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Thread: Krag Dwellers Part 1

  1. #41
    Join Date
    Sep 2011
    Location
    3-20
    Posts
    158

    Re: Krag Dwellers Part 1

    We start climbing and by mid day we are up in our new glassing roost scouring the slopes for goats. Once again we are hunting in September and the weather has recently changed with a cold front on our doorstep. In spite of our efforts with three of us scanning we can not locate a goat. We retreat down off the peak to a relatively flat spot and set up camp. The day wraps up with us having our usual mountain house dinners and off to bed. We rise at the crack of dawn and partake in our usualy morning routines. The one item we pack up every trip regardless of weight is a pop bottle of carolanes for coffee. A few creature comforts go a long way into keeping you comfortable on the mountain which in turn helps keep you on the mountain. We make the 1 hr pilgrimage back up to our viewpoint and notice some fresh tracks and pellets alongside some fresh urine in the snow. Cant say for sure weather a goat has walked by in the night or maybe we had bumped one out of the spot on our way up the previous day. Either way we never did see any goat . We spend that day glassing from this location moving just enough to see into a few other nooks and crannys in some nearby areas. Still no sign of goats. The day is fading and finally a goat appears. Off in the distance just visible through the binos a goat is walking a razor ridge skylining itself. Now through the spotters we can see this creature looks big and burley, but unfortunately there is a few kms between us and this white walker. Realistically he isn't far from where we had started our journey back closer to the quads. Now we are all warm and fuzzy feeling conjuring up a plan.

  2. #42
    Join Date
    Sep 2011
    Location
    3-20
    Posts
    158

    Re: Krag Dwellers Part 1

    Ideas get bounced around about what our plan of attack is going to be. Its approaching evening , Either we go down to the tents and spend the night and leave the mountain in the AM, or Do the usuall midnight run off the mountain in the dark. Well our ambition wins and we elect to have another quality dehydrated meal pack up our tents and scurry down in the dark. I really dislike navigating the mountains by headlamp but when time can be saved this seems to be what happens.
    Now we managed to follow our route down easily enough until we had to navigate a slippery section of a slide with some water running down. Lesson learned from this moment was to always strap the guns into the packs when navigating dicey spots. I ended up slipping and loosing my footing and my gun went for a tumble through the rocks. nothing too bad but enough to make a dent on my scope tube and make me loose confidence in it. Had I had my rifle strapped in I'm sure it would have faired better.
    Anyways we continue down reaching the creek below. Now we are back into grizz sanctuary judging by the semi recent sign we had seen on the way in. Its been a long day but we continue to hike out through the valley drainage and arrive at the quads. I'm not entirely sure about the time at this moment but we are well into the night. We saddle up the steel horses and start our ride back towards the general area of the mountain with the goat. When we arrive at our destination we set up a tarp tent and grab our sleep bags and call it a night. I'm guessing it was close to 2 AM.

  3. #43
    Join Date
    Sep 2011
    Location
    3-20
    Posts
    158

    Re: Krag Dwellers Part 1

    Morning arrives and I wont even lie to ya and say we were out of bed at the crack of dawn, because it was easily 9 am when we surfaced from our slumber. Feeling a lack of confidence in my rifle I went for a stroll to take a few poke shots at some rocks to check my guns zero. 3 shots manage to connect at the rock I aimed at so I feel things are still holding together with my trusty VX3. Ill also include that when I contacted Korth Group afterwards about getting my scope fixed they over exceeded my expectations and fixed me up. Most of the mountain holding this goat is not visible from the valley bottom, but there is one rocky peak that I figured I glass before we start hiking up. I pull out the spotter and low and behold there is a goat tucked in the rock. The morning is running out but we hit the hiking sometime before noon. We chose a path that followed some run off down a chute which turned into a mess of scrub alder and devils club . Soon enough after wasting time and energy fighting the shin tangle we chose to go straight up the mountain where the timber was a better choice . We followed a labyrinth of mule deer game trails up the mountain until we finally got close to the tree line Hard to see the goat but it is in this pic bedded in the rocks . about 25 ft from the 3 standing trees on the rock is the goat bedded facing the left
    Last edited by ditch donkey; 01-11-2019 at 03:07 PM.

  4. #44
    Join Date
    Sep 2011
    Location
    3-20
    Posts
    158

    Re: Krag Dwellers Part 1

    Upon reaching the opening in the tree line we dropped our packs for a well deserved rest. As my partners set up for an afternoon coffee I continued to take a peek at what was visible at the edge of the trees.
    I immediately notice goats scurry past me about 200 yards above me in a shale slide. Easily two nannies both with kids in tow. They make quick work scrambling up to the top of the saddle and out of sight. This was the first we had seen of this nursery group. I'm not sure if I had spooked them directly but I retreated back into the cover of the trees. upon hearing of my new found group of goats the three of us crept back into a spot to take a better look. There are both nannies perched above us with the kids presumably on the other side out of sight. They seem rather calm bedded up there now, either they had not seen us or they felt secure enough up in their beds. Now the big solo goat could be seen across the bowl from our location feeding on the slope. We had him through the spotter and by our accounts he seemed like a stud. The across distance of this bowl faintly registered at 800 yards on our rangefinder. Now we had the issue of these nannies bedded between us and our billy. The weather had been good up until now but we had been aware of a system due to blow in on us and we knew we had precipitation on route. A message was sent to a wife back home via Inreach to have her check the weather report and the news wasn't good. The clouds had begun to blow past us taking visibility away at times, but things were still very reasonable. with some distance to gain to make a play on this goat and the band of nannies in our path the decision was made to drop back into the timber make a fire to wait out the night. We had lost sight of all the goats due to the clouds and we really didn't have enough daylight to get where we needed to be. We gathered as much firewood as possible to ride out the night. We had all made the decision to leave all the camp gear back in the valleybottom. All we had was our clothing systems and a fire. Unfortunatly this is also when the photos from this trip stop.

  5. #45
    Join Date
    Sep 2011
    Location
    3-20
    Posts
    158

    Re: Krag Dwellers Part 1

    Now i won’t go into detail regarding who was big spoon little spoon that night. but we had our usual MH dinners and kicked back to enjoy our cozy fire as darkness fell. Things were ok for a few hours we had been bullshitting for a few hours when flakes of snow started to fall. Now the fire was great but the scrub mountain juniper firewood we had sure had a pungent smoke to it. the wind wasn’t in our favour and the smoke had become a real nuisance. The snow fall picked up to a steady pace and soon we were wearing all layers with our rain suits on. Now over the years i have purchased a great many used items from SR80 and the first light clothing i had from him was certainly worth every penny. Now this was my first night spent around a fire waiting the night away and I really don’t look foreward to doing it in the future but somtimes it can’t be helped. By far the longest 10 hours of my life. By morning we had close to 3 inches of snow and it was still comming down. Throughout the night I had many conversations in my head regarding how fast i planned to get off this mountain with the first rays of daylight. But once the sky brightened we felt slightly mere at ease and were faced with a decision about our next move. Everything was socked in still, and the snow was still falling. There was no visibility to check the locations of our goats and the practical safety of our climb ahead was weighing on us. The decision was made to pack off the mountain and head home.
    Afterwards we watched the weather network to monitor our areas weather and that storm did not let up for 3 days which helped to justify my decision to leave the mountains. At the end of the day one does not want to jeopardize his whole future goat hunting career over one goat opportunity.

  6. #46
    Join Date
    Sep 2011
    Location
    3-20
    Posts
    158

    Re: Krag Dwellers Part 1

    So after a week or so Letting the weather clear up, we were back headed in to where we left off. This was our last ditch effort to pull a rabbit out of our hats. We made good time getting back into where we had departed from but now there was a considerable amount of snow down low in the valley. And unfortunately by the tracks on the road up the fsr we were not the only ones up in here recently. as we get back to the end of the road for the pickup before disembarking with the bikes we once again find a familiar truck parked. The outfitter is up in here again. So we cruise up through the snowy trail which is will soon be more ideal for a sled machine. as we pull in to where we planned to disembark up the mountain, we are soon back in conversation with the outfitter who has a guide and client up our mountain. He is surprised to see us again but congratulates us on our previous success. We had killed one of his plan B goats the previous year. Anyways we decide to pull out and our once choice is to go look for a new billy. As we leave the outfitter asks us if we know a spot that matches a quick description he gives and since we havnt caused him any grief with his clients he says there is a goat at this new location. Not knowing whether this is a goose chase or not we decide to go look since we really don't have an alternative. So upon reaching this new spot only a few km away we quickly locate two goats up on a rock face. Not sure if this is the one he described but its a pair of goats never the less. Upon further investigation we can determine that this is indeed a nanny with a young billy. He is Mature by definition but clearly not sporting much age, maybe 2 year old. his horns don't appear to be even double his ear length. I'd wager maybe in the 7" range. Now we move a bit closer and the goats even start feeding in our direction. We havnt even had to climb up much in elevation thanks to the recent dump of snow. The goats are now within closer to range and the decision is getting closer. Deep down I know this goat is too young but the pressure to be successful is weighing heavy. We banter back and forth about the young billy and the goat feed there way out of sight. Iv reached the decision that this isn't my goat . He isn't big enough to be wall material and not really enough meat to warrant the work . He is definatly more valuable left on the mountain for now. We keep moving closer to where we lost sight of them just to see how close we could get. The sound of pebbles grabs my attention and I look above us to see the nanny. She has some how got above us and is now spooked. She takes off for higher ground soon followed by the young billy out of sight. We spend the rest of the day just enjoying the afternoon in the mountains and soon plan to head home. on our way down we once again cross paths with the outfitter and client who turns out were also unsuccessful getting close to that big billy back on the other mountain. The client, an older fellow from louisianna takes interest in us young resident hunters and is awestruck that we can have these opportunities readily available to enjoy these adventures. For the price he paid to be there that week I could afford 8-10 seasons worth of time and gas to go looking for these amazing creatures that inhabit the peaks of our province.

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