Post by: hunterednate on October 18, 2019, 10:27:32 AM
Physically: the country goats live in is ridiculous. I’d been on plenty of backcountry hunts in the last decade, some pretty extreme (thinking of two grueling 16 miles in, 16 miles out bear hunts in the GPW a couple years ago, packing out 80+ lbs of meat/camp both times). So I thought I’d be reasonably prepared for this kind of hunt – I wasn’t. I guess in terms of endurance, I felt fine (about a 5.5 mile hike, 3000 ft gain in to the basins we planned on hunting), but in terms of actually getting to the goats once we hit those basins…yikes. Many of the goats we saw might as well have been living on a different planet: sheer cliffs sweeping up hundreds of feet below scree fields, glaciers – simply inaccessible. Goat tags are not for the weekend hunter or the car camper. They will force you to your physical limits.
Mentally: mountain goats may be the most difficult North American game species to field judge. I can’t tell you how many anxious moments I spent zooming in to the smallest pixel on grainy digital zoom inches I’d taken while scouting. Is that tip broomed – or just curled tight? Does he really carry his mass that high, or is that a shadow? This is part of the fun of the hunt, of course, but also part of the agony. And when you’re pulling the trigger on a OIL tag, you don’t want to make a mistake.
Conditions: this hunt runs from Oct. 1 – Nov. 30. On my final scouting trip on September 25th, I was hiking in 8” of snow at the top of the unit. More snow fell just three days before I could get off work to hunt, and we were slogging through 4-10” of powder on every trail we walked during the hunt. Add on temps falling into the teens at night and 30 mph wind during the days in the hunt….I felt like I was on Everest at times, not SW Wa.
Game: the goats in the Enchantments or the Olympics will stand beside the trail like llamas at a petting zoo. Hikers would have to shoo them away at times. Not these goats (for reasons I’m still not aware of). The goats in the Mt. Margaret Backcountry are wild, even the nannies and the kids. We never saw a goat within 200 yards of us that wasn’t trotting away. Beyond that, they were nervous, and would move out of sight at first convenience. I felt like we were stalking wary whitetails in Oct – not a species that has only had one animal harvested from this unit in the last 40+ years.
All that to say…this hunt was harder than I imagined it would be. Much harder.
But also, without a doubt, the most rewarding hunt I’ve ever experienced.
Beauty: this unit is stunning – simply breathtaking. From the vistas of Mt. St. Helens at dawn over Spirit Lake to the hummingbirds buzzing like mosquitoes in the wildflowers to the goats themselves, sprawled on rocky ledges over pristine blue alpine lakes…the photos don’t do this place justice. It’s gorgeous.
Challenge: the harder the hunt, the more satisfying the payoff. I think this is something pretty much everyone on this forum understands.
The Mountain: signs of the eruption of Mt. St. Helens are everywhere in this unit. Trees scattered like matchsticks on every slope, the barren south facing slopes, the pumice pebbles that pop under your feet with every step – you are humbled and terrified by the latent power that sleeps beneath the dome of every big peak in the volcanic cascades. It’s a healthy fear – the fear of God.
Goats: Mountain goats are a remarkable animal. I read Douglas Chadwick’s seminal work on mountain goats, A Beast the Color of Winter, cover to cover before this trip – and fell in love with the animals. I’m a Christian, and take seriously the idea in Genesis that God created human beings to be stewards and caretakers of God’s creation. These aren’t my goats – or your goats – or the state’s goats: they are God’s goats. To participate in the management and stewardship of this species in the role of a hunter is an honor and a blessing, and I thank God for giving us that privilege of partnering with Him as he cares for his creatures.
Now the story...
Post by: hunterednate on October 18, 2019, 10:30:21 AM
Post by: hunterednate on October 18, 2019, 10:34:39 AM
Post by: hunterednate on October 18, 2019, 10:35:35 AM
Post by: hunterednate on October 18, 2019, 10:37:59 AM
Post by: hunterednate on October 18, 2019, 10:40:31 AM
Post by: hunterednate on October 18, 2019, 10:43:35 AM
Post by: hunterednate on October 18, 2019, 10:47:39 AM
Day 1: I left the trailhead with my buddy Ben two hours before dark. We fought snow covered alders that clogged the trail for hours before finally emerging into the open high country at dawn. Stunning beauty – a gorgeous vista of Mt. St. Helens – and a mature goat feeding on the ridgeline.
We got within two hundred yards of the goat, but I decided to pass on the shot. He was a big animal and clearly a billy with gorgeous hair…but both horns appeared broomed. I’d seen much better goats in the unit, and didn’t want to shoot this guy on day 1.
I was questioning this decision that afternoon. We spent four hours glassing the cliffs where we’d spotted the two biggest goats on our scouting trips, but they were bare – no goats in sight. Nothing. What’s worse, ten inches of snow made navigating those slopes dangerous, if not simply impossible. Even if we spotted a goat, we couldn’t have killed it. I was cold, sleep deprived, exhausted from the 6+ mile hike so far…I actually told my buddy I wanted to go home, regroup, and come back to the unit in ten days (hoping the snow would have melted). My buddy said “ok,” and we started trudging back to camp.
On the 1-mile hike back to our tent, I changed my mind: snow or no snow, we came here to hunt. We’d hunt.
We looked lower down that night, and spotted two more goats – one a billy that looked like he had some promise from 600 yards away. We decided to mark his location and return in the morning.
That night was brutal – temps in the teens, sleeping in our tiny tent that we set up on eight-inches of snow, all our water freezing overnight…I kept thinking to myself: “I’m not a goat hunter. I’m just not cut out for this.”
Post by: HighCountryHunter88 on October 18, 2019, 10:48:18 AM
Post by: jowings22 on October 18, 2019, 10:50:12 AM
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Post by: hunterednate on October 18, 2019, 10:52:16 AM
We returned to the site of our last billy sighting, but no goat was visible. We enjoyed a gorgeous view of the sun rising behind Mt. Adams, with Mt. Rainier, Mt. Hood, and Mt. St. Helens flanking it. Best freeze dried granola and pop tarts and starbucks via shaken in a water bottle I’d ever enjoyed.
My brother-in-law hiked in and joined us while we were eating. He was a boost to our spirits, too, and we set off on a little hike to a different area.
That’s when my buddy spotted the goat – the same one from the night before – bedded on a brushy ridgetop. We confirmed he was a mature billy through our zoom cameras, then began the mile-long off-trail hike to his ridge. We slipped and slid and stumbled over deep snowy slopes for close to an hour before finally making it to just above his location….but no goat in sight. We could see the snag where he’d been bedded, so we knew the goat was within 100 yards, but couldn’t see him due to the steepness of the hill and the thickness of the brush.
Since this was our last day of hunting for the week, we decided to take a page from our deer hunting playbook. We’d send my buddy on a looping walk behind the goat and have him try to push him up toward the ridgetop – where I’d be set up to shoot when he appeared.
The plan worked to perfection. Thirty minutes later, I spotted a flash of white in the brush and black horns floating against the snowy backdrop. The billy trotted into a shooting lane at 70 yards and I shot instinctively. He dropped at the shot and slid against a fir tree, dead – stopping just 15 feet above a 200+ foot cliff.
We later found out it was a spine shot, entering just behind the left shoulder and exiting low in the neck. Not where I was aiming. But exactly the result I was hoping for.
Post by: hunterednate on October 18, 2019, 10:59:04 AM
The billy was everything I’d hoped for. A mature face – thick, sharp horns – and a luxuriously thick coat. He was built like a tank, too. It took all we could do to hoist him out of the tree well with three dudes and a rope to get him to a flat spot for photos and knife work. We ended up with 92 lbs of boned out meat at the butcher. I wouldn’t be surprised if his weight was in the 275+ lb range on the hoof.
The pack out, naturally, was agony. More off-trail slogging, more stumbling, more arctic wind biting our bare faces. We shot the goat at 1 pm, and made it to the trailhead around 9 pm – then gorged on 10-hour-old gas station roller food around 11 pm (a pizza pocket dipped in fry sauce is surprisingly good).
What I realized when my head hit the pillow after midnight is that everything about this goat hunt was grace. Grace in the technical sense – meaning something good you don’t deserve that is freely given and joyfully received. Like I said, I’m a Christian – my faith is built on grace: God being kind to me and welcoming me in Jesus even though I haven’t done anything to deserve it. He just does it, for me, or for anyone with empty hands open to receive it – grace.
Same with this goat hunt: it was all about grace. I didn’t do anything more than any of the other thousands of you who applied for goat tags – I just applied, and happened to draw it. Grace. I had decided to go home on day 2 of the hunt – but then I found a second wind. Grace. I was ready to give up and shoot basically any mature billy – but ended up with a 10”+ trophy. Grace. I was aiming for a lung shot – but hit him in the spine. Grace. I couldn’t pack more than the head and the hide in my pack – but had two buddies who took every scrap of meat. Grace. I’m 31, healthy, with a back strong enough to do this, in state that has goats living in the mountains, born to a dad who taught me to hunt and started buying me OIL goat points when I was 14 years old...all grace.
So when you know it’s all grace, what you end up feeling is all gratitude. Thank you to my brother, my dad, my brother-in-law, and my buddy for their scouting help. Thank you to X-Force for the info on the unit and goat hunting 101. Thank you to Bucksnort for the notes and phone conversations with info on his hunt in the unit last year. Thanks to the WDFW for managing the resource and getting this goat hunt started back up after a forty-plus year closure. And thanks to God for giving life and breath and everything else in his good creation – volcanoes, goats, people…all of it.
I hope each of you on this forum who dreams of hunting goats gets the chance to do it. It’s grace. It’s good.
Post by: Rainier10 on October 18, 2019, 11:03:51 AM
Thank you so much for posting.
Post by: HighCountryHunter88 on October 18, 2019, 11:13:25 AM
Post by: Ridgerunner on October 18, 2019, 11:18:54 AM
Post by: Timberstalker on October 18, 2019, 11:20:41 AM
Congrats to you. You pushed through it and made it happen. Awesome.
Post by: HikerHunter on October 18, 2019, 11:23:51 AM
Post by: Benny on October 18, 2019, 11:25:31 AM
Post by: elkrack on October 18, 2019, 11:29:24 AM
Post by: Jgarrigus on October 18, 2019, 11:33:08 AM
Post by: blackveltbowhunter on October 18, 2019, 11:35:47 AM
Post by: hunterednate on October 18, 2019, 11:36:47 AM
Post by: Bushcraft on October 18, 2019, 11:45:51 AM
That was unquestionably one of the best hunt write-ups I've ever read on this forum.
Bravo sir! Exceedingly well done on all accounts. Thank you.
Post by: Ironhead on October 18, 2019, 11:57:31 AM
Post by: fishngamereaper on October 18, 2019, 12:09:37 PM
Post by: birdshooter1189 on October 18, 2019, 12:10:20 PM
Post by: WAcoueshunter on October 18, 2019, 12:14:32 PM
Post by: boneaddict on October 18, 2019, 12:15:31 PM
I agree with what an awesome post. Beautiful photos and fantastic story. THANK YOU!!!
Post by: deadwoodbuck on October 18, 2019, 12:25:41 PM
Post by: jmscon on October 18, 2019, 12:52:30 PM
Thanks for sharing!
Post by: meatwhack on October 18, 2019, 01:12:34 PM
Post by: BullMagnet76 on October 18, 2019, 01:31:27 PM
Post by: Tapp8277 on October 18, 2019, 01:32:38 PM
Post by: X-Force on October 18, 2019, 01:47:11 PM
Awesome write up and an amazing animal. Your level of appreciation for the entire experience is inspiring.
Thank you so much for posting.
100% this.
Awesome billy and epic adventure.
Post by: hunterednate on October 18, 2019, 02:37:30 PM
Post by: Machias on October 18, 2019, 04:53:49 PM
Post by: jackelope on October 18, 2019, 05:09:22 PM
Post by: sjhgraysage on October 18, 2019, 06:12:00 PM
Post by: SuperDave on October 18, 2019, 07:11:42 PM
Post by: dewandgin on October 18, 2019, 08:12:19 PM
Post by: idaho guy on October 18, 2019, 08:16:17 PM
Post by: Blacktail135 on October 18, 2019, 08:35:38 PM
Post by: CaNINE on October 18, 2019, 09:00:45 PM
Post by: Turner89 on October 18, 2019, 09:03:36 PM
:yeah: great post, very impressive. :tup:Awesome write up and an amazing animal. Your level of appreciation for the entire experience is inspiring.
Thank you so much for posting.
100% this.
Awesome billy and epic adventure.
Post by: Tree Killer on October 19, 2019, 04:53:49 AM
Post by: RB on October 19, 2019, 08:23:47 AM
Post by: bowhunterforever on October 19, 2019, 01:07:35 PM
Fantastic story and goat, congrats!:yeah: :tup:
Thanks for sharing!
Post by: hunting4sanity on October 19, 2019, 01:50:48 PM
Post by: Jpmiller on October 19, 2019, 02:31:35 PM
Post by: Falcon on October 19, 2019, 09:18:55 PM
You did everything right and have a lot to be proud of :tup:
Post by: bucksnort on October 20, 2019, 08:47:06 AM
Post by: actionshooter on October 20, 2019, 09:42:01 AM
Post by: full choke on October 20, 2019, 10:01:10 AM
Great goat, great story! Thanks for sharing the adventure!
Post by: TheHunt on October 20, 2019, 10:44:00 AM
Post by: elkboy on October 20, 2019, 10:45:00 AM
Post by: hunterednate on October 20, 2019, 02:38:57 PM
great job Nate! Glad you got the goat you wanted. Definitely a challenge worth accepting. I know it's one me and my son will never forget. Congrats!
Thanks Bucksnort! Your help through this whole process via email and phone was a big boost and encouragement.
Post by: hunterednate on October 20, 2019, 02:39:40 PM
Nate, great write up and pictures. I talked to your Dad this morning. Than you before church this morning. What a blessing!
Yes! Great talking to you. Thanks.
Post by: ShaneTyTrey on October 20, 2019, 04:00:38 PM
Post by: pianoman9701 on October 21, 2019, 08:00:30 AM
Post by: HikerHunter on October 21, 2019, 09:26:28 AM
Great write up, great goat, awesome photos (how much more effort was photo #5 to collect?). Thanks for sharing with us!
That photo was collected purely by chance, which means we didn't intentionally set it up. I had followed a goat path around the cliffs and spotted a goat down below. You can't really tell from the photo, but I'm actually taking photos on a goat underneath hunterednate that he can't see!
Post by: scrapperdude on October 21, 2019, 12:29:23 PM
Post by: Rob on October 21, 2019, 12:43:28 PM
Post by: Birdgetter on October 24, 2019, 07:03:07 PM
Post by: Harbor_hunter on October 24, 2019, 08:52:04 PM
Post by: WildW00d on October 24, 2019, 10:37:44 PM
Post by: elkoholic1 on October 25, 2019, 08:13:18 PM
Post by: O. hemionus on November 22, 2019, 09:35:39 PM
Post by: Gutpile on June 30, 2021, 04:11:55 PM
Post by: hunterednate on July 01, 2021, 10:41:18 AM
Epic! Great chatting today. Good luck on pops' moose hunt. I'm super stoked for you guys!
Thank you for all your help! Guys like you are what make this forum great. We are pumped, too.
Post by: Big6bull on July 02, 2021, 08:46:09 PM
Post by: westside Elkhunter on July 05, 2021, 11:11:24 AM
Post by: Bogge45 on October 20, 2021, 07:23:31 AM