Day 9: A Kootenay Range Mountain Goat Hunt

I began dreaming about hunting mountain goats about 10 years ago. Although I’d grown up watching outdoor TV and seeing the big-name hunters of the day hunting all the mountain species, I believed I’d never have the opportunity to chase those species myself.

Being a guy from the southeastern United States, the idea of western big game fascinated me. In 2017, I walked into a taxidermy shop and saw a full-body mount of a mountain goat. It was one of the coolest mounts I’d ever seen. The fire to chase goats burned a little hotter. In 2018, I began western hunting in earnest and never looked back. Then in May of 2019 while spring bear hunting in Idaho, I saw my first mountain goats high up on a cliff face. My mind was made up – I had to figure out a way to go goat hunting.

Unsurprisingly, my mountain goat tag applications across the west were repeatedly denied, so I decided I would start saving for a guided hunt. I researched for this hunt just like I do for all my DIY hunts: compiled all the information I could and then made the most logical decision based on my data. Price, opportunity rate, hunt duration, and population density were some of the more prominent factors I looked at. After all was said and done, I decided to book with Beaverfoot Outfitters out of Golden, British Columbia. This hunt checked all the boxes I was looking for, one of most important being a 10-day duration.

I booked the hunt almost two years in advance which gave me plenty of time to plan, train and dream about the adventure to come. I work out daily and stay in good shape but I upped the ante for this hunt, vowing that physical fitness wouldn’t be a determining factor to being unable to punch my tag.

The time flew by as it always seems to. It wasn’t long before September 1^st came around and I was boarding my plane in Atlanta for a direct flight up to Calgary – the adventure was beginning! I landed around 9:00 p.m., and, after a lengthy wait, my bag and firearm arrived unharmed. I breezed through customs and met up with Troy, the owner and operator of Beaverfoot Outfitters. I climbed into his truck and settled in for the 3-hour drive. We arrived at his house around 1:30 a.m., and I immediately headed to bed in hopes of getting a little sleep before the hunt began the next morning.

Morning came quickly and with it, the sound of eggs popping in a fry pan. I swiftly dressed and ventured out to find my guide, Chad, waiting for me with breakfast on the table. Chad and I immediately hit it off being of similar age and both just loving to hunt. After a breakfast of bacon, eggs and toast we headed out to the area we were planning on glassing and exploring on our first day. We arrived a little after daylight and soon after, Chad spotted a billy, but he was on a rock face that no sane human would attempt to conquer. After an hour or so, we took the truck around to a different area and loaded up our packs to hike a few miles and get a look at a huge basin that had produced a lot of goats in the past. We stayed in the area all day. Although we glassed up six goats, none were billies that we deemed to be first-day shooters. We decided to hike back to the truck a few hours before dark to re-glass the first area with hopes that a billy from that morning had moved down. When we arrived, the billy had indeed moved down; we watched him until he disappeared over a ridge towards a high bowl 2,000 feet above our current location.

After seeing that billy to end Day 1, we were excited to head out the following morning. We arrived at our glassing location and began to search for goats. We quickly found some – and a large grizzly. I’d seen and hunted my fair share of black bears, but this was my first grizzly sighting, and it was an impressive animal to watch. After he ambled away, we loaded up our packs and began the climb up to the bowl where we’d last seen the billy the evening before. It took a few hours to make the climb, but eventually we arrived at our desired location for the day.

The bowl had a high lake in it that was glacier fed. The turquoise-colored water looked like something that you’d see on the front of a postcard. We glassed around finding multiple groups of goats and a lone billy. He was a decent goat, but seeing as it was only Day two, I elected to pass. While we sat and ate our lunch, we saw a nanny and kid working our way from about 500 yards away. I guess they just wanted to be social because they walked all the way up to within 70 yards allowing me to take some fantastic photos. We arrived back at the truck a little before dark and headed to camp for a hot meal and a good night’s sleep.

Anyone who has spent any amount of time in the mountains knows the weather is less than predictable, which is one of the main reasons a 10-day hunt was so important to me. The forecast for Day 3 was not ideal, so we elected to hunt lower and glass high if we were able. Another one of the factors that helped me pick Beaverfoot Outfitters was my ability to add on a mule deer tag. My very favorite hunts are high country deer hunts, and I try to do them annually. My hope in this case was to kill a goat in the first five days and then go and look for a nice buck up high. However, the poor weather on Day 3 changed those plans and we decided to try to find a buck lower where the clouds would allow us to look around. We saw a couple of does, but no bucks were found. This day became a rest day, and we made some big plans for days 4 to 6.

On Day 4 we loaded up our packs with three days’ worth of food and gear and headed out into the fog right after breakfast. We drove in as far as possible by truck, then climbed on an ATV to ride another 20 minutes to the base of an avalanche chute. From there we began to climb by foot. It was really steep. We took our time and after gaining about 1,500 feet of elevation, we broke through the clouds to a beautiful blue sky and surrounding view of the Kootenay Range. We continued to climb and after another 700 feet, we found ourselves setting up the teepee, preparing to spend the next few days looking for goats. This was an area that wasn’t often hunted because of the difficulty getting into it, but it was gorgeous with beautiful, high alpine grass hillsides and steep, gnarly rock faces. That night glassing we saw a grizzly, four black bears, a handful of mule deer, and the biggest billy of the trip. Unfortunately, none of the bucks were what I was looking for and the big billy was in a location where retrieval wouldn’t be possible. I went to sleep hopeful that the billy would move to a more huntable location the next day.

Day 5 was another poor weather day to say the least. We sat in the clouds and rain glassing as much as we could when we got the occasional miniscule break in the weather. During one of these small windows, we saw some animals including a group of goats in a very good location with a nice billy. The goats were on the move though, and with the cloud cover moving in again, the goats gave us the slip. That evening the clouds cleared just before dark and I glassed a nice buck very briefly before he went into some timber. Even with the bad weather, we saw animals, so we knew there was plenty of game around. We were optimistic that the following day would produce.

We woke up to a beautiful cold morning on Day 6. The temperature had dipped lower overnight and many of the higher surrounding peaks had fresh snow on them. The best news was that all the fog was down in the valley, 1,500 feet below us. We ate a quick breakfast and headed out to glass for animals. Chad and I set up about 40 yards apart so we could see down into two different bowls from the same peak. As the sun came up, we began to see deer coming out to feed but no goats. Around 9 a.m., I saw Chad pulling out his spotting scope, so I moved over to talk to him.

“What do you see?” I asked.

“A good buck,” he replied.

“A shooter?”

“I think one side has 6 points!”

“What?!?!”

We got the spotting scopes on him and he was indeed a shooter. It very well may have been the buck I’d briefly seen the night before, but I wasn’t sure. I ranged him at a little over 500 yards and we moved down about 60 yards to a large rock that allowed me to set up prone. The buck walked into a group of trees and disappeared. We assumed he must have bedded down. As we sat and waited for him to make his reappearance, small buck after small buck appeared, but not the big guy.

After more than four hours of waiting, we finally saw his antlers appear in the trees. He began to slowly work his way away from us. Then, after walking about 30 yards, he turned broadside. I ranged him at 470 yards and held for 8 inches of wind. The gun recoiled and we saw the bullet hit him right behind the shoulder. The buck moved off toward another group of trees and I was able to hit him again before he disappeared.

It took about 45 minutes to make our way over to him, and he was exactly what we thought he was. A beautiful, dark-antlered 6×5. We began working on him and after breaking him down, we headed back to camp. Our plan had been to spend three days on this ridge, so once we arrived back at camp, we broke it all down and loaded it up. The pack down with all of camp and a large muley split between us was pretty sketchy in the steep parts, but we made it to the ATV right at dark and headed to the truck. With my muley tag punched on a nice buck, it was time to really buckle down and find a goat.

Day 7 did not go as planned. We hiked back into a nice bowl and didn’t see even one animal after a full day of glassing.

On Day 8, we hiked back up to the high lake where we’d seen all the goats at the beginning of the trip. We saw two good billies, both over 800 feet up a sheer cliff face. We watched them for hours in hopes that one of them would work his way down. Although one finally came a little ways, it wasn’t far enough. Even though they didn’t come down close enough for a shot, it was amazing to watch them maneuver around the cliffs. I was very happy I had made a 10-day hunt a priority.

Day 9 rolled around and we were really feeling the pressure. We decided to head back to the same area we’d been the previous day in hopes that one of the billies had moved down into a huntable location. We glassed our first location with no luck and decided to move around and glass the area from our very first day spot. Soon after glassing, we picked up a lone billy moving his way towards a saddle that would take him into a high bowl that Chad had never climbed into before. It was a good location if he would stay in place. We threw on our packs and headed in. After about 45 minutes, we came to the location where we’d glassed on our very first day. We sat down and glassed more, but couldn’t find the billy anywhere. We decided we had to make something happen and began our climb to the last known location of the billy without knowing if he was still up there. After a steep climb, we came over the edge into a big bowl with massive sheer rock walls – and no goats anywhere. It was a great disappointment. We sat down to eat lunch in hopes that given some time, a goat would appear.

After a couple hours we made our way back towards the edge to work our way back down, still hoping we’d find a billy we could put a move on before dark. Chad was walking about 15 feet in front of me as we approached the edge to begin our descent when he suddenly stopped and dropped to the ground. All he’d seen was a little tuft of white fur above the ledge, but the tell was accurate. A goat was bedded on a ledge on top of a large rock outcropping about 600 yards away.

Staying low, we crawled up 130 yards to a large flat rock where I could shoot if we deemed the goat to be a billy. After about 30 minutes, more goats began to appear from around the side of the ledge we couldn’t see. The bedded goat stood as the other goats appeared, and we began to study them. One was a billy we were confident in. And finally, after nine hard days of hunting, our opportunity had finally arrived. I settled in for a 470-yard shot.

Just as the billy cleared the other goats, and I was preparing to shoot, every goat bedded. This seemed like a replay of my buck – almost the same distance and scenario. We had nothing but time with only about four hours until dark. The goats stayed bedded for over an hour, and then suddenly, they were all on their feet looking around. This was the moment I’d been dreaming of for years. I settled the crosshairs and squeezed the trigger. The billy jumped forward about 10 feet and stopped. I worked the bolt as fast as possible and squeezed again. The billy wobbled, fell, and began to slide.

“STOP! STOP!” I yelled and he did, about 5 feet from taking a tumble that would have put him at the bottom of the valley. Chad and I were ecstatic! Finally, it had all come together after over a week of hunting and seeing dozens and dozens of goats. We hiked and found a route up to my goat that required only limited rock climbing. Arriving at his side, we found him to be a beautiful billy with thick, white hair. That was a moment I had dreamed of for many years. His final resting place was the most picturesque location I could have hoped for, with a beautiful Kootenay valley as the backdrop. Not all hunts go as planned, but this one did. It was the perfect ending to a perfect hunt.