Note that I made two blog posts today. See the previous post for our Glacier Park trip.
My friend Paul Jagoda drew a goat tag in an area North of Yellowstone- the same unit Matt drew his tag in last year. Paul, his brother Phil and I went on the hunt the first weekend of the season (Sept.1)
Phil wrote a nice story of the adventure so I will copy and paste his words:
Pre-hunt
Paul’s goat hunt actually started
sometime in June or July when he notified me that he successfully
drew a coveted mountain goat tag in southern Montana, and wanted me
to go along. I was looking forward to kicking off the 2017 hunting
season acting as his Sherpa and extra set of eyes.
We attempted to scout the hunting area
2 weeks before the season started, and when we arrived at the
trailhead the forest service had posted signs stating that the trail
was closed due to a grizzly kill site that was on the trail. After
Paul placed some phone calls the forest service determined that the
trail would be re-opened before the opener.
The hike in
We kicked off the hunt the day before
the opener by meeting Fred and picking up a horse on the way. At the
trailhead we were met with 3 trucks already parked in the lot, and
shortly after another 2 hunters (father/son from Billings) with a
packer bringing in their gear. They were hunting the adjacent unit,
and camping in the same basin we were headed.
The hike in started to get interesting
about half-way in when we crossed a stream and got off the main trail
and came across the grizzly kill site that originally closed down the
trail.
The Charge
As we proceeded up the trail and were
about ¾ of the way to the camp site, the vegetation started to
change with the higher elevations, and there were many grouse berry
plants covering the forest floor. We noticed that there was a strong
smell of sweet berries or something similar to flowers. We started
to walk up an incline and I was in the lead, with Paul and then Fred
behind him with the horse. I noticed up ahead a log that looked out
of place with a different coloration. A few more steps and it was
very clear to me that about 60-70 yards ahead was a silver-tipped
grizzly with its head down eating berries. I immediately turned and
warned paul and Fred, and they both pulled out their bear spray and
started yelling at the bear to alert it. Luckily the bear took off
away from us and not at us, and we stood there making some noise and
figuring out what to do next.
I got a glimpse of 2 bears running
through the trees up ahead making a racket. About 30 seconds later
it sounded like a locomotive coming through the woods and it was
clear it was coming right at us huffing and crashing through the
trees. Fred and paul started yelling at the bear and we all had our
bear spray out ready. The bear charged to about 40 yards and
stopped, and Fred was saying “that’s what you call a bluff charge
guys”. We stood our ground and were in a close group, probably for
the better as I think the large group of us with the horse kept the
bear from coming closer. The sow then turned and ran away.
At some point I pulled out my handgun
and switched the bear spray to my left hand, feeling more
comfortable with both out, the more weapons the better. Not much
time passed and we could hear the sow making another charge, huffing
and crashing like a freight train right at us, faster than we could
imagine an animal that size could run. At some point Fred tied up
the horse around a tree, and told Paul to load up his rifle and get
ready. We all had our pepper spray out ready, with my handgun also.
This time the bear came even closer, about 30 yards. Sometime
during this ordeal, I backed down the slope and scraped up my shin,
thinking the bear was coming in on us for good. But the bear turned
and ran away again.
But the bear made a third charge, this
time closing the distance to about 25 yards, stopping on the top of
a bank that dropped off down to us, using it as an advantage. The
sow stood there for what seemed like forever, huffing and growling
and we could all see the slobber coming out of her mouth. She half
stood there up on her hind legs, looking like she was almost ready
to jump towards us. Fred raised his arms to look bigger and yelled
“go away bear”, and this seemed to irritate the bear even more,
probably because she had a cub and was trying to protect it. Fred
told Paul that if she came any closer to shoot her, at this point I
cocked the hammer on my .357 ready to shoot if Paul did. This was
the most tense moment of the encounter, not knowing what the bear
was going to do next. Then Fred gave a shot of pepper spray at the
bear, and it almost reached the sow. This seemed to have an effect
from the noise and spray, then Fred told us to start backing away.
The wind was blowing towards us and when Fred used the pepper spray
some of it came back in my face and I started coughing. As soon as
we started to back away, the grizzly got down on all four and turned
away. We then backed down the slope about 40 yards and decided what
to do next. Fred then realized he lost his safety cap of his pepper
spray and wanted to go back to the scene and get it, because he
didn’t want an accidental discharge in the horses face or one of
us. Paul and I both thought he was crazy to want to go back to the
charge scene, but would not let him go back alone. We very
nervously walked back to the charge point yelling the whole way, and
found the safety cap and quickly got out of there.
As we walked down the slope the
father/son hunters heard us and yelled to us. I walked down to them
and talked with them and they informed me that shortly after their
packer dropped them off the bear charged them to within 40 yards. I
informed them that we encountered the bear only about 80-100 yards
from where they were, and if they wanted to camp near us for safety
they could (Fred and Paul said to let them know they could). They
said there was no way they could haul all their stuff up that way
since the packer left, and they would stay there. Unfortunately
they did not look very well prepared to be camping in the wilderness
area, and their camp site was not in a good open location.
Once we finally reached our camp site,
we set up camp and that night was pretty tense and nervous. Fred
put a bell around the horse and setup the horse outside of camp as a
watchdog, set up the electric fence around our tents, and we kept
the solar lights on all night for an added deterent. Unfortunately,
every time the horse jingled the bell, or neighed or blew it jolted
me awake. Not sure we got much sleep that night, with the exception
of Fred, I think he started snoring as soon as his head hit the
pillow.
Hunt Day 1
The first hunt day started bright and
early, with a goat bedded above camp about 400 yards away,
unfortunately it was in the wrong hunting district. We climbed up to
the top of the ridge to the NE, at which point Fred showed us the
“goat trail” that we would be using to get over into the hunting
district. At times the trail got very narrow, and other times you
did not want to look down as the slope below disappeared very
quickly. As we neared the end of the pass, we could see a lot of
goats bedded down in a grassy slope.
We could see about 20 nannies and kids
bedded, and it didn’t appear there were any billies or nannies
without kids. We decided to creep closer and look them over more, so
we belly crawled to a clump of trees about 300 yards away.
Once we determined none of the goats
were “shootable”, we slowly got up to get them to ease out of
the area. After the goats went down the slope, we started hiking to
the NW to look at other areas, and we could see the goats down on
the vertical slopes running, jumping up and down on the cliffs,
looking like they were trying to commit suicide. It was hard to
believe none of them fell off the cliffs as they ran in panic.
The rest of the hunt day was mostly
uneventful with the exception of the beautiful scenery. There were
many more goats down on the cliffs and at the bottom, so we made a
mental note for tomorrow.
Our hike back we decided to go straight
up and over instead of following the goat trail, and it got a
little dicey going down with rocks falling from our feet displacing
them, and a very strong wind blowing up through the narrow pass. We
finally made it back to camp with another beautiful sunset to greet
us that evening.
Hunt Day 2
The plan for the second day was to get
Paul his goat! As we went up to the goat trail to get over into the
hunting district, it seemed a little more slippery/unstable then the
day before for some reason, both Paul and I commented on that. Could
have been because some of the adrenaline wore off from the first day
of the hunt, we started to question the sanity of making the
crossing. Either way, we made it over into the hunt area and did not
see any goats in the immediate area.
So we decided to hike down near the
bottom, and see if we could catch some goats near the bottom of the
cliffs we saw them the day before. About ¾ of the way down, we
decided to stop and do some glassing. We saw a bunch of goats up in
the cliffs pretty high up and inaccessible, a lot of goats. I
figured we would just wait it out and see if any came down closer
and was about to take a nap when I heard Fred and Paul discussing how
to go get the goats. Fred was picking apart the slope piece by piece
and figuring out how we could climb up to get closer, and he
determined that since there were trees growing on the slope near the
goats it was “doable”. The shade on that side of the mountain
made it hard to see all the detail, and we discussed later in the
hunt if it was in full sun we would not have gone after them, so it
was a good thing it was shaded and hid some of the finer details
of the terrain.
It was around 11:00 when we started
down into the valley to go after the goats, and as we neared the
bottom it became very clear we were in serious bear country (Dark
timber and remote wilderness area) I saw a bed that appeared to be
from a bear as we hiked down, and we walked through areas that were
absolutely torn up from bears digging up rotten logs and stumps
looking for food, and a pile of very large bear scat that was
entirely pine cone nuts. So we made some noise as we walked through
this area, including Fred singing some Marty Robbins cowboy songs.
Once we reached the other side of the valley, we could then tell that
the vertical climb up the other side to the goats was going to be
very steep.
So up we went, one step at a time, and
slowly made our way closer to the goats. It was very steep, easily
greater than 45% I’m guessing. As we neared the cliffs and grassy
benches that the goats were on, we could see them through the trees
about 280-300 yards away. We discussed waiting there and Paul
possibly getting a shot at that distance, but it was pushing the max.
distance and Paul and Fred decided to try and get closer. There
were about 10-12 goats scattered on the slope, bedded and feeding and
doing what goats do. So we crept up closer to the next strip of
trees, trying to close the distance. The three of us spread out
next to each other, Paul trying to find a good rest for the near
vertical shot. Fred and I were glassing the goats, trying to figure
out a shootable one. It didn’t appear the goats knew we were there.
At that point, the shot was around 225 yards I think. Some of the
goats started moving around and going to the left, and Fred and I
were able to see that one of them was a billy (male) by the way he
urinated. Paul was scrambling from place to place trying to get a
solid rest, and for the life of him could not get a spot that would
allow him to take a steady shot. As the goats started moving, it
started getting tense because we were calling out goats to Paul to
shoot and the yardage and he either didn’t have a solid rest or his
view was different than ours because the distance we were from
eachother, it started to get a little chaotic and I think Paul was
getting some serious goat fever and feel the pressure to get a shot
off before the goats high-tailed it out of there.
There was about 8-12 goats that
eventually went up and out of range, including the Billy, and we
thought our chance was blown to get a shot off, disappointment
started creeping in. But then Fred noticed a single goat still
bedding on the rocks on a small cliff, so I scrambled real quick
right down next to Paul. The goat turned and hopped up on the edge
of a small cliff, I think the range was around 250 yards, very steep
angle. I think at this time Paul had a solid rest on a big deadfall.
Paul’s first shot looked like it hit the goat, as it appeared to
hunch, but later as we discussed I think it was just stretching. I
could see the bullet stream to the goat as the sun reflected off the
projectile, weirdest thing ever. Paul took a second shot, and I
also saw the path of that bullet and it was high and right and
hit the rocks. The goat didn’t seem too alarmed, and jumped up
higher and started moving left.
A few tense moments went by not
knowing if the goat went down or was just walking to the left.
Then we were able to see it walking up where the other goats had
gone, the range was about 280 yards at this point I think. After
some tense discussion to determine if it was the same goat, Paul
lined up for another shot. “Goat fever” had really set in at
this point and I could see he was breathing hard and having a tough
time keeping steady. He took another shot as the goat stood on a
small cliff, and it went high and right behind the goat. I told him
to control his breathing and slow down, and his second shot drilled
the goat in the boiler room. The goat stopped and slumped on a rock
at the edge, then slowly rolled over into a small depression out
of site. High fives and congratulations started at that point.
We slowly made the vertical climb up to
where the goat had fell, and found it in a steep rocky chute and it
had stopped before going further down and getting stuck in a spot
that we might not have been able to retrieve it from. So Fred
jumped down into the area and tied a rope onto the hind legs, and
we hauled it out of the spot up to the grassy bench to skin and
debone it.
Once we started skinning, it became
apparent to us how truly steep and difficult this area really was.
The hike out was pretty tough, as we had to go down to the valley,
back through the dark timber bear country, then back up the other
side, through the goat pass, and back down to camp. The hike back
through the dark timber was a little interesting since we had goat
meat and the hide in our packs, keeping an eye out for bears and
making noise to alert any nearby. Fred left a little blood trail
from his bloody nose that kept recurring and small cuts on his
hands, so if the bears didn’t smell the goat they could at least
blood trail us from what Fred was leaving behind. (LOL)
We made it up to the goat pass just
before dark, and for Paul and I it was a pretty dicey experience, I
had to fully concentrate on just looking straight ahead and where I
was putting my hands and feet. Fred just seemed to walk right on
through like it was no big deal. To kill the goat and come back to
camp, it was a total of about 7.4+ round trip miles, camp elevation
was at 9,450 ft and we climbed up to the pass at 10,200 ft. Then
went down into the valley at elevation 8,750 ft., then up to kill the
goat at 9,600 ft. On the way back we got to do it all over again,
so it was around 3,050 feet of vertical elevation change twice.
That night in camp we all slept pretty
good being worn out from all the hiking the day of the kill. However
during the night I heard what sounded like rocks being moved around
from the dry stream bed nearby. Of course feeling like the camp
watch dog I alerted everybody that there was something down in the
stream bed so we all scrambled awake with lights, bear spray and guns
ready in case it was a nearby bear. I’m a pretty light sleeper
anyway, but I’m sure Paul and Fred thought I was scared out of my
wits from the possibility of bears around since we had goat meat
hanging in the trees 100 yards away….. In the morning there was a
goat in the cliffs above camp, so quite possibly the noise I heard
was the goat coming down for drink during the night.
What a great
experience and adventure, I would say to summarize the goat hunt, or
any goat hunt a couple sayings come to mind: “How bad do you want
it”, and “how much misery can you put up with”. I’d say we
did both pretty well, and I’m glad the three of us were together
during the bear charge, it certainly helped the outcome of the
charge.
(by Phil Jagoda)
