This is a story about my first and last goat. Back in the good ole days when I could run ridge to ridge. I got my one and only goat. My hunting buddies and I stumbled upon some goats while bear hunting. We saw some dandies. We had set up bear camp up high on a ridge. We did get a few bears out of that camp. But seeing the goats inspired us to put in for those. I only had 2 points when I got drawn. Since the goats were about a 4 hour hike from our current bear camp, we decided to find a shorter route. We discovered a short cut off and old spur road that cut the time in half. We moved all our stuff from bear camp and established our goat camp. We had cooking stuff, a couple of lean-tos, chopped up a bunch of fire wood and we were set. There were four of us that went up nearly every weekend scouting for both bears and goats. I took my wife up there once! That was almost a divorce. It took us over 4 hours to get there, over rocks that we had to crawl over, we had ropes tied to trees on some of the harder areas. It was pretty tough. On opening morning, we saw a big goat on the other side of the draw. We had to circle around the top and then drop down into them. 1 hour later I had him. That big billy was huge. What a hunt with some good friends. I got my 12 year old a nanny from the same location about 3 years later. A year after that one of my buddies got one too. Those were the good ole days. I got my big billy in 1983. I did get drawn for archery goat but never got close enough to take a shot. I’ll be 60 years young next year and this is one of my fondest hunting memories.
