"The Nest"-1500ft cliff on both sides
West Side- Ambush!
Brett's bedded mountain goat
Nanny with Kids
Short Billy
Young Billy
Nope, it's just a nanny! (2 nannies and a kid)
I have paid little attention to a very neat species living in my own back yard, the North American mountain goat. While stalking high country mule deer and elk, occasionally I would bump into these big round balls of fur. But since they had less than impressive horns, I pretty much ignored them my entire life.
Other than getting within muzzle loading distance and packing one out in the thin air, scoring them on the hoof proved to be the most difficult challenge for us on this hunt. Field judging them has a true learning curve. You are talking only an inch of length and or mass per horn which separates a good billy from a great one. In order to field judge properly, they need to be standing and one must view both front and side profiles. We soon found out it is tough to score them on the hoof if they are also alone or if more than 300yards out, even with a spotting scope. Scoring billies and the respect for the extreme conditions where they choose to live quickly turned me into a huge fan; I would go again in a heartbeat!
My youngest brother Brett was 1 of 10 who drew a second season (either sex) permit out of 555 applicants. In Utah, this is one of the 5 once-in-a-lifetime species which means you can only draw this permit once. When he asked me if I wanted to help him, I was definitely up for a new hunting adventure. Brett wanted to harvest one with his muzzle loader; I couldn't talk him into packing his bow. We did carry a Christensen Arms .300 ultra with us too. Brett is also a taxidermist, so he wanted to make sure the billy had a super body and coat for a full body mount.
We both spent some time this summer learning more about mountain goats. Here is what I learned; The longest B&C measured mountain goat horn was off a female at almost 13". Billies generally have more mass and often shorter horn length. Really big billies have 10" horns. The min. score for Boone & Crockett is 47". The min. long hunter score is 41". To score a billy you take the horn length and four mass measurements for both horns. It can be super hard to determine their sex. Billies have an extra scent gland behind the base of the horns. Often this gland is black which can make the mass at the bases look larger than they truly are.
Brett had previously scouted the unit with his brother-in-law Nathan. He, Nathan and I spent Friday high on top of the Beaver Mountain Range deciding where to be on the opener. An earlier any weapon season had just finished, so the goats were spread out for our hunt. Several were found in sheer 2,000 foot cliff walls. It's mesmerizing watching them scale up and down them like you or I climb stairs. We hunted at 12,500 ft in elevation on top of peaks with names like Mt. Holly and Shelly Baldy. We had a pretty good idea where we wanted to start in the morning after seeing some good prospects.
Opening day found us high in an alpine saddle between two peaks. We had hunters with horses above us and hunters on horses coming up the drainage from below. The hunters above bumped a large band of nannies and kids with a few good billies in with them. The billies peeled off and came right underneath us. We knew they were nice billies but one did not stand out from the rest as they were moving under us, so we elected to pass.
Later that morning we found 13 large mature billies all alone in one big bachelor group. They worked up a cliff face 400-600 yards above us. It was too far for a muzzle loader and too far to really pick one out to shoot. It would have also fallen to the bottom if we shot one anyway. We hoofed it around to the North side of the peak and hiked to the top. We caught them bedded on the pinnacle of the peak 500 yards out with cliff edges on both sides. It was too much of a risk to shoot one there too. We felt for sure they would fall off if we took the chance.
According to our calculations, there were two monsters in the group. Brett's billy that had a huge body, clean thick coat and super mass and another great goat with longer horns which made him seem not as heavy. We were not too sure which one was the better billy? We studied them both very hard. Brett decided on the longer horned billy if we got the chance. Now what do we do since they are not in a spot for a shot; Do we wait or do we get aggressive?
We had Jared hike over to our side of the canyon... He, Nate and Tyson were on an opposite peak watching us. Jared joined us and we decided to make a push rather that sit all day waiting to see if they would come back off the rim. We started out toward the goats, each step the top of the ridge got narrower and the sides dropped off making it more important where you placed your next boot. It was not for the faint of heart. At one time we had to stop and let Jared collect himself. He fell off a tall cabin roof breaking both arms two years ago, so I think he was dealing with some flashbacks. He soon was fine, and believe it or not, he actually worked himself out to the billies for us.
We felt they would pick the West side of the peak to escape from Jared. He caught them napping at 50 yards in front of him and we think everyone but two did just what we wanted them to do. We think the long horned billy bailed off the cliff out of sight under Jared to the South or East? The other 11 billies worked down and around to our side of the mountain just as we had planned. Thanks to Jared, the plan worked great! He didn't place his life in real risk of falling, but not just anyone would have climbed out there to bump them off their nest.
Nate, Tyson and Brett's wife, Britanie, now were across the canyon watching it all unfold. We soon had all 11 billies under us at 100 yards as Jared joined up with Brett and I again. We knew they all had to be there but we could only see three goats work themselves out into our view. We had Brett's billy walk out and bed directly below us. We studied him again and again. We decided he truly was a "stud". He was heavy and had an enormous body. Brett didn’t bring a camera like I thought he would have. So I got out of my backpack Dusty's nice Canon camera and turned it to video mode, knowing not sure how well it would film video? It had a good zoom and I knew it took good pictures.
We were settling in to shoot him in his bed with Brett's T/C Muzzleloader (1X scope, 100 grain powder, 290 grain sabot). Brett quietly called his two young boys on his cell. Dusty was watching them all day long back at the main road. He was recovering from knee surgery and was the real help to Brett on this trip. He told them to listen to his shot as he placed it on a rock with the speaker phone on. By the time we got our act together, the billy spotted movement from one of us and he got up. I didn't have the camera rolling for Brett to shoot. Just like that, the billy was out of sight. I thought the gig was up!
We worried the billy would take the band back the other way they had come, so we had to act fast. We moved directly down towards them. To our luck the rest of them kept moving in the direction we wanted them to go. We soon had multiple billies below and in view. It was hard to decide again as most were mature and inter-mingling. Brett kept looking back at me for my opinion on which one. I was trying to film and also trying to help him decide. This proved bad for filming.
Finally the big guy popped out. Brett, Jared and I immediately knew he was the one that we had tried to take in his bed. He was longer and heavier. Brett pulled his gun to his shoulder. I zoomed in on the big billy 75 to 100 yards away and Brett dropped him in his tracks with his T/C. Well almost in his tracks. It was so steep, he rolled 200 yards in the shale rock before coming to a stop on a shelf. It was awesome footage! I panned back on Brett's reaction. It wasn't until we got back to the trucks that I realized in the midst of re-evaluating the billies that I got off sequence in hitting the record button and didn't get one of the coolest kills I have ever filmed on camera. Darn it!
We all carefully worked our way down into the deep canyon below towards the billy. I fell down badly and while trying to save a camera, I got scraped up pretty good and pulled a muscle behind my leg. Once we finally got a good look up close, we knew Brett had harvested a "brute" of a billy. It was yet another great hunting chapter in the Butler Book!
I am not sure what Brett's billy will score? I did a real rough conservative score in the field and got just under 49”. It was a great billy! I have fallen in love with hunting mountain goats, at least in Utah. The fact that Brett let us all enjoy a bit of his once-in-a-lifetime goat hunt for us was awesome. Congrats on a great billy goat Brett!
