It can go badly. An undetected hollow, perhaps disguised by loose powder snow, or a bump that catches a ski tip. Now what?
It can go REALLY bad. When landing, a gust of wind can cause a ground loop by going under a wing and swiveling the airplane so that the opposite wing tip touches, and over she goes. (Or, maybe this pilot was slow tying down his aircraft?)
14 - The Mountain Goat
My Favorite
Because I prefer to hunt goats before all other Alaskan animals, I am especially concerned that readers gain a genuine feel for the unique conditions of mountain goat hunting. In many Alaskan publications, the mountain goat is not even listed as a prominent game animal. Some list the Alaskan Big Four, and do not include the goat. On the other hand, if you decide to hunt goats with a guide, you discover that the cost is as great as hunting a Dall sheep. Properly hunted, goats come hard!
Only one thing derogatory can be said about the Rocky Mountain goat. IT WOULD BE NICE IF HE HAD LARGER HORNS. Otherwise, the goat provides the finest hunting there is. His climate is delicious, his scenery breathtaking, the climbing and stalking unsurpassed, the shooting long and challenging.
Goats live above the Dall sheep. They look down on all other furred game. Their lands are a fortress primeval. From their battlements they can sneer at the great bear, the skulking wolf, and most of the time, at the panting, laboring hunter.
The mountain goat is one of only two game animals in the western hemisphere that remain white year-round. The other is the Dall sheep.
(The Polar bear which also remains white is considered an ice-living animal that comes ashore only irregularly.)
A mountain goat often appears to be disdainful and almost disinterested in the approach of a toiling hunter. While seated comfortably on some rocky prominence, he is prone to gaze down his long nose with only casual interest in a hunter's upward struggles. Just as the stalker decides to risk a long and imaginative shot, the goat rises, surveys distant vistas, and with a step or two disappears from view.
Most goat hunters have experienced such mountain goat arrogance. The goat is accustomed to being master of all he surveys, and until the shot, you are not likely to worry him unduly.
While we have pretty well worked out the number of game animals in other species of the northwest, I have heard and read little concerning authoritative estimates of the number of goats. The lack of mountain goat data seems strange in these times of cataloging and labeling everything else. While dedicated naturalists tag and spot-paint "dangerous" grizzly bear, and while worthy organizations produce a million miles of "Life among the moose, jackals, eagles—you name it," we don't see much on mountain goats.
The Dall sheep with his magnificent curl of horn has lured trophy hunters to about every sheep-occupied mountain meadow in southeastern Alaska and the Brooks Range to the north.
Fascination with sheep hunting has probably been to the goats' advantage. In most of their remote areas the goats have been allowed to flourish without heavy hunting pressure.
Goat hunting can take you all the way to the top of the mountain, but is there a goat on your mountain? You glass to find out.
As mentioned before, the problem with goats is that their horns are too small. Few trophy room viewers get excited about seeing a mountain goat mount. So, the-run-of-the-mine trophy hunter—who may be more concerned with trophy exhibition than challenges of the hunt—tends not to go after the high ranging goats.
Goat hunting is more physically difficult than sheep hunting and provides more challenging shooting. This appeals to me, but it is peculiar how hunter/writers differ even in basic mountain goat appreciation. A few have found goats easy and knocked them off with little effort. That can occasionally happen with any game animal, but most writers claim to have worked hard for their goat trophies.
The most respected Dean of shooting editors, Jack O'Connor, found nothing good to say about eating mountain goat meat. He thought it tough, stringy, tasteless, and virtually inedible.
Russell Annabel, author of Hunting and Fishing in Alaska, agrees with this writer that the flesh of the goat is among the best tasting of any in the arctic, and that is going some. So, we disagree on more than a little.
I believe that goat hunting in Alaska might best be introduced by including the stories of three hunts that I enjoyed. Thereafter, we can discuss mountain goat hunting in a more technical manner.
Goat Country
This handsome goat, moose, and bear country is in the Chugach Mountains—as the crow flies, not fifty miles out of Valdez. Yet, almost no one goes there. If the photographer had turned around after taking this picture he would have gazed across a mile-wide rocky bowl where we have taken brown bears and many goats.
In the valley below, our hunting parties have taken black bear and moose, as well as an occasional brownie.
The Richardson Highway, the road to civilization, lies at least seven hours of hard hiking down this valley with some difficult fording of the stream seen in the photo.
There is a glacier out of the picture right behind me. This is a nice hunting ground that we never tired of—and we never met another human or saw anyone's sign.
15 - Goats are Tough
Going and Coming
Talon-like, my aching fingers clutched at the ragged stone. My boots dug for purchase on a narrow ledge. I pressed my body tightly to the cliff face. Still, I knew I was not going to make it. Thirty feet below my straining body roared a deep glacial stream. I was in trouble.
The seventy-pound pack bulging with hunting gear and crudely boned-out mountain goat tugged me away from the rock face, and my .300 Weatherby rifle had flopped from my shoulder and dangled clumsily near my elbow. I had to act quickly, or I would topple backward into the stream. I had to shuck the load and hope that, without the pack, I could work my way back off the ledge.
Awkwardly, I freed my left shoulder from the pack harness. Immediately, the weight of the load and rifle on my right arm became unbearable. I gripped the rifle sling in my teeth, pulled my arm free of the sling, and gave the pack a clumsy heavy into space. The sudden release was almost my undoing, and I fought frantically for balance as my right hand clawed for a new grip on the crumbly rock.
Carefully, dripping sweat and shaky with tension fatigue, I eased my way back out of the gorge and onto safer ground. I had relearned that the shortest route to camp is not always the best.
Three weary hours later, I recovered the soggy but little injured pack from where it had grounded on a gravel bar a mile below the gorge.
That is mountain goat hunting as I know it—a rough, rugged, and occasionally dangerous adventure.
This is a goat meadow. Somehow the animals find sustenance from these barren slopes. There is safety up here, and goats like it. A goat can speed across any of the mountain you see in this picture. They might choose to go up the slanting meadow, but if desired, they will stride across the rocks as if the route were a highway. No other animal can follow them.
Unlike most goat hunting experiences that we read about, I have found that "coming home" with the trophy should sometimes be the story told. Anyone who has climbed a cliff has discovered that going up is easier than coming back down, and in hunting the wily mountain goat the adventure does not always end with the killing shot. Mountain terrain, weariness, and heavy loads can produce difficulties and dangers quite as confounding as the hunt itself.
The mountain goat is big, fast, and tough. He is proud, rugged, and to my thinking altogether handsome. His area is remote and all stood on end. The old hunters' adage, "You can walk where a sheep walks, but never try to follow a goat,'' effectively describes the ruggedness of hunting old Billy.
Personally, I would pass up two sheep hunts for one go at goats. I like their clean lonesome country. I like their arrogant down-the-nose appraisal of the toiling hunter, and although it sometimes makes me want to cry in frustration, I glory in their ability to trot fearlessly across an apparently impassable cliff face. Of the more
than two hundred head of big game that I have taken, my fondest memories concern goat hunting.
While all goat hunts do not include cliff-hanging experiences, the goat hunter exposes himself to an almost incredible variety of hazards.
Of course, there are the expected (and accepted) rigors of thin air and steep slopes, but when one is after the really grand trophy, there may also be glaciers to cross, treacherous rockslides to negotiate, and icy streams to ford.
I have, while returning to camp from goat hunts, taken bad falls, been temporarily lost, trapped by fog so dense that I could not always see my own feet, and once while wrapped in our sleeping bags, my hunting partner and I were nuzzled by a yearling brown bear who, with its mother, was passing by.
Perhaps typical of the rigors of bringing home a goat trophy was a hunt for goats near Valdez.
Our day's hunt had been arduous and unsuccessful. On the way back to camp we decided to delay the final one-mile plunge down the mountain and take a last look across the summit of the ridges surrounding our base camp.
Although evening dusk was beginning to thicken in the valley, We muscled our way up the lichen covered ledges and across the rocky slides until, gasping and wheezing, we topped out a few hundred feet above a small snow field.
Without the mountains to block it, the breeze was sharp and cutting. We sought shelter from the wind below a crest where the sunlight was still warm and where our legs and lungs could resume normal functioning. We half-dozed, as hunters often do, just soaking up the comfort of warmth and enjoying good companionship.
Suddenly we heard rocks falling, and after a moment, we again caught the rattle of dislodged stones. We were quickly on our feet and moving, rifles at ready. Our single packboard was left neglected in the sunny hollow, and in my haste I unwittingly stepped on an already battered sandwich just removed from a jacket pocket.
Jerry in the lead, we darted along a spiny ridge to where we could see more country. A shallow, bowl-like depression came into view. Climbing the opposite slope, slowly working his way across the rubble, was what appeared to me to be the granddaddy of all mountain goats.
Recognition was mutual. Grandpa took one, apparently all-encompassing look, shifted into high gear, and really began laying tracks up the rock pile.
Beside me, Jerry's .270 began to boom. I was dimly aware that he was standing up, and I thought, "He'll never hit him shooting offhand."
I do not remember estimating range, judging wind, or making any other significant calculations. I jacked a round into the chamber, sat down, and caught the goat in my crosshairs. I saw rock shatter where one of Jerry's quick shots splattered itself. I held on the back of the goat's neck and touched off the .300 Weatherby.
My position was not exactly Camp Perry, and by the time I got out of recoil and back on the target the action was over. Old Billy Goat Gruff was tumbling limply and slowly, end-past-end back into the grassy bowl.
I kept the Weaver 4X glued to the seemingly immense expanse of white fur until the goat came to rest limp and sprawling, near the bottom of the meadow. I became aware of Jerry thumping me on the back and calling it a great shot. Not until then did I realize that the range approached three hundred yards. My heart began to thud mightily as the old adrenalin belatedly went to work. I felt so shaky that I wondered if I could get over to where the trophy lay without a decent rest.
It is often said that the fun is over once the shot is fired. However, a one-mile downhill clamber did not appear overly difficult, and as I skinned out the goat I gave little thought to the trip back to camp.
Possessing only one packboard between us, we quickly reduced the goat into a very heavy single pack that Jerry willingly shouldered. As the victorious hunter, without a pack, I was elected to drape the head and goat hide around my neck for the journey down.
Only the mountaintops still held dim light, and our return trip suddenly presented more than an awkwardly loaded downhill hike. There were now the added problems of avoiding stepping off a cliff edge, misjudging the stability of a rockslide, or even ending up in the wrong hollow.
In the deepening dusk we were casually negotiating a steeply slanting patch of grass when Jerry's feet shot out from under him. Feet first, he skidded down the slope, his heels and hands scratching for holds but still sliding. Only a few feet from an ominous looking black edge he came to a jolting stop. Burdened by his huge pack, Jerry sat unmoving, gathering himself before calmly asking for a hand up. I complied without much thought, chuckling to myself over the way he had looked skidding and bouncing along.
When we were past the meadow and on solid rock, Jerry dropped the big pack with a sigh of relief. He unslung his .270 and examined the scope. It was battered and the rear lens was packed with dirt The only way he had kept from going over the cliff edge had been by digging the ocular end of his scope into the ground to act as a brake. (Try that with an iron receiver sight!) As a lover of fine arms, my senses cringed, but the idea of being weighed down by a heavy pack on the lip of a precipice, and held there by only a few 6 x 48 screws far overshadowed the possibility of scope damage.
The way down the mountain seemed endless. We repeatedly backtracked when a route proved too difficult We discussed just sweating it out on the mountain all night. Each time camp seemed so close that we went on.
As true dark settled in we practically felt our way downward. We smashed and clawed through thickets of brush and torturously worried ourselves across rockslides and icy freshets.
The raw goat hide about my neck proved to be the world's most efficient insulation, and I itched and sweated buckets of brine into old Bill's thick fur. I began to feel like the Ancient Mariner—in my case condemned to forever wear the defunct goat as a necklace. I fervently vowed never again to set foot outside camp without every man carrying a packboard.
After another eternity of stumbling blindly down talus slopes we reached the creek edge with the friendly campfire crackling on the other side.
Our companions had long before become aware of our painful approach, warned no doubt by the clatter of tons of loosened rubble and the accompanying groans and un-muffled curses.
So, that goat came home. When I sit in my trophy room and gaze at his mounted head I seldom dwell on the shot itself. But, I can again feel the cutting wind on the mountain, the strain of packing down the slopes, and I picture Jerry bouncing toward the cliff edge. My heart raises the beat a little, and I live again that good hunt with a grand trophy, shared by a close and valued friend.
Goat camp! The author reads. A pulp novel is always along. It is nice to get into sneakers (Does anyone use that term anymore?) after long hours on the mountain.
The rifle? Usually close by. There are brownies around.
So, I didn't shave (that week). I occasionally bathed in the glacial stream that ran just beyond my feet, but those dips were quickies—more sloshes off than real bathing. No one else in any of my hunting parties got into the stream, voluntarily. Man, it was cold. Shaving was hard and almost murderous in cold water. Heating shaving water over a twig fire or a camp stove rarely seemed worth the effort in the high country. So, I was grubby, but so was everyone else.
Hey, living primitive has been one of the great attractions of big game hunting, and I suspect it always will be.
16 - Learning About Goats
Take a look at a goat mount and you see a spike-horned little old head that might make a man wonder why any hunter would hunger enough for such a trophy to flounder his way across the moose pastures, claw past the sheep meadows, and struggle up into the tortured crags of Alaskan mountain goat country.
I had a friend like that. He kept telling me that goats just did not interest him. His gaze fell unappreciatively on my favorite Billy mounts, and my tales of pursuit among the high pastures brought more yawns than gasps.
So, we went into the high country for goats. He went because he is a good hunting partner. I went, as I always do, with churning anticipation.
We gasped our wa
y into likely country and rested in an alpine meadow, letting a gentle breeze dry the sweat that dampened us. My friend condescended that it was mighty fine country, which it was, with lesser peaks falling away before us and higher elevations raising forbiddingly shadowed monoliths above and around. Still, I knew he wished a curl-plus Dall ram was our quarry.
A little later we began to see goats. Unlike rams that keep their heavy-horned heads out in the open, goats curl into tight balls, resting with their heads tucked in. My buddy did a little cussing because he could not easily judge the half-hidden horns.
A nice Billy scampered an improbable passage along a cliff face that would have given any sheep a severe case of vertigo, and my friend could not shoot because the trophy would have dropped hundreds of feet to impractical recovery and almost certain destruction.
We watched big, long-horned fellows ogle us with interested arrogance from well out of sensible shooting range, and the unexpected appearance and hasty flight of a pair of average nannies almost underfoot nearly precipitated a similar panic in my startled companion.
When his shot finally came it was a long one, more than two hundred yards and across a small canyon. A strong wind blew, and the goat had to be anchored in his tracks lest he step off into space, as they often do when hard hit
My buddy crawled into a nest of rocks that matched a benchrest for steadiness. Using both our hats to cushion his rifle, he cranked his Bausch and Lomb variable up to 8X and proceeded to plant a .338 Winchester Magnum, 250 grain bullet solidly into old Bill's spine and shoulder area. The goat simply slumped.
Per our shooting system, he had another bullet on its way without waiting to examine response to the first shot. The second bullet bit just as solidly, and watching through our spotting scope, I called the shooting off while my buddy was rattling his bolt on a third round.
The Hunter's Alaska Page 10
