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Author Topic: Mount Margaret Goat 2019  (Read 17504 times)

Offline hunterednate

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Mount Margaret Goat 2019
« on: October 18, 2019, 10:27:32 AM »
Let me start by saying that if you’re thinking of hunting mountain goats, but have never done it before – it’s harder than you think it is. On many levels.

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...


Offline hunterednate

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Re: Mount Margaret Goat 2019
« Reply #1 on: October 18, 2019, 10:30:21 AM »
Scouting trip #1 was with my wife and 6-week-old daughter. We made it to the top Norway Pass on a rainy, chilly morning in mid-July and saw 1 goat. Mission accomplished.

Offline hunterednate

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Re: Mount Margaret Goat 2019
« Reply #2 on: October 18, 2019, 10:34:39 AM »
Scouting trip #2 was in late July. Climbed with my bro-in-law (hikerhunter) to the top of the unit, set a few trail cams, and spotted our first billy, just serenely chewing his cud on a narrow ledge in the middle of a series of 400-foot cliffs. This trip is when I realized just how tough the hunt would be – and that eating my tag could be a legitimate possibility.

Offline hunterednate

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Re: Mount Margaret Goat 2019
« Reply #3 on: October 18, 2019, 10:35:35 AM »
Scouting trip #3 raised my spirits. We spotted our first big shooter billy – in an accessible location, no less – and close to 40 other goats. I started to feel like this hunt was in reach (little did I know we would never find that billy again – despite hours scouring his basin with glass).

Offline hunterednate

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Re: Mount Margaret Goat 2019
« Reply #4 on: October 18, 2019, 10:37:59 AM »
Scouting trip #4 was another downer. Clouds, rain, cold – and it was just August 17th. The clouds lifted later in the day, and we did end up spotting an older goat – one that I would happily tag – but again: we could never find him again after that initial sighting (both goats were located near the unit boundary – an area of the monument off-limits to foot travel. My suspicion is they simply wandered out of the unit).

Offline hunterednate

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Re: Mount Margaret Goat 2019
« Reply #5 on: October 18, 2019, 10:40:31 AM »
Scouting trip #5 was a blast. An all day thru-hike (start at Norway Pass, emerge at Coldwater Lake) brought sightings of big bull elk, a healthy black bear sow, 30+ goats, and lots and lots of hikers, trail runners, and mountain bikers. Again, we spotted one other potential shooter billy, and after 17+ miles of hiking, the Chehalis McDonalds tasted REALLY good at 11 pm that night.

Offline hunterednate

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Re: Mount Margaret Goat 2019
« Reply #6 on: October 18, 2019, 10:43:35 AM »
Scouting trip #6 was jarring: the unit had turned into the arctic. 4 inches of snow at the trailhead, 8 at the top of the unit, painfully slow hiking. Such a stark contrast to our fair-weather August scouting trips. And what’s worse, I never saw a goat. My expectations for the hunt were plummeting along with the temperature.

Offline hunterednate

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Re: Mount Margaret Goat 2019
« Reply #7 on: October 18, 2019, 10:47:39 AM »
The Hunt

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.”

Offline HighCountryHunter88

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Re: Mount Margaret Goat 2019
« Reply #8 on: October 18, 2019, 10:48:18 AM »
TAG
-Matt

Offline jowings22

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Re: Mount Margaret Goat 2019
« Reply #9 on: October 18, 2019, 10:50:12 AM »
Following


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Offline hunterednate

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Re: Mount Margaret Goat 2019
« Reply #10 on: October 18, 2019, 10:52:16 AM »
Day 2:

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.
« Last Edit: October 18, 2019, 11:35:04 AM by hunterednate »

Offline hunterednate

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Re: Mount Margaret Goat 2019
« Reply #11 on: October 18, 2019, 10:59:04 AM »
The Goat

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.

Offline Rainier10

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Re: Mount Margaret Goat 2019
« Reply #12 on: October 18, 2019, 11:03:51 AM »
Awesome write up and an amazing animal.  Your level of appreciation for the entire experience is inspiring.

Thank you so much for posting.
Pain is temporary, achieving the goal is worth it.

I didn't say it would be easy, I said it would be worth it.

Every father should remember that one day his children will follow his example instead of his advice.


The views and opinions expressed in this post are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of HuntWa or the site owner.

Offline HighCountryHunter88

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Re: Mount Margaret Goat 2019
« Reply #13 on: October 18, 2019, 11:13:25 AM »
GREAT WRITE UP! CONGRATS!
-Matt

Offline Ridgerunner

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Re: Mount Margaret Goat 2019
« Reply #14 on: October 18, 2019, 11:18:54 AM »
Best post of the year.  What a great story and great hunt.  You were BLESSED and I love that you recognize things as they are. Congrats on a lifetime of memories and making the most of a rare and exceptional opportunity.

 


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