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Breakneck Billy: A Goat Hunt On Crack

trb

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On a particularly mediocre Thursday afternoon walking back to my classroom after the bell, I opened my phone to see a new voicemail from an unknown CO number.

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As a public school teacher, my hunting season schedule has always been a confounding source of frustration. I have to pick and choose how I dedicate my limited time off, and often rush the hunts that I do prioritize. Contrasted with that, is my surplus of scouting time available. Thus my quandary when I texted some friends to gut check whether I should accept this potentially once-per-20-years hunt with 5 hunting days left in the season. @winmag summarized it best when he texted me, “ will it provide the experience you want?” My gut reaction, was hard no. Having never held a “big 3” tag before myself, I always envisioned spending my summer off scouting, then acting on my scouting decisively in the 3-5 day window I’d be able to take off during the season itself. On the other hand, it was impossibly difficult to resist the urge to go for it and appreciate the opportunity presented to me with whatever time I had.

As luck would have it, my wife would be traveling for work, so I could have my toddler spend some quality grandparent time for three days while I got after it in the little time I had. Also, it was a weekday-only hunt. Hugely tipping the scales towards accepting CPW’s offer, was the offered assistance of a good friend from my USFWS days, as well as the invaluable presence of @Bluffgruff for all 3 days, and @winmag on Sunday. Here would be the draft schedule: scout starting around noon Saturday with the help of bluffgruff and my buddy K; scout all day Sunday with the help of all 3, and aim to kill by Monday with a hard cutoff of 10 am in order to be back in time for an RMBS/BHA event I organized to spread the word opposing prop 127. Not exactly the “experience” I had dreamed of over my years of applying, but gotta take what you can get!

Another con to accepting is that I had purposefully avoided jumping down the rabbit hole on any of the big 3, so my confidence was not exactly brimming with knowledge of determining gender, age, or even behavior this time of year. However, having two experienced hunters like winmag and bluffgruff, really boosted my confidence of being able to do this tag at least some abbreviated justice. Also, I was coming off the back of a goat hunt! Just a few weeks prior, one of my closest friends got this very same call for a different unit. I dropped my leave days I had taken for my muzzleloader elk hunt, and immediately went to help.

It is not really my story to tell, but I can share that we had 4 guys, we glassed about 6 different basins, and saw 1 goat, a 2.5 year old billy that my friend was thrilled to take with limited time on the tag. After that experience, not only was I potentially addicted to goat hunting, but at least I had some minor experience to hang my hat on.

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All that is a long way of saying, I accepted the tag.
 
Some explanation for the rest of the story. I don't feel like there are many secrets in goat hunting this unit given its recreational popularity and the difficulty of drawing the tag, so I will be posting likely recognizable landscapes. This is all publicly available through CPW, so I don't think I am really blowing up anyone's spot.

Also, this will probably take me about 24 hours to finish up, so save your complaints about my thread posting speed, and go enjoy your life. No promises of 230" deer to let you all down with here.
 
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Some explanation for the rest of the story. I don't feel like there are many secrets in goat hunting this unit given its recreational popularity and the difficulty of drawing the tag, so I will be posting likely recognizable landscapes. This is all publicly available to CPW, so I don't think I am really blowing up anyone's spot.

Also, this will probably take me about 24 hours to finish up, so save your complaints about my thread posting speed, and go enjoy your life. No promises of 230" deer to let you all down with here.
I've been waiting for a high country muzzy deer thread... Did I miss it? Or are you too busy with your elitist goat hunting to partake of the commoners hunts? LOL
 
Day 1: Saturday
Through some collaborative e-scouting we prioritized about 5 or 6 different drainages that were worth looking at, with multiple being able to be checked on the same hikes or from the same glassing knobs.

K and I arrived to the trailhead at the same time, and it was determined that I would do a large loop hike while checking into the heads of about 4 or 5 basins. K would climb a 12,300 ft peak that would give him a great vantage of some slopes to the N. Bluffgruff volunteered for a long hike on a Ridgeline that would give him a series of different glassing perspectives across multiple 13ers, 2 14ers, and into some really great looking basins.

The strategy was to locate as many goats as possible as fast as possible, and start to narrow the candidates from there. Winmag's goal for me was clear. A mature, ideally 6+ year old billy, looking like a white gorilla or polar bear. It should have a sway back and pot belly, and a Roman nose. This was just the beginning of my crash course in billy identification.

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Packing light but with a 60x spotter and gear for staying at altitude til last light, I began to hike up a drainage towards a popular 14er. My plan was to cut off trail through willows then up to a ridgeline at 12,800 ft to start peeking into basins. I hadn’t even made it off trail before I spotted a group of goats working up a grassy chute through some cliffs. A promising start. As suspected, it was obviously a group of nannies and kids.
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Another few hundred feet and I put my binos up to glass a steep shute towards the top of a 13er that looked like something was skylined in. Sure enough, another goat! This one looked alone, and larger bodied, but was too far to make any judgements. He was near the final destination for the evening, so I marked his location, took a pic or 7, and began to cut off trail and up to the ridgeline that would lead me to my next glassing location.

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IMG_6086.jpegDay 1 continued…
Climbing up to the ridgeline to begin jumping the heads of basins, I spotted a group of sheep bedded in the grassy slopes at 12,500 ft. You know it is going to be a good hunt when you are passing sheep on your way still up!

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At the head of the first basin, nothing spotted. It is hard to make judgements based on 30 minute glassing sessions midday, but I feel like goat hunting may be an exception to that rule. Although I am sure I could have missed some (they are surprisingly difficult to see bedded in rocks), I did not have the luxury of dedicating prime glassing times ot every basin in the area.

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Onto the next one! Nada.

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And the next one… more sheep!

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And the next one….nothing again!

Finally I began to loop over and around a prominent 13er to where I knew the lone goat had been a few hours before.
 
The end of Day 1

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As I rounded the edge of a ridge towards where the lone goat had been spotted a few hours before, I immediately caught a white shape up and moving about 300 yds away. I crawled up to a rock, set up the spotter and took a closer look. To my disappointment, the distance between her horns was clearly a few finger widths apart, and her hide, still shedding gave her away as a nanny (thanks to winmag for the latter tip). Slightly disappointed, I made my way down to the edge of the cliff below us to glass the basin and leave the nanny to her evening feeding.

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I was rewarded by a phenomenal sunset, and a string of texts from K and bluffgruff, which I will get into in my next post, but no goats in the excellent-looking but well-trafficked basin below me.

Just as last light was approaching, I stood up, gathered my spotter, and took a few steps through the rocks back behind me to see if the nanny was still there. Instead of the nanny, not 100 yards away, was a much larger, beautifully coiffed billy! I still have absolutely no clue where he came in from, or if I had just missed him bedded behind a rock before, but I was now standing sub-100 yards from a great looking billy. I quickly set up the spotter and took some closer to pics to share with our group thread to start to judge him as a candidate for pursuit on Monday.

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With only maybe 10 minutes to do so, I watched him and took the best pictures I could before doing my best to circumvent them on my way out, and down a steep rocky mess of a “trail” back towards my vehicle. I arrived at my truck to meet K and compare notes about 9 pm that night, up to my shins in mud having walked through an unpleasantly mushy bog on the way back.
 
Meanwhile….Day 1 from bluffgruff’s and K’s perspective:

@Bluffgruff please chime in here if I missed anything about your day.

As he made it to the saddle/ridge that he planned on walking to a 13er to glass for the evening, he was informed by other hikers of a lone goat on that very 13er. Great news!

He wrapped around the 13er, and instead picked up 2 goats on a ridgeline to the north right at treeline. He then located 2 more young billies on another ridgeline nearby. K then updated that he found 5+ nannies and kids from his vantage, shortly followed by bluffgruff and K simultaneously reporting two full sized goats and a lone goat in some very steep stuff on a far away ridgeline.

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The amount of goats, particularly billies, they were seeing was extremely promising, and highlights the value of their generosity of joining the hunt and willing to put in the time and miles they did to accomplish our goal.

As light was dwindling, bluffgruff then relocated 2 of the original goats he saw, wallowing and acting like mature billies.
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Now we had 3 priorities for the next day: K and I would relocate my last light billy to get a closer look; Winmag would come in, casually cross a 14er to get a closer look at the 3 probable billies on the steep ridgeline; and bluffgruff, again sacrificing himself to the greater good, volunteered to drive to the other side of the unit, go in from below, and get a better look at the wallowing treeline billies.
 
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Day 2 - Sunday

After sleeping in our vehicles at the TH at 11,600 ft, we got an early start to try and relocate the billy and nanny from below. This is was a screw up on my part in strategy. I climbed part way up the slope of a 14er hoping I could see the bench they were on because I had decided that night I was hoping to meet up with winmag later on that day to see the billies he was targeting. My happenstance locating of the billy the night before motivated me to want to see more, both for educational and comparison purposes.

Anyway, as first light hit, it was immediately clear that their bench was not fully visible, and we immediately packed up and began to climb back up the gully trail. An hour or so later, we relocated the billy and nanny immediately at the top of the gulch. He still looked good, but I couldn’t count his rings to be sure of age.

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I left K with the billies and climbed up to check another basin and get service to see how bluffgruff’s morning was going.
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No goats were spotted, and also bad news from bluffgruff. His access was newly shut down, he tried an alternative route but abandoned it 3 miles in, realizing that the blockage made the hike to the treeline goats logistically nearly impossible to get to with the time I had available the next morning to get it done.

I returned to the goats below me to get some more pics and enjoy watching them do their thing.
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Day 2 continued:

Winmag, now having crossed over a 14er and dropped down a ridge to get closer to the ridgeline billies, reported he had found the first, but didn’t strike him as mature.
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Shortly after, he located another “polar bear sumbitch”, that was definitely mature, visible even from a great distance. He then led him to another bedded billy and filmed probably the coolest goat encounter I’ve ever seen.

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I will let him post the video if chooses to, but most importantly the takeaway was that he felt very confident he was looking at a mature goat, and my confidence in his judgement was the motivation I needed to stop watching my own goat and go in his direction.

Only hiccup was the fastest way to do that was a bit of a trek through a semi-notable scramble route. I spent the next 3 hours crossing this ridge (full of beds and goat sign), climbing the 14er behind it, and setting up above winmag to get my eyes on the billies below.

The traverse:
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