Boulder River Mt Goat

[shootem]

Great thread

[2MANY]

Great write up for sure but after seeing the Google Earth picture I'm not sure why you didn't just stay in town and hike up there before daylight each morning.

[50CalJim]

Google Earth can be deceiving. I know where Zoorda was hunting & it's some pretty rugged country & probably unrealistic just to walk in everyday.

[RadSav]

Google Earth can be deceiving. I know where Zoorda was hunting & it's some pretty rugged country & probably unrealistic just to walk in everyday.

I'm assuming that was a joke from 2MANY and he just forgot the chuckle emoticon.

[2MANY]

LOL.

Sometimes the delayed chuckle is more fun.

Yes I get it.

[RadSav]

Sometimes the delayed chuckle is more fun.

Absolutely!

[Falcon]

This guy knows how to draw out a story

Having said that, keep it coming

[mtndew]

This guy knows how to draw out a story

Having said that, keep it coming
 
loving it!

[Cat hunter]

Enjoying the story and pics, keep it coming ! 

[Chase2008]

You are killing me with the wait

[zoorda]

Great write up for sure but after seeing the Google Earth picture I'm not sure why you didn't just stay in town and hike up there before daylight each morning.

If you go on some of the hiking web sites, guys talk about doing this hike in one day. They typically are only packing a water bottle and its a trip that starts and ends in the dark. My day pack probably would come in over 25lb with rifle, spotting scope, binoculars, and minimal other gear. I think at best it would be 4 to 5 hours in and maybe 3 or 4 out with a light pack. This might even been wishful thinking. That doesn't leave much time to hunt and if you have to go off trail and find routes around the cliffs the time to travel any distance can be incredible slow going. The next phase of my story addresses this specifically. I absolutely think hiking in and setting up a camp is the way to hunt this area, for efficiency and the full experience of the hunt. I did not see another person for an entire week, there was one set of tracks that came up the trail that I saw the entire 13 days I spent hunting during two separate trips. Most of my scouting trips I didn't see any body on the trail. The only people I would see was my friends that came with me on these trips. I really enjoyed the solitude off this experience. This was the main reason I avoided the Three Fingers trail, as it is one of the most heavily use trails in the area. And I didn't want be hunting surrounded by a bunch of hikers.

This being said I don't know if you were serious with your question or not, but I couldn't imagine attempting to hunt this area by hiking in every day. I do have to admit that I did research motel and rv parking option right after drawing the tag, but that idea was dropped after my first few scouting trips.
   

[zoorda]

The next day I planned on resting my legs and spend the day glassing from the big rock next to my camp. That plan lasted about 5 minutes. I got the spotting scope setup, had my binoculars, rifle and was enjoying another mt house scrambled eggs breakfast when I heard a noise below me. I crawled out on the edge of the rocky cliff and less than 200 yards away was two billies feeding. They were probably a couple hundred feet lower than me. One was a pretty decent Billy, they disappeared heading down the drainage. From where I was I knew I wouldn't get a shot at them unless they came right back to where I had seen them. The weren't spooked so I waited for about half hour and then decided to go after them. I dropped down going as straight after them as I could. It was pretty easy going at first.... for about 100 feet, then it got ugly, thick and steep. I would drop down until I could go no further because it was straight down and there was no way to go around so I would have to climb back up and keep trying to find a route around. I have been hunting in this state for 35 plus years and can without a doubt say this was the most miserable two and a half hours of brush beating I had ever experienced. Two and a hours and I travelled less than 200 yards. I finally busted out into the drainage I had seen the goats go down and there he was, less than 50 yards away staring at me, a Billy goat. I don't know which one of us was more surprised. We had a short stare down, I had time to actually snapped a quick picture and then he ran off. This was the smaller of the two goats, not the goat I was going to take today.

[zoorda]

I spent the rest of day hiking down the drainage looking for the other Billy. I found an area that they had been feeding in heavily, it was really brushy, but looked like someone had been driving a tractor with a brush hog through it. I didn't see any other goat on this day.
This is a picture of the drainage looking back up towards my camp. Travelling in this drainage was actually really easy compared to the rest of the terrain.
   

[zoorda]

The next day my buddy Ty was coming up so I waited in camp and got the much needed rest for my legs. He arrived around 12:30, we got his tent set up while I told him about my last several days of hunting. Around 1:30 we headed up toward White Horse Mountain. Near the end of the trail to White Horse we had a pretty good view down in to Snow Gulch and the cliffs to the East. These were the cliffs I had been seeing the several lone goats hanging out on. We could see several goats from this point, I suspect that one off them was the Water Fall Billy. He had not appeared at the base of the water fall all week. This was as far to the East I had been able to make it, but from here it was several hundred feet straight down to where the goats were. This was not going to be the route I had been looking for.
 

[zoorda]

From this view point we could see my camp and the drainage below it, we were a little over a mile away. We spotted two billies just to the east of the drainage below my camp. They were 1000 to 1500 feet below my camp, probably 500 yard from where I stopped my search the day before. The drainage had cliffed out and so I had cut to the west caught the trail and took it back to camp. We watched them for awhile and put together a plan to get to them. It was too late in the day to try and get to them, it was dark before we even got back to camp. The next morning we glassed they area the billies had been in the day before, we had to do little climbing to find a clear view. We spotted one of the billies but couldn't tell which one he was and he was across a deep canyon from us. We packed up and headed down, it took us about an hour and a half to get to what we guessed was the right elevation. We found a good spot to set up camp, tossed our camping gear and headed towards the goat.
 
The flag was up there, we stood it back up a got some cool pics with it.