Since my wife re-discovered hunting last year it’s been a whole lot easier to get out and do more of it. ïÂÅ Still riding the high from her success last year when she took a whitetail and mulie, we planned a trip for this year for goats and grizzly.. The goats were under a general open season and we each drew a permit for the grizzly.
She discovered muzzleloaders last year while on a trip to the Yukon with a friend of ours, who is a huge ml hunter. He offered to let her use his back up muzzlestuffer for this hunt and she was hooked. I was going to try and get one (griz or goat) with my bow.
Oct 4th found us drifting down the river and glassing a lone billy lounging on a cliff face. We put the spotting scope on him and decided to go for it. There was no question that she was first up to bat, plus I really enjoy being guide/packer/spotter/etc for new hunters on a chase.
I shot a compass bearing from the boat to the goat and 2 hours later, after pushing up a steep hill side filled with willow, birch, maple and various prickly bits of shintangle we were a little over 100yds away from a bedded billy. She has been hitting the gym for the past year and I’m pretty sure she only broke a sweat to make me feel better. I, on the other hand, almost blew a lung dragging my sorry ass up the hill.
We found the goat were we had last seen him when we left the boat but, even though we were almost level with him, we had a hard time finding a clear shot through the canopy.
We finally found a window big enough to get a clear shot and she sat with her back to a tree and used her knee to rest her elbow on. I parked down beside her and watched the billy through my bino’s.
This is only the third animal she’d ever put crosshairs on and I watched out of the corner of my eye as she got her breathing under control and steadied up her aim. I watched the goat for what seemed like minutes when a cloud of smoke temporarily obscured my vision and the concussion from that big .50 cal assaulted me.
I watched the billy jump up, turn 180 degrees and take one step before he plummeted off the cliff. He vanished from sight on his way down and we heard one loud crash as he hit shrubbery.
Half an hour later we found him hung up against a small tree, dead as a post. To date, she’s 3 shots for 3 animals.
Three days later it was my turn. We had found a billy high on a cliff the day before and returned the next day to discover he was still there. A not so leisurely 3 hour hike later we poked through the bush at the top of the cliff where we though he should be. Half way up I got hung up in a bunch of bushes and managed to snap in half one of my labour intensive arrows I had made for this trip. Now at the top I had two choices, left or right, and decided to check the right hand, downwind clearing first.
I should have hooked a left.
I turned around and looked up to find the billy walking towards me from about 50 metres away. We both saw each other at about the same time and he quickly decided that he needed to be somewhere else.
I tracked him for a couple of hundred yards along the top of the cliffs then lost his sign. I wasn’t sure if he went into the heavy brush or over the edge.
We returned to the cliffs the next day, unsure if he would still be there or if we had spooked him into the next mountain range. His tracks from the previous day suggested that he hadn’t left in a hurry so I was optimistic that he might still be around.
It was a beautiful day and the black flies were out in full force, and for some reason I seem to be candy to blackflies. God, I hate them.
I spotted him in a different part of the cliff structure and knew immediately that there wasn’t a hope of getting in close enough for a shot with my recurve. Out came wife’s muzzleloader and off we went in pursuit. Another shot with the compass and within an hour we were on top of a large slide looking for Mr. Billy.
I saw a white object move about 60 metres away and promptly realized that I hadn’t put a primer in the rifle. I ripped off my glove and dug into my pocket for one. By this time the goat had noticed us but seemed unsure of what we were. I dropped the primer in as he turned and I was presented with a lovely butt shot.
He looked at us, looked down the cliff, and then took a couple of steps which put him broadside to me. More smoke and noise and our second goat took two hops and collapsed in a steep chute.
We shinnied along the wall to where he had been bedded earlier, dropped our packs, swatted a few bugs, and I went over to the chute to see how nasty a retrieval it was going to be. I quickly came to the conclusion that I wasn’t getting to him from the top and had to work my way around to the bottom of the bluff and get to him from below.
I huffed and puffed and clawed my way up the chute, thankful that two very stunted birch trees had decided to eek out an existence in the crevices on the way up. I got to the goat and told my wife that I was going to lift his head for a couple of quick photo’s. I said “be quick†as I was pretty sure he would start to slide as soon as I moved him.
I was right, and two photo’s later he sailed off into the abyss and crashed into the alders about 80 feet below. Amazingly he didn’t break any horns.
Getting down out of the chute was even more fun than getting up.
Although I wasn't successful in my endevour to take a mountain goat with my stick & string it was still an amazing week of hunting in some very beautiful country. Next year a billy gets a yard of bamboo.
That which doesn't kill me better run for cover...
I look forward to seeing and reading more about the trip.
So congratulations and good luck next time, regards.......Bill
) they are the one animal I have always wanted to hunt. I know now that will never happen so I really enjoy seeing photos and reading stories with them as the subject.