Thursday, November 20, 2008

Canada Mountain Goat Hunt

I hunted the first week of November with Marty Lightburn of Rocky Mountain High Outfitters out of Jaffray, BC. He did a great job but was dealt a tough hand. We had terrible visibility for 5 of the 7 day hunt.

We stayed the first three days at a cabin he has up in the alpine. The cabin had been helicoptered in and was very comfortable given the near constant rain and snow. We did get out the first full day, November 7, but the goats had moved out of the area for some unknown reason.

The second day rained and we had very limited visibility so we didn't venture far from camp. A single white tail doe was spotted close by; neither of us could figure why a whitetail was so high that late in the season.

I'll not drag out the story too long but suffice to say I spent many hours, after traveling even more hours, standing around a campfire waiting for the visibility to increase to more than a couple hundred yards.

On the last day of my hunt we got a break and spotted 5 goats above us - not a good sign since we were looking for a big billy and they're normally alone. The spotting scope showed a couple of billies so we commenced our climb - only about 1700 feet vertical up a slide that wasn't all that bad of a climb.


We got into position and looked more closely at the two billies. One was older with a broken horn and the other was younger with stilleto points. I elected for the older critter 383 yards distant. The two packs made for a solid rest, the 100 gr. TSX at 3450 fps from my 25 WSM, 700 Ti hit about as perfect as I could hope and he tumbled about 75 yards down the hill - closer to the pack animals. The goat was in the red circle (above) when I shot.



That's Marty in the first image, he's a heck of a guide but I take better pictures! Billy is 8 7/8" and 5 1/2 years old, he'll be a half body mount. The image doesn't show how very well he is haired out.

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