Mica Man
Well-known member
Super cool thanks for sharing!
2014 Wyoming Mountain Goat Hunt!
- Thread starter npaden
- Start date
Great stuff, Nathan. What a great experience. You earned every bit of that success. Congrats.
hardscrabble
Active member
Congrats Nathan! He truly is a once in a lifetime trophy.
Gerald Martin
Well-known member
- Joined
- Jul 3, 2009
- Messages
- 8,676
Incredible hunt Nathan. The memories you have made on this hunt will be with you for the rest of your life. Well done!
ashersdad
Well-known member
One of the best write ups this year! Thanks for taking us along for the ride and congrats on a great billy!
Nameless Range
Well-known member
That's awesome. Congratulations. Really good write up. Taking a goat in some of the most beautiful country on earth is a trip you'll forever remember.
sheff
Member
Thanks Nathan! Enjoyed the hunt! Congrats!
Sheff
Sheff
MinnesotaHunter
Well-known member
Thanks for bringing us along, Nathan. Goat hunting seems like it gets in your blood, I know it is in mine now.
Congrats on a great goat!
Congrats on a great goat!
krshntr81
Member
Congrats on the great goat, and thanks for taking me along on the hunt!
Southwind
New member
A hearty Congrats and thanks for such a super chronicle of your adventure.
npaden
Well-known member
Thanks for the comments guys, I do these writeups as much for myself as anyone else. Getting it all written down with pictures mixed in really helps burn in the memories for me. Who knows, maybe someday my 7 year old son will want to read about some of the hunts his dad went on and go back and read some of these.
Yes, the current plan is for a full body mount. I was very happy with the hair on him and although he isn't a monster, he is a good representative goat.
npaden
Well-known member
Okay so I'm back on the mountain and got some pictures taken and it's officially dark now and the rain is coming in with lightning in the distance. Time to get busy!
I mentioned that my friend had stayed back at the bottom on this stalk and although we had come up with some hand signals to help direct me to the goat, that had pretty much been a failure, although in the end I ended up actually stumbling upon him out of luck. When we split up I did grab a radio just in case I got into trouble while up on the mountain. I radioed him that the goat was down and that I was starting to work on it. He had heard the shots although he had also lost track of the goat and wanted to come up and help me get him out. I said great and expected to see him in a little bit.
After the other hunters story of the grizzly coming in on them while they were working on the elk, I moved my gun and my backpack with my pepper spray right next to where I was working on the goat. I had watched a few videos on how to cape an animal for a life sized mount and got right to work with my havalon knife. He had really long hair, but overall it went pretty smoothly getting him caped and quartered out.
As I was about finished up on one side my friend radioed me and asked me where I was at. I yelled as loud as I could and ended up giving him my GPS coordinates, but he never could find me in the dark and ended up getting cliffed out and in the end decided to just go back down and wait for me at the bottom.
Skinning him out, it turned out that my first shot was high and had hit him in the spine and then my second shot was rushed and I hit him right at the base of the neck. It was a very quick kill shot, but the result was a baseball sized hole in his fur at the base of his neck where the exit was because all the bone fragments that blew out. Thankfully, the current plan is for that side to be against the wall and my taxidermist said that the hair is so long he thinks he can fix it although he might have to shrink the neck down a little bit. Hopefully it will all work out, other than the damage from my bullets the cape and face were in great shape which isn't always the case on mountain goats after they come to rest.
Okay, back to skinning and quartering him. I got him all skinned and set that aside and just about had him quartered as it really started to rain pretty good. My buddy had made it back down to the bottom and radioed up a real positive confidence boosting report that went something like "That lightning is really starting to get close and it's starting to rain pretty good. You need to really start working your way down and just leave the goat, this is the kind of stuff where people end up dying on the mountain." Up where I was at the lightning still seemed a safe distance to me and the rain was more of a sprinkle so I told him I was going to finish getting him quartered and bagged and come down the mountain with the head and cape. About 30 minutes later and everything was done. I had all the meat in my game bag, although I didn't debone any of the quarters and packed the cape into the load shelf on my backpack. I kicked the carcass off the shelf and heard it roll a few times so I figured that would attract any bears and keep them off the meat in my game bag and with the hurry I was in I didn't bother to hang anything.
I really like my Stone Glacier backpack and the ability to load things between my bag and the frame of the backpack in the load sling. It worked great although I didn't get any pictures of it in the dark.
I started down the mountain in the dark and in about 2 steps realized that this was going to be harder than I thought. The mountain was full of boulders and climbing up and down in the past we had actually spent most of our time using them to climb up and down. When they are dry they give you good footing and there are usually cracks to hang onto and I had felt really confident going up and down. In the rain, the moss turned these same boulders into an ice skating rink. SUPER slippery! Even on a relatively flat spot I nearly ended up on my butt within a step or two.
So my strategy for getting down changed completely. First and foremost I looked for any type of vegetation like grass or shrubs that would allow me to get some kind of a foothold to keep me upright. Loose ground was also good as I could dig my heels in as I stepped down and that worked to keep me upright as well. There were still a few areas where I couldn't avoid going across the rocks, but I just went really slow and always was hanging onto something. My hands ended up getting pretty scratched up because of constantly grabbing onto brush and tree branches to keep my balance. Creek bottoms and avalanche chutes are normally places I avoid, but they ended up being about the best way to get down the mountain while avoiding the more slippery rocks with the moss on them. About 1/2 way down, I'm climbing over deadfall and stumbling over rocks and lost my balance and grabbed onto a tree branch to keep from falling and wouldn't you know it, the tree branch breaks off in my hand. I fell right over onto my back pretty hard. Thankfully the way I had packed the cape and head, the horns weren't pointed toward my back and it actually ended up cushioning my fall. I was surprised that I didn't end up hurting myself at all in the fall.
I got back up and kept heading down. It seemed to take forever and it was actually less than 1/2 mile to the bottom and only 800' of elevation loss. Again, deadfall is something that you would normally avoid, but it seemed the safest route so I kept climbing over deadfall and sticking to the heaviest brush and timber. I was able to finally see and hear the ranger with a couple hundred yards to go and I was VERY thankful to break out into the last clearing. It hadn't ever ended up being a full blown rainstorm, so God was for sure looking out for me and I had done a LOT of praying on the way down.
A quick trip back to camp and we decided to go ahead and try to wash the blood out of the cape in the creek. We head down there and I'm just strolling along, completely forgetting that the rocks might be slippery when I end up with my feet rocketing out from under me and landing HARD on my tailbone. It still hurts a little while I'm typing this almost 2 full weeks later! All that work getting down the mountain without hurting myself and then I bust it just walking down to the creek to wash out the cape.
We spent a good 15 minutes or so trying to get the blood washed out and realized that we had just increased the weight of the cape by about 40 pounds by getting it wet. It took both of us to carry it back to camp and I was much more cautious this time around. We hung it up to let it drip although with the rain coming off and on I'm not sure it did a whole lot of good.
Some prayers of thanksgiving for a successful hunt and safety, some dinner and I was in the sack, exhausted.
Shockingly though I think I only got about an hour or two of sleep that night. I'm usually a sound sleeper and don't have problems going to sleep but the events of the week kept racing through my mind. All the what ifs and the relief of getting a billy and I just couldn't get my mind to stop and get to sleep. I woke up the next morning ready to go so I guess just laying there did me some good, but I guess I was about as full of adrenaline as I had ever been so sleeping was a difficult proposition that night.
I mentioned that my friend had stayed back at the bottom on this stalk and although we had come up with some hand signals to help direct me to the goat, that had pretty much been a failure, although in the end I ended up actually stumbling upon him out of luck. When we split up I did grab a radio just in case I got into trouble while up on the mountain. I radioed him that the goat was down and that I was starting to work on it. He had heard the shots although he had also lost track of the goat and wanted to come up and help me get him out. I said great and expected to see him in a little bit.
After the other hunters story of the grizzly coming in on them while they were working on the elk, I moved my gun and my backpack with my pepper spray right next to where I was working on the goat. I had watched a few videos on how to cape an animal for a life sized mount and got right to work with my havalon knife. He had really long hair, but overall it went pretty smoothly getting him caped and quartered out.
As I was about finished up on one side my friend radioed me and asked me where I was at. I yelled as loud as I could and ended up giving him my GPS coordinates, but he never could find me in the dark and ended up getting cliffed out and in the end decided to just go back down and wait for me at the bottom.
Skinning him out, it turned out that my first shot was high and had hit him in the spine and then my second shot was rushed and I hit him right at the base of the neck. It was a very quick kill shot, but the result was a baseball sized hole in his fur at the base of his neck where the exit was because all the bone fragments that blew out. Thankfully, the current plan is for that side to be against the wall and my taxidermist said that the hair is so long he thinks he can fix it although he might have to shrink the neck down a little bit. Hopefully it will all work out, other than the damage from my bullets the cape and face were in great shape which isn't always the case on mountain goats after they come to rest.
Okay, back to skinning and quartering him. I got him all skinned and set that aside and just about had him quartered as it really started to rain pretty good. My buddy had made it back down to the bottom and radioed up a real positive confidence boosting report that went something like "That lightning is really starting to get close and it's starting to rain pretty good. You need to really start working your way down and just leave the goat, this is the kind of stuff where people end up dying on the mountain." Up where I was at the lightning still seemed a safe distance to me and the rain was more of a sprinkle so I told him I was going to finish getting him quartered and bagged and come down the mountain with the head and cape. About 30 minutes later and everything was done. I had all the meat in my game bag, although I didn't debone any of the quarters and packed the cape into the load shelf on my backpack. I kicked the carcass off the shelf and heard it roll a few times so I figured that would attract any bears and keep them off the meat in my game bag and with the hurry I was in I didn't bother to hang anything.
I really like my Stone Glacier backpack and the ability to load things between my bag and the frame of the backpack in the load sling. It worked great although I didn't get any pictures of it in the dark.
I started down the mountain in the dark and in about 2 steps realized that this was going to be harder than I thought. The mountain was full of boulders and climbing up and down in the past we had actually spent most of our time using them to climb up and down. When they are dry they give you good footing and there are usually cracks to hang onto and I had felt really confident going up and down. In the rain, the moss turned these same boulders into an ice skating rink. SUPER slippery! Even on a relatively flat spot I nearly ended up on my butt within a step or two.
So my strategy for getting down changed completely. First and foremost I looked for any type of vegetation like grass or shrubs that would allow me to get some kind of a foothold to keep me upright. Loose ground was also good as I could dig my heels in as I stepped down and that worked to keep me upright as well. There were still a few areas where I couldn't avoid going across the rocks, but I just went really slow and always was hanging onto something. My hands ended up getting pretty scratched up because of constantly grabbing onto brush and tree branches to keep my balance. Creek bottoms and avalanche chutes are normally places I avoid, but they ended up being about the best way to get down the mountain while avoiding the more slippery rocks with the moss on them. About 1/2 way down, I'm climbing over deadfall and stumbling over rocks and lost my balance and grabbed onto a tree branch to keep from falling and wouldn't you know it, the tree branch breaks off in my hand. I fell right over onto my back pretty hard. Thankfully the way I had packed the cape and head, the horns weren't pointed toward my back and it actually ended up cushioning my fall. I was surprised that I didn't end up hurting myself at all in the fall.
I got back up and kept heading down. It seemed to take forever and it was actually less than 1/2 mile to the bottom and only 800' of elevation loss. Again, deadfall is something that you would normally avoid, but it seemed the safest route so I kept climbing over deadfall and sticking to the heaviest brush and timber. I was able to finally see and hear the ranger with a couple hundred yards to go and I was VERY thankful to break out into the last clearing. It hadn't ever ended up being a full blown rainstorm, so God was for sure looking out for me and I had done a LOT of praying on the way down.
A quick trip back to camp and we decided to go ahead and try to wash the blood out of the cape in the creek. We head down there and I'm just strolling along, completely forgetting that the rocks might be slippery when I end up with my feet rocketing out from under me and landing HARD on my tailbone. It still hurts a little while I'm typing this almost 2 full weeks later! All that work getting down the mountain without hurting myself and then I bust it just walking down to the creek to wash out the cape.
We spent a good 15 minutes or so trying to get the blood washed out and realized that we had just increased the weight of the cape by about 40 pounds by getting it wet. It took both of us to carry it back to camp and I was much more cautious this time around. We hung it up to let it drip although with the rain coming off and on I'm not sure it did a whole lot of good.
Some prayers of thanksgiving for a successful hunt and safety, some dinner and I was in the sack, exhausted.
Shockingly though I think I only got about an hour or two of sleep that night. I'm usually a sound sleeper and don't have problems going to sleep but the events of the week kept racing through my mind. All the what ifs and the relief of getting a billy and I just couldn't get my mind to stop and get to sleep. I woke up the next morning ready to go so I guess just laying there did me some good, but I guess I was about as full of adrenaline as I had ever been so sleeping was a difficult proposition that night.
npaden
Well-known member
Kind of a recap of the final stalk.
The green line is the route I ended up taking to get to him. The red circle is where he was when I shot him. We saw him very close to this spot earlier in the day, but he just moved back into the timber about 100 yards or so where you couldn't see him from the bottom any longer. Thankfully I caught a glimpse of him on my way down.
The yellow circle is where the lone goat was that I saw on Sunday morning when I first got there. I think it may have been the same billy when it was all said and done.
Not the best picture but thought this was a neat shot through the spotting scope of me up at the top of the mountain.
The rain stayed away most of the night and the next morning was overcast, but the rocks were dry and we had a relatively easy time of it going back up to retrieve the meat. I was surprised by how little meat there was when it was all said and done. The hindquarters were much smaller than on a deer and although the front shoulders seemed big there really wasn't a ton of meat on them. Even the backstraps seemed small for the size of animal that it was.
I went ahead and deboned the quarters while we were up there before packing the meat out. Thankfully nothing had messed with the meat in the game bag although the ravens were on the carcass.
Too bad I wasn't able to get my trophy pictures taken in light like this instead of at dusk with the sun in the wrong place.
This kind of gives you an idea of the area he was hanging out in, kind of surprising that it wasn't more cliffy to me, but this was the north facing slope and I think with the warmer weather the cooler temperatures and shade meant more to him than the security of a steep cliff.
Finally a shot of packing him out.
Of course I had the trekking poles for the packout in good conditions, but they had been back at camp when I was trying to make it down the mountain in the dark the previous night.
My elk hunt turned out to be just as much of an adventure when it was all said and done, it's going to take me a few days before I can get it posted. This was my first time with 2 hunts during back to back weeks away from home and it was more difficult than I expected. Both hunts turned out to be more difficult than I had expected as well so the end result was one tired dude when I got home 18 days after leaving.
I think that pretty much sums it up. Thanks for following along. I have a couple videos that actually turned out decent, but I still haven't figured out how to get them converted and uploaded to play on a computer. Nothing too exciting but hopefully I'll be able to figure it out and add them later.
The green line is the route I ended up taking to get to him. The red circle is where he was when I shot him. We saw him very close to this spot earlier in the day, but he just moved back into the timber about 100 yards or so where you couldn't see him from the bottom any longer. Thankfully I caught a glimpse of him on my way down.
The yellow circle is where the lone goat was that I saw on Sunday morning when I first got there. I think it may have been the same billy when it was all said and done.
Not the best picture but thought this was a neat shot through the spotting scope of me up at the top of the mountain.
The rain stayed away most of the night and the next morning was overcast, but the rocks were dry and we had a relatively easy time of it going back up to retrieve the meat. I was surprised by how little meat there was when it was all said and done. The hindquarters were much smaller than on a deer and although the front shoulders seemed big there really wasn't a ton of meat on them. Even the backstraps seemed small for the size of animal that it was.
I went ahead and deboned the quarters while we were up there before packing the meat out. Thankfully nothing had messed with the meat in the game bag although the ravens were on the carcass.
Too bad I wasn't able to get my trophy pictures taken in light like this instead of at dusk with the sun in the wrong place.
This kind of gives you an idea of the area he was hanging out in, kind of surprising that it wasn't more cliffy to me, but this was the north facing slope and I think with the warmer weather the cooler temperatures and shade meant more to him than the security of a steep cliff.
Finally a shot of packing him out.
Of course I had the trekking poles for the packout in good conditions, but they had been back at camp when I was trying to make it down the mountain in the dark the previous night.
My elk hunt turned out to be just as much of an adventure when it was all said and done, it's going to take me a few days before I can get it posted. This was my first time with 2 hunts during back to back weeks away from home and it was more difficult than I expected. Both hunts turned out to be more difficult than I had expected as well so the end result was one tired dude when I got home 18 days after leaving.
I think that pretty much sums it up. Thanks for following along. I have a couple videos that actually turned out decent, but I still haven't figured out how to get them converted and uploaded to play on a computer. Nothing too exciting but hopefully I'll be able to figure it out and add them later.
Ron Wright
Member
Great write up, I enjoyed reading it.
It got real stressful for me too, but my hunt worked out in the end just like yours did. The success makes a packout like that much more tolerable
It got real stressful for me too, but my hunt worked out in the end just like yours did. The success makes a packout like that much more tolerable
npaden
Well-known member
Oh yeah, a couple more little tidbits to add for the summary.
7 days of hunting. That's a first for me, not sure I've ever hunted 7 days straight for anything before.
37 miles on the boots. There were the 2 big days with 11 miles and 12 miles that adds up pretty quickly, the rest were just short hikes here and there, but generally with a lot of elevation gain and most of those miles at 9,000'+ elevation.
105 miles on the ranger over those 7 days. Probably about 1/2 of that just driving the crappy road back and forth between our camp and goat creek. I think when it was all said and done we made 8 or 9 round trips in and out of there.
200+ miles on pickups driving from one location to another after we were setup at base camp. The unit really isn't that big, but driving from one spot to another often involved a long way around. I would look at my GPS and it would say that we were 13 miles from one of my waypoints that might have taken us 50 miles of driving to get from there.
My wife has added up the cost of this trip a few times with the expensive nonresident tag, the fuel to get there and back pulling a trailer with the ranger and ATVs, and the eventual cost of the lifesize taxidermy mount and when it is all said and done it seems like a pretty big number even to me, but this truly is a once in a lifetime tag and when it was all said and done was a great experience and was worth every penny.
We ate mountain goat spaghetti last night and it was pretty good actually. Not sure if it was worth the near $100 per pound price that it ended up being if you add in all the costs, but it was way better than I was expecting. The friend that processed it for me while I was elk hunting said that she would have expected it to take 20 - 30 minutes to grind that much meat, but it ended up taking her 5 hours instead. Pretty much had to force every ounce through the grinder. But hey, that saves us having to try to chew it and the flavor is actually good. It's super expensive hamburger, but at least it is edible.
I'm sure I'll think of little things to add here and there. Hope to get the videos figured out, have one of the billy pawing dirt on him and one of a couple kids playing that I thought was good. All my GoPro footage ended up being fairly worthless, and we didn't get near as much video of me actually hunting with the other camera as I was expecting but I think we did okay on the pictures.
Thanks again for the comments and following along.
Nathan
7 days of hunting. That's a first for me, not sure I've ever hunted 7 days straight for anything before.
37 miles on the boots. There were the 2 big days with 11 miles and 12 miles that adds up pretty quickly, the rest were just short hikes here and there, but generally with a lot of elevation gain and most of those miles at 9,000'+ elevation.
105 miles on the ranger over those 7 days. Probably about 1/2 of that just driving the crappy road back and forth between our camp and goat creek. I think when it was all said and done we made 8 or 9 round trips in and out of there.
200+ miles on pickups driving from one location to another after we were setup at base camp. The unit really isn't that big, but driving from one spot to another often involved a long way around. I would look at my GPS and it would say that we were 13 miles from one of my waypoints that might have taken us 50 miles of driving to get from there.
My wife has added up the cost of this trip a few times with the expensive nonresident tag, the fuel to get there and back pulling a trailer with the ranger and ATVs, and the eventual cost of the lifesize taxidermy mount and when it is all said and done it seems like a pretty big number even to me, but this truly is a once in a lifetime tag and when it was all said and done was a great experience and was worth every penny.
We ate mountain goat spaghetti last night and it was pretty good actually. Not sure if it was worth the near $100 per pound price that it ended up being if you add in all the costs, but it was way better than I was expecting. The friend that processed it for me while I was elk hunting said that she would have expected it to take 20 - 30 minutes to grind that much meat, but it ended up taking her 5 hours instead. Pretty much had to force every ounce through the grinder. But hey, that saves us having to try to chew it and the flavor is actually good. It's super expensive hamburger, but at least it is edible.
I'm sure I'll think of little things to add here and there. Hope to get the videos figured out, have one of the billy pawing dirt on him and one of a couple kids playing that I thought was good. All my GoPro footage ended up being fairly worthless, and we didn't get near as much video of me actually hunting with the other camera as I was expecting but I think we did okay on the pictures.
Thanks again for the comments and following along.
Nathan
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