gbear
07-03-2010, 08:59 AM
With Canada day falling on the Thursday, I decided I may as well take the Friday off to make a long weekend. Since the wife still had to work, I decided to go with a buddy to check out my goat LEH zone. I've been in the area a number of times over the years, and because it's a local zone for me, you always here about the goats, but like many, I never get to know an area too well unless I am going to actually hunt it. What's kind of nice is that the LEH zone only has a few mountains in it and a healthy goat poplulation.
First we decided we were going to hike up from the south end of the mountain as there is a road fairly high up the mountain where we could start. Right off the bat, we see goat tracks. We get in the timber and there is trails and goat hair everywhere you look. It was fairly steep, but we only came across one set of bluffs, My buddy brought along his youngest son who is 9 who seems keen on the outdoors. This was his first big hiking trip up a mountain. It was cool to watch his excitment. We got up to the top ridge in probably about 2 hours and sat down behind a boulder for a quick bite and to get out of the wind. It was kind of rainy up there yesterday, so it was fairly cool. Then we decided to walk along the top for awhile and look down into some gullies. The young guy was enjoying his first trip to the alpine and was running a bit ahead of us. It was kind of funny cause he stopped really sudden, turned around and started running back to us yelling "there's goats, there's goats!" So we ran up a few more meters and caught a look at 35 goats making thier way to some cliffs. I guess the young guy came across them feeding right on the edge of the top ridge at about 50 yards.
After a bit of hiking around we made our way back to the truck. It was only mid afternoon, so I thougth we should drive around to the north end of the mountain ridge. So we did that and parked at a good glassing area and quickly picked up over 60 goats in various basins and cliffs. Some alright billies on this end, and getting above at them and being able to recover it if you get one looked much more promising from this end. I'm thinking I have the start of a game plan. Probably go at least one more time for a look before the season.
First we decided we were going to hike up from the south end of the mountain as there is a road fairly high up the mountain where we could start. Right off the bat, we see goat tracks. We get in the timber and there is trails and goat hair everywhere you look. It was fairly steep, but we only came across one set of bluffs, My buddy brought along his youngest son who is 9 who seems keen on the outdoors. This was his first big hiking trip up a mountain. It was cool to watch his excitment. We got up to the top ridge in probably about 2 hours and sat down behind a boulder for a quick bite and to get out of the wind. It was kind of rainy up there yesterday, so it was fairly cool. Then we decided to walk along the top for awhile and look down into some gullies. The young guy was enjoying his first trip to the alpine and was running a bit ahead of us. It was kind of funny cause he stopped really sudden, turned around and started running back to us yelling "there's goats, there's goats!" So we ran up a few more meters and caught a look at 35 goats making thier way to some cliffs. I guess the young guy came across them feeding right on the edge of the top ridge at about 50 yards.
After a bit of hiking around we made our way back to the truck. It was only mid afternoon, so I thougth we should drive around to the north end of the mountain ridge. So we did that and parked at a good glassing area and quickly picked up over 60 goats in various basins and cliffs. Some alright billies on this end, and getting above at them and being able to recover it if you get one looked much more promising from this end. I'm thinking I have the start of a game plan. Probably go at least one more time for a look before the season.