First Hike in Hunt/First Goat Hunt - FULL STORY

[Crawfy42]

Kyle – Me - 24 years old – 10 years hunting experience
Brad – My brother - 22 years old – 9 years hunting experience
Ryan – good friend - 22 years old – 1 previous trip experience
Shawn – good friend - 22 years old - dedicated cameraman – first trip ever

August 29, 2010 – 4 A.M. PST Wake up
So it begins. The deepest we have ever gone so far for a hunt or anything else as a matter of fact. The trip gets off to a rookie kind of start and it wasn’t me of course. Departing Surrey BC at 4:30 in the morning, we had got our rifles out of the safe the night before and secured them under our beds. Mine under my bed and Brad’s 2 under his, Ryan is going to borrow one of Brad’s for the trip. I load my stuff into my truck including my rifle and some other miscellaneous gear that was not packed in the night before, not paying attention to what my brother is doing. We leave the house at 4:30, my truck and Brad’s truck. I try getting a hold of Brad and Shawn in their truck on the 2 way radio, but they forgot to put batteries in it, I was going to ask Brad if he put his guns in his truck. The first stop will be Tim Hortons right before Highway 1, which happened to be only about 20 minutes from our house. So no big deal I will ask him there. Get to Timmy’s, and order our drinks and muffins, get back to my truck before my partner Ryan got back, get on the 2 way, which brad put some batteries in by now, and ask him if he put his guns in his truck. A slight delay in his response.... “No, I forgot them.” I laugh at him thinking he’s joking around probably because I asked a “stupid” question. He then starts driving his truck through the parking lot and tells me to meet them on the freeway somewhere, they have to go back to the house to get the guns. Well, he forgot his 2 guns, what a rookie. So I start driving and figure I will wait for him at the rest area just past Abbotsford just off the freeway. What I haven’t told you readers yet is my brother pissed me off a couple weeks prior to the trip and I was going to get him back... today. I was going to pull a prank on the two of them in their truck that is top 3 all time on the laughing list. (for us anyways). We get to the rest area, I have two Ziploc bags ready, take a crap in one of them and close it up and put that bag inside the other Ziploc. So we have a turd in a double Ziploc bag scenario here, all sealed off. I put it in my canopy all safe and sound. We wait around for about 15 minutes and we start to hear them on the radio. So I pull out on the freeway and we start to convoy up to Williams Lake where it will be our last fuel stop/ food stop. Shawn and Ryan go to subway and are going to get everyone’s sandwiches, including one each for the hike in the next morning. I finish filling up all my jerry’s before Brad, so I get the Ziploc turd bag out of my canopy and sneak around to the side of his truck, trying as best as I can to hide this bag from public view because it would have been awkward for somebody to see. Open up his passenger door and open both air locks on both bags, almost puking in the process, what a nasty stench. Stuffing the bag between the middle console and the passenger seat, trying not to breath, I stealthily close the door. Mission accomplished. Those two are in for a real treat. The drive continues on westward, (That’s as close to you knowing where we were as you’ll get ;) ) meanwhile Ryan and I are killing ourselves laughing, wondering if they smell anything. After about two hours, I can’t take it anymore and get on the radio to start giving them hints about smelling something. I needed to know if my prank worked. Turns out it did quite well. For the past 2 hours they were arguing with each other who stank. They were both trying to be polite to one another and not directly saying that the other smells like shit. My brother thought it was Shawn’s pants, Shawn thought it was Brad’s boots. That was their conversation for 2 hours. Priceless, and well worth at me getting laughed at for actually doing what I did. So after a long drive we made it to the end of the road, the rest will be hiked in.

August 30, 2010
We slept in our canopies, waking up before the sun came up, wanting to get an early move on the hike to base camp. 70 pound packs, 15 km, it was going to be a long day. Nothing to eventful happened on our hike in, but we were totally done once we got to our base camp, and we still had to set up sleeping arrangements, no tent, just tarps. So after a couple hours of fixing camp up and organizing things, we went out to the creekbed which we were camped 20 yards away from, started scouting with the spotters and binos. We saw a goat, but unfortunately it was not in our area to hunt, even if it was it would not have been fun getting too. We were all in bed at 7:50 PM.

August 31, 2010 – Day before the season opens
We had planned for this to be our pre- season scouting day. My brother and I did a quick hike in a couple months prior and saw a lot of goats, but this is when it starts to really count. We had an hour hike from base camp just to the alpine, we called that heart attack hill. Our main deer hunting spot has a 15 minute hill that must be climbed in the morning which we named heartbeat hill. This one was a 1000 foot warmup. We started walking through the meadow which had a couple of sparsely palced trees, we saw movement. Up come the binos, got to love those new bino buddy straps I just purchase a few days before, and it’s a bobcat. Cool. We walked along the alpine meadow until we approximately reached the middle of it. We were surrounded by shale mountains in kind of a bowl shape around us, reaching up into the sky at 8500 - 9000 feet. We spotted around 14-15 goats fairly quickly, they were a long ways away and not sure if a couple of the singles we saw were billies or not. Looking up the alpine meadow we see 3 black moving objects. Get em up in the spotters and it’s 3 grizzlies, a big, big sow and 2 cubs. The cubs were wrestling each other, right out of national geographic or something, pretty cool. We got up into the shale a little bit but didn’t press to terribly hard, daylight was running out. So we made our way back to camp all excited for the next morning, opening day.
http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc4/hs602.snc4/58224_464263927418_737492418_7198068_8153200_n.jpg

http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc4/hs622.snc4/58224_464263952418_737492418_7198072_2995913_n.jpg - Shawn, Me, Ryan

http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc4/hs292.snc4/40948_464264237418_737492418_7198075_875811_n.jpg
- Brad

http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash2/hs152.ash2/40948_464264262418_737492418_7198079_1518445_n.jpg

[Crawfy42]

September 1, 2010
Early wake up. Our packs were packed the night before for today’s hunt. We started the trek up Heart Attack hill which took an hour and got back into our glassing area we were in from the day before. Right away we spot a number of goats, nannies and kids, as well as a couple different singles all by themselves. We could not tell if either of them were a billy or not, even with our spotting scopes on 60 power. Well it’s time to go closer and get up in those hills. We looked at each of the different slopes along the little mountain range, trying to decide which would be easiest to get up. We thought that the farthest shale slope away from the possible targets would be best. It took about an hour to reach the bottom walking through the alpine meadow where we saw the grizzlies the day before. Here we go. The ascent begins. For you who know shale, you take a step, but lose half of it. Makes the mountain climb seem even longer than it already is. We get about a 1/3 of the way up and we run into some sheer rock faces. I happened to be in the back watching our six so everyone was ahead of me. I took the wrong route and kind of got stuck on some steep rock. I know I could have got out of there with some real fancy footwork but mentally I was nervous about my knee, I had acl reconstruction surgery on it in December. Although it is 100 %, it’s just the mental part that I need to overcome. So my buddy Ryan sees that I’m in a bit of a pickle, puts his gun down and comes to the top of the rock. I pass him my 7MM Remington Magnum and he places it down on his bag as well. He reaches out with his hand, I grab him and climb up this 5 or 6 foot rock face. We continue upward and about halfway we need to stop for a lunch break. It’s about 11 AM. Our two friends can’t handle going hard and forgetting about food for a bit, they need it, I just think they need to man up that’s all. So I get out my Brunton Stove and hook her up with the white gas, and get our water boiling. Mountain House meals and bread. While waiting for the water to boil we look back at the meadow we walked through and spot a big lone grizzly bear with a nice coat of fur it seemed. Another big one. After that 30 minute delay, up we go for the last half to the top. More rock climbing was necessary here but it wasn’t too hard. Just had to move quick in a couple of spots. What a pain in the ass dealing with a 35 pound pack and a rifle is way up there. We reach the top and the GPS tells me we are at 8500. We walk along the top ridge of the mountain which was fairly easy except when you look to your left, it is a sheer 2000 foot drop at a 100% vertical angle. Woah. Better not be getting to close to that, you would have enough time to have a coffee before you hit the ground at the bottom. As we were getting closer to where we last saw the tango we were going to get a closer look at, we came to a big rock. We were slowly creeping along at this point knowing we were getting close and Brad was in the lead. He looks back to us and starts making hand signals. Tango spotted. I take a little peek over the rise and there is a goat bedded down at about 200 yards. The angle of it’s head was awkward and we couldn’t quite tell if it was a male. Plus we were new to this and in the heat of action at a closer distance, we we wanted to get closer instead of getting the spotters out. That big rock that was right there, gave us 2 options. Continue side hill, slightly downward, or go a little higher right on the top edge of the mountain and get on top of the rock, which might be a perfect spot. The downward way had us in a direct line of site with the goat. So that narrowed it down to one option. Off the packs go. So now we are standing on the top of this mountain, and literally without a word of a lie, 2 feet to the left is death 2000 feet straight down, but that’s not all. We need to climb up about 7 feet of rock. Ryan passes me his 30-06, because it was impossible to do this with a rifle, not to mention risky. He climbs up first no problem. I then pass him my gun and his gun. My turn. I grab a good solid rock sticking out with my right hand and with my left foot I place it on a very good foot hold about 6 inches wide. All it is, are those 6 inches, plus 2 feet, then death to my left. I didn’t stay there too long because that was pretty freaky in that position. I scramble up over the top as quick as I could. It wasn’t really as dangerous as it sounds, all the foot holds and rocks to grab onto were big and solid, there was not any real danger, just the fact that it was 30 inches to your left is an insane cliff. Now we are all on the top of this big rock and we are sneaking to the edge of it, knowing that as soon as we can see over the side, Mr. Or Mrs. White will be there at about 125 yards. Just as we get to the ledge we see it get up and walk away around the corner of a rock face. Damnit! So we go back down that rock we climbed up and get back to our packs and continue side hill a bit until we reached a decision point. The goat was in no hurry and did not seem to care we were there, so I knew it was not to far away. We still were not sure if it was a Billy yet, the horns did look pretty long, so we figured we would keep going after it, and it was all by itself. But now we were faced with 2 options once again. Up, or down and then some nasty side hill. I wanted to go down, the other 3 wanted to go up. This was a 15 minute debate. I finally said screw it, I’m going down, I was pretty pissed off at this point. For some reason I knew if you went up, you would not be able to see the goat because it would be standing at the bottom of the rocks and at a completely vertical rock face you cannot see what is directly below you. This was my reasoning for going low. We part ways and I go side hill on probably a 75 degree or more shale slope through a gully wanting to get up to the other side of it hoping once I get to the little rise and look over I will have visual contact. That was a very difficult 20 minute hike, almost biting it about 3 times. As I was going I could see my brother and 2 friends doing some rock climbing of their own, in some precarious looking positions. I eventually make it to the other side of the gully and take the last few steps upward to the ridge. Low and behold the goat is looking at me from 50 yards away. Bingo. Get my scope on it a knew right away it was a Nanny. I could have shot it 500 times but I wanted a Billy. We watched each other for about a minute and then it walked off carelessly, in the direction of the other 3. My heart was still beating fast as the excitement died. I got out my 2 way radio and turned it on and was going to try to get a hold of the other guys and let them know it was a Nanny. After all, we were trying to get Bills. Brad didn’t have his walkie turned on, when we separated from each other we didn’t think about that part of the equation, we were a little frustrated with each other at the same time. So I continue downhill on this ridge I was on for about 10 minutes or so. BOOM! Here we go, one of those guys are shooting at a goat. BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! Then silence. I try my brother on the radio after a couple of minutes and he says he got one. He thinks it’s a Billy, but they saw it at about 450 yards and it was running. I tell him that I’m pretty sure it was the one I ran into and that it is a Nanny. So at this point I cannot physically get to where they were. I was going to meet them back in the meadow after they dealt with the goat. For the first time in my life I was kind of scared trying to get down off a mountain. I only had 1 option and at some points had to be an 80 degree incline, but in shale it’s not the end of the world, just dig your feet in and let yourself slide down a few feet at a time. But when the shale turns into a flat rock face beneath your feet with loose gravel on top, that is not fun. I came to a stretch probably 8 feet long like this and I had to go down it. So I sat on my ass and started to slide down, wow did that ever hurt, but other than a little bit of temporary pain I was okay. It took me about an hour and a half to get down to the meadow, almost rolling down the mountain a few times and a sore ass and tailbone. No new scratches on my gun either, just a lot of dust. I get to the spot in the meadow where we had agreed to meet, and find out via walkie talkie that the goat was a Nanny, while everyone was kind of disappointed, there is nothing you can do at this point. A Five year old Nanny with 9.5 inch long horns. (We are also a long, long ways away from region 3 for those of you who read the thread about the goat harvest in relation to Nanny’s being shot in that area a few days ago haha. ) I only waited for them for about 20 minutes and we finally met up and that was that. Off back to camp. We had a great meal that night, goat, onion, garlic, and a few spices all fried up in the frying pan. Along with instant mashed potatoes and gravy, that was by far the best meal we had the whole time we were there. Another early night

http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc4/hs312.snc4/40948_464264277418_737492418_7198082_1001788_n.jpg - Brad and Shawn

[Crawfy42]

September 2, 2010
Once again, the hike up heart attack hill was again an hour long. But now it seems like it’s three hours long. Once into our glassing area in the alpine meadow, we didn’t see any goats or any other animals at all, anywhere. I decided I was going to walk to the end of the meadow and go over the top of the farthest ridge we could see, and around the furthest mountain we could see from our current position. I knew there was another valley around that corner. My brother and I departed but Shawn and Ryan couldn’t handle it anymore, they stayed where they were. We made the 6 or 7 km journey to the bend in the valley after getting attacked by massive horseflies the entire time. I’ve never hated those things so much. Once rounding the bend we saw a long valley sloping downward back into the trees. We had previously taken off our packs, so all we had on us were our binos and rifles. We were running as fast as we could, side hill on shale to cover distance as quick as possible, we knew time would be tight even though it was only 1 PM. We ran for about an hour going up and down gullies and crossing frozen snow patches. We then came to the opening of a large bowl in the valley we could not see an hour before and realized we could not get to this goat in the time we had. If I were a betting man, that goat was a big billy. We started making our way back to our packs, then back to where we left our friends in the meadow. We meet up with them, but find them both fast asleep. It turns out that they have been sleeping all day, when we left them. A solid 6 hours. They are both weak. Back down heart attack hill we went.

September 3, 2010
An early start today, our Shawn and Ryan have rested now for many hours including the day before and are ready to give a hard hike today. Once up heart attack hill, we take a new route. Directly up the first mountain to our right. It was very steep and grassy in the beginning but that soon turned to rock. Not shale, but small rocks which all seemed to be about 2 feet in diameter all piled on each other. Probably a thousand feet uphill like this. It was actually easy walking on, the rocks did not slip very much and it was fairly quiet. Once at the top we realized this was the easiest way up and wish we had discovered it for opening day. But here we are with a perfect view to the left and right, can see for kilometres each way and we were already at 7500 feet. We set up here, planning to glass for an hour or so and figure out what our next move will be. While everyone is looking around for goats, not thinking there will be anything else up this high, I spot something dark brown. Binos up. Grizzly. It’s burying the gut sack of the goat my brother had taken on September 1. Another scene out of national geographic. The Bear caught our scent and took off side hill, and I sure wish I could move that fast in the shale. This thing was at about 8000 feet. Never would have thought I’d see a bear up that high. So we got all that on video and after that was over, we spot a goat probably around 5 km away. All by itself, we decide to move in on it and get a closer look. We hike up to the top of the mountain thinking it will be easier to walk on the top and over instead of travelling side hill. We are now at 8700 feet, highest I’ve ever been. Walking was okay for the first hour or so, until we hit rocks and more rocks, and bigger rocks. We had to go low and side hill to continue. We make it to the next ridge and Shawn and Ryan need a lunch break. Ryan forgot his water, I don’t have much left, same with brad and Shawn. Bottom line is that we have no water for our mountain house meals. So Brad walks down to a patch of snow and fills up the pot with snow, I use that to boil the water, another first. We finish eating but we can’t see the goat anymore, but since they seem to be a fairly lazy animal that just like to lay on a rock seemingly forever, figure it’s still there somewhere. We keep pushing forward, eventually getting into the immediate area of where we last saw the goat. It has taken us about 5 hours to get here since we first spotted it. Now we were in a very rocky area and stopped moving when the wind stopped blowing. It was almost always gusting so we kept a fair pace. If you’ve ever seen Lord of the Rings, where we were looked exactly like Mordor. Big, sharp, black rocks surrounded us, but it made walking easy and quiet, we were also above the goat, well from when we last saw it anyways. I climb up a big rock to peer over the edge expecting to see the goat below somewhere but to no avail. Nothing in sight. Brad is to my right about 10 feet and stands on the top of this rock, leans out with the upper half of his body, binos in hand. He starts motioning towards me, tango spotted. I go to him and take a look as well. It was so windy that all I could make out in the binos was a white goat and I knew it had horn, the wind was wreaking havoc with my attempt to get a good visual on it. It was only about 150 yards away! We had no shot from where we were, there is no way we could safely fire a gun there without possibly falling over the front of this rock. We had to relocate to the next big rock pile 100 yards to our left and slightly higher. We get there but we are trapped. We can see nothing, there are massive boulders everywhere we look. We need to get on top of one of them. We carefully climb out on a big black rock, which turns into a narrow ledge with a wall, then that took us to a rocky knob right on the very top. We make it on the top of this knob safely and see Mr. Goat and indeed it is a billy. We were in a neat spot, on the top of a rock outcropping, just basically large enough for the 4 of us to be on. The goat has nowhere to go, this is a perfect position. I quickly get out my rangefinder (I bought it for my dad on fathers day 3 years ago, more on that in a few minutes) and ranged it at 250 yards. Camera rolling, everything is good to go, I fire a shot right behind it’s front shoulder with my 7MM Remington magnum 175 grain bullet. It walks behind the only rock there was. To our surprise, it comes out the other side walking straight for us. It was so windy at this point, and swirling in all directions. I was not sure how it was going to affect my bullets. I wait until it is mostly broadside as I do not want to have a bullet going through its head area, fire again. Miss. A third shot. Miss. Now I’m mentally screwed up thinking my gun is off (I did bump the scope slightly earlier that day). Now I try aiming off the target to the left. Boom. Miss! I grab a round out of my pocket and chamber my fifth. I let this shot fly, a hit the goat, it starts to roll downhill and rolls for about a hundred feet. I take a sixth shot and put it right through the heart. Then it rolled. I’d say it rolled a thousand feet until it stopped. We gathered our stuff on the top of this rock and proceeded to make our way to the goat. It’s a billy with an 8.5 inch horn length. Taxidermist said another year older it would have been in the record book somewhere, it was only 2 and and half years old. So we are at the goat, 1000 feet below from where we were, which was very rude coming down, I realize that the rangefinder is not with me, and that I forgot to pack it away with my other stuff from the top of the rock we were on. The first thing I said to Brad, Shawn and Ryan was that it was not worth 500 dollars to go back up and get it. So my dad has been bugging me about it for the last couple weeks and I have to go out and spend another few bills to keep the old man happy. Oh well, it was worth it. The crazy things we hunters do for the adventure of a lifetime! And that is all I have to say about that. The End.

http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc4/hs603.snc4/58379_464264527418_737492418_7198091_5758622_n.jpg

http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash2/hs152.ash2/40948_464264287418_737492418_7198084_5114789_n.jpg - Sept 2, the goat we were trying to go after was on the farthest left side mountains. That's as close as we got

http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash2/hs309.ash2/58949_464265292418_737492418_7198129_838578_n.jpg

http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash2/hs309.ash2/58949_464265332418_737492418_7198135_3767233_n.jpg - Kyle, Ryan, Shawn

http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash2/hs204.ash2/46705_464265517418_737492418_7198142_3152835_n.jpg - Kyle (me)

[urbanhermit]

Cool post guys!

[3006pg]

beauty man sounds like you guys had a great time!

[twoSevenO]

that must be some of the nicest country i've seen! Well done lads. You'll remember this for the rest of your lives :)

[Jelvis]

Excellent adventure, you fellas did great wow, you must be in shape ..
Beauty photos and good write up .. that's what hunting is all about, a fun time with buddies ..
Jel .. Got your goat .. fantastic country .. thank you for the look see ..

[porcupine]

Congratulations on a good hunt and story. Really nice looking country and great photos. Oh to be your age and able to climb those mountains with good friends and young legs.

[sawmill]

Great read!I agree all the way with Porcupine:mrgreen:

[Amphibious]

great story and hunt! reminds me why I'm so addicted to those white beasties :P

[Rodd]

Another awesome post Guys! Beautiful Country! Thanks for sharing!

[shadow1982]

Beautiful country and good prank

[shantz]

Great story & pics guys!

[steepNdeep]

Right on! Epic trip for you young bucks! Congrats on a great hunt. Where's the vid of that grizz running on shale...

The sh!t-in-a-bag is f'd up, but since you're 22 & from Surrey it makes sense. :wink:

My bro's buddy treeplanting had the worst smellin' feet in the world, so one day my bro hid his rotting sweaty socks inside his pillowcase... they ROFLTAO when his eyes were teary in the morning from the smell...

[Crawfy42]

Right on! Epic trip for you young bucks! Congrats on a great hunt. Where's the vid of that grizz running on shale...


I'll try to get that on here... It's on my hd camera so I'll how to figure this one out...

Thanks to everyone on the feedback. I hope you all have great seasons!

[jrod113]

I guess I have no choice, but to believe the story about the goats because you have photo evidence. Jeff and I wanna see a picture of the shit in the bag

[MB_Boy]

The sh!t-in-a-bag is f'd up, but since you're 22 & from Surrey it makes sense. :wink:
.

Ha ha....too funny Steep. :mrgreen:

Congrats guys....looks like some nice country you were in.

[bcrawford]

haha I was driving the truck he put the shit in. Good prank but it was the size of a slug so its non worthy of a picture!!!!

[kennyj]

Great story! Congratulations on your goats.
kenny

[swampthing]

Good effort men. Good to see you found such flat country to hunt.

[squirrelmonkey]

Great post guy's
I to just completed my first goat hunt, albeit unsucessful. but I'll tell you
I wore the treads off a nearly new pair of boots on that shale shit over the course of 9 day's.
At 47 yrs. I have never puy my body through so much stress but it was for me quite an acheivement to get up and around those mountains.
You definately earn a goat when hunt them the way you guy,s did.
And I whole heartidly congratulate you guys on an excellent hunt.