was out of hiking commission and forced to glass for goats from below. There was a fire in the vicinity, so the smoke in the air made glassing conditions unideal. I did manage to find a nice goat through the smoke, but it was too much of a climb for that day with my painful blister. Perhaps I’ve gotten soft in my old age! After a disappointing start, I went home for a few days to heal and re-energize.
The next week we came back to the same area, but this time with plans for a 10-day hunt. For the next several days, everyone else in camp would chase elk with their bows and be ready to help me with my goat hunt while I continued to search for a once-in-a-lifetime Idaho mountain goat.
The next couple of days were slow as I checked a few different spots but only found nannies with kids. Tyler and Blaine had been elk hunting a few miles above camp and had spotted several goats in the peaks above where they were hunting. Tyler told me I needed to hike in with them and check out the area.
The next morning, the three of us got up at 4 a.m. and started a two-hour hike in the dark. We got to the top of the first ridge as the sun was cresting in the east and lighting up the beautiful Idaho scenery. Immediately, I could see several different goats stretched out across the peaks above us. There was one lone goat in an accessible location about two miles and a couple thousand feet above us. I knew it would take me a while to get close enough to the goat to check him out. I parted ways with Tyler and Blaine as they headed off to chase elk and I began my ascent to the goat.
When I left Tyler and Blaine, I was at around 8,000 feet, 2,000 feet climbed already, and I was only halfway there. The air was thin, and the terrain was steep. It took me a couple of hours to get close enough to the goat to see more than just a little white dot. The goat was feeding up a rocky ridge a couple thousand yards away. I was in a somewhat level spot where I could set up my spotting scope and take a good look at him. By the time I got my spotter set up, he was getting ready to crest the ridge heading into a basin on the other side. When I got him in the spotter, he was walking straight away from me. I could not see his horns, but I could see that he had a large scrotum hanging between his back legs. No doubt now he was a billy. The goat walked over the ridge and out of sight. I packed up my spotter and continued my ascent. It took me another hour and a half to get up to the point where I last saw the goat. The thin air, my heavy pack, and my older legs and lungs required a lot of breaks for me to get to that point. I had another 200 yards to get to where I could see down into the basin where the goat had gone.
As I got to the point where I could see into the basin, I would take a step, glass, take another step and glass, inching forward. Eventually, I got to the edge to where I could see completely into the basin and there he was bedded below me around 400 yards away. I ducked down out of his view and snuck uphill to my right to get into a better location to look him over. I was on a scree slope, and every time I took a step, scree would push away from my boots and slide downhill, creating what seemed like a huge amount of noise. I crawled to the edge and was able to look at him through my binoculars. He was laying in a small bed he had carved out in the scree. He was looking up towards me. I wasn’t sure if he was looking at me or not, but he didn’t seem very concerned. He looked like a good, mature billy, and I decided that if I was able to do my part, he would be my once-in-a-lifetime Idaho goat.
I moved my pack up in front of me and nestled my rifle into it. I had him in the scope at 310 yards. I could not get a good shot angle the way he was laying, so I waited and watched him through the scope. He laid his head down and went to sleep. I lay there for half an hour waiting for him to get up. The rocks were poking me, and it was very uncomfortable. Finally, he put his head up and gathered his front legs under him. I knew he was getting up and things were about to start happening. He rose from his bed, facing straight at me. I held the crosshairs on the front of his chest and squeezed the trigger. At the shot, the goat collapsed and began rolling down the hill through the rocks. He rolled for what seemed like forever, and I held my breath while he cartwheeled down the slope. He finally came to rest far below where he was laying when I shot him. I sat down and glassed him to make sure he was done and tried to take it all in. I sent my son a message on my Zoleo, letting him know I was going to need some help.
I made my way over to the billy through the scree. I got to where he lay and sat down next to him. I was in awe of what an amazing experience this had been. I sat there for a long time taking in the beauty of this amazing animal and the scenery that stretched out in all directions. It was one of those moments where all the craziness of today’s world disappeared. I sat there with my goat knowing that I would never get to do this again. At that moment, everything was right in the world and I didn’t want it to end.