Hairy Beasts and Smell Korns

[Stone_Ice_1]

The weekend after the 4th I went in to grab 2 of my other cameras because I wanted to move them to another location. I wasn't expecting much at this location but was pleasantly surprised. This camera was about 100 yards off a road and I just wasn't expecting much.View attachment Bear.JPG
Not a big bear but a pretty one.

View attachment Freaky 1.JPG

This guy was unique. As I said before I usually have 2 cameras fairly close to each other. It is amazing how often you get the same bull within minutes of each other on the cameras, even if they are several hundred yards to a quarter mile apart. This guy was no exception.

View attachment Freaky 2.JPG

View attachment Bull 2.JPG

Another typical bull for what I was seeing early in the season. Longer brow tines and 3rds and fairly narrow. This one did have more on the back end than most of them though. When I went in to check this camera, the area reeked of elk. I kept expecting to see them. I didn't but they couldn't have been far off. A bachelor herd had come through the previous day and a few of them were good sized.

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[BrowningCitori]

This post is off to a great start, well time for off-season reading. Keep the posts coming

 

[Caseknife]

Antler growth should have been real good given the lush vegetation, some real healthy looking bulls. It would be neat to just have the ability to join someone on this hunt and go along for the eye candy.

 

[Stone_Ice_1]

After picking up the cameras in the last post I took the four wheeler in on a rough road to a new area I had never been. I had started up this road many years before in my truck and decided it was not worth it. So with the 4 wheeler I went in after work in the evening. My plan was to ride in a ways and I had some spots I wanted to hike to that I had found on google earth. I was hoping I would have enough time to get in and out before it was too late. Even though it was now July, the high elevation in this area and it was obvious that most of the elk were not in the area. I ran into a group of 12 young adults that were clearing out some areas for the Montana Conservation Corp. They told me it was day 9 of their 10 day stay in the area and they had not seen another person or an elk in all that time. I found that hard to believe as there was some sign around but mostly the elk weren't there yet. But they were running 10 chain saws all day every day so I imagine the game stayed away. They were certainly chatty and happy to see somebody new to talk to.


These pictures are all taken from a old mine/cabin location. If you have been up the road you may know what I am referring to.



I put the two cameras within view of this last picture. One is in the creek bottom near the openings you see on the far left of the picture. The other is over the top of the ridge where that opening is. There are a couple of opening just on the other side and it was an elky looking place that had a spring seeping up in it. No lack of water up here right now but as I said it was early and the snow had just melted off with patches of it still around.

I did run into 2 other guys up here. They were staying in the cabin. It was already getting dark when I talked to them and they were surprised I still had to drive all the way back down. Told me they hadn't seen any elk either. On my ride out I saw 2 cows in some openings before I headed back down but was a little disappointed I didn't see more. It is a beautiful area and always fun to explore someplace new, especially when it is so close to home.

 

[BuckRut]

Those parks in that very farthest shaded bowl are where the elk hang out.

 

[Stone_Ice_1]

Switching gears a bit, with the end of July means the high country is opening up and I can start thinking about scouting for goats. My girlfriend was lucky enough to draw a Glacier National park backcountry permit during the early draw. I had a hike there that I had wanted to do for years but was not able to snag a backcountry site. With this permit we looked at lots of options and settled on just a 2 day, 1 night trip over Gunsight Pass, which is the area I hadn't been able to get a pass for. My first try at snagging a site for this trip was almost 20 years ago. So we scheduled that trip for July 29 and 30th.

On the 28th we drove to Glacier and camped at Apgar Campground, which isn't far from where we would end our backpacking trip. We would leave the car at Lake McDonald Lodge in the morning and get on the first bus to take us over Logan Pass to the starting point which is the Jackson Glacier Overlook. We did take a side trip on this hike and actually hiked all the way to Jackson Glacier, if you ever do this hike I highly recommend that as it was the highlight of this trip.

So on the 28th, coming from Helena, we had to go over Logan Pass. We stopped there for a few hours and hiked to Hidden Lake. Even though I have lived in Montana and visited Glacier many times, I had never done this hike as it is always swamped with people.

The reason I bring up this trip is because my biggest concern with the goat hunt was identifying a mature billy. I had looked at pictures and read "A Beast the Color of Winter" but nothing helps as much as first hand experience. Glacier is the perfect place to do this. Why? Because you can get close enough to the damn things to reach out and do a junk test with your hands while they walk by. This of course is not recommended and I'm sure there would be more than just a few looks as tourist watch you do this.



Any guesses on which one of these are nannies or billies?



This was turning out to be a great scouting trip for me, even though it's not even close to where I can hunt.

If you ever draw a mountain goat tag and are concerned about identifying the age/sex of goats I highly recommend a trip to Glacier.

 

[Stone_Ice_1]

More goat porn from near Logan Pass





Guesses on sex?

 

[Stone_Ice_1]

One more, this one is pretty obvious.

 

[Caseknife]

More goat porn from near Logan Pass

View attachment 357971

View attachment 357972

Guesses on sex?

Think those three are billies

 

[Caseknife]

One moreView attachment 357974, this one is pretty obvious.

Two juvenile billies

 

[Caseknife]

Switching gears a bit, with the end of July means the high country is opening up and I can start thinking about scouting for goats. My girlfriend was lucky enough to draw a Glacier National park backcountry permit during the early draw. I had a hike there that I had wanted to do for years but was not able to snag a backcountry site. With this permit we looked at lots of options and settled on just a 2 day, 1 night trip over Gunsight Pass, which is the area I hadn't been able to get a pass for. My first try at snagging a site for this trip was almost 20 years ago. So we scheduled that trip for July 29 and 30th.

On the 28th we drove to Glacier and camped at Apgar Campground, which isn't far from where we would end our backpacking trip. We would leave the car at Lake McDonald Lodge in the morning and get on the first bus to take us over Logan Pass to the starting point which is the Jackson Glacier Overlook. We did take a side trip on this hike and actually hiked all the way to Jackson Glacier, if you ever do this hike I highly recommend that as it was the highlight of this trip.

So on the 28th, coming from Helena, we had to go over Logan Pass. We stopped there for a few hours and hiked to Hidden Lake. Even though I have lived in Montana and visited Glacier many times, I had never done this hike as it is always swamped with people.

The reason I bring up this trip is because my biggest concern with the goat hunt was identifying a mature billy. I had looked at pictures and read "A Beast the Color of Winter" but nothing helps as much as first hand experience. Glacier is the perfect place to do this. Why? Because you can get close enough to the damn things to reach out and do a junk test with your hands while they walk by. This of course is not recommended and I'm sure there would be more than just a few looks as tourist watch you do this.

View attachment 357967

Any guesses on which one of these are nannies or billies?

View attachment 357968

This was turning out to be a great scouting trip for me, even though it's not even close to where I can hunt.
View attachment 357970
If you ever draw a mountain goat tag and are concerned about identifying the age/sex of goats I highly recommend a trip to Glacier.

Top 4 likely nannies, middle is a billie and think the bottom two are nannies. Mostly gaging on horn structure.

 

[Stone_Ice_1]

Almost all of the goats pictured are billies. In the first photo with 4 the one on the far left is a nanny, it is the same one in the close up on the 2nd picture. Otherwise they are all billies. The only one I don't know about is the smaller one at the top in the very last photo. Otherwise a frank and beans test was administered on each one.

The next day we hiked into our campsite, no goats spotted that day. This is the day we hiked all the way to Jackson Glacier, highly recommend it if you get a chance.

The following day was the hike over Gunsight Pass, the views and rock formations are amazing here. Once at the top of the pass there is an old cabin there and there were several goats stationed in that area.



Unlike the previous goats near Logan Pass, these were mostly all nannies. There was only one kid with them though.



Stunning views down the Gunsight Lake side of the pass. These goats are obviously used to people coming through here.





I would guess at the sex of each goat as we saw them. Only one had me fooled in this group. There was a very old nanny with this group that had a big old horseface. She had me concerned because when I saw her I thought for sure it was a mature billy. She was very old and you could tell she was losing muscle in her back legs from her age. You could even tell with the way the goats were acting around her that she was farther down in the hierarchy but I guessed she was probably the matriarch of this group for quite some time.

 

[Stone_Ice_1]

For a while I was a little concerned my girlfriend was going to put the kid in her pack and take it home with us. As we continued down the other side of Gunsight to Lake Ellen Wilson we saw more goats, including a couple of younger billies that were together. I don't have pictures of those 2 but they certainly illustrated the difficulty of trying to tell the difference between a young billy and a nanny.


Then just before we got to Sperry Chalet I spotted another goat coming down the trail. It was immediately apparent that he was bigger and he eventually walked by me at just a few paces. He is pictured below and he is a mature billy.



Mostly what I learned from my hiking trip in Glacier is that a truly mature billy is pretty recognizable after some practice of looking at the goats. After practice you can pretty much instantly tell on them. It gets tougher when they are younger though. This just solidified my plan that I wanted a mature billy partly because if you find a truly mature one then you know you have a billy.

 

[BuckRut]

 

[Fidel]

Did you ever go hunting?

 

[Irrelevant]

Mostly what I learned from my hiking trip in Glacier is that a truly mature billy is pretty recognizable after some practice of looking at the goats. After practice you can pretty much instantly tell on them.

I found this to be true too, I have seen two giant Nannies that at first glance I would have said were mature billies

 

[Flatbrimmer]

Dude I’ve been reading this thread for like 2 weeks

I need more excitement my man
LESSSGGOOOO