On day one of my 2019 Kodiak brown bear hunt, I couldn’t help but notice a band of several mountain goats in the high, craggy peaks from where we sat glassing. I started talking to my guide, John Rydeen, and said, “That looks fun.”
“A lot of hunters have several sheep on their walls, but most usually have only one goat,” John replied. He knew I had sheep hunted in the Talkeetna Mountains of Alaska over a decade earlier.
“Why’s that?” I asked.
John’s response was, “Because goats live where even sheep don’t want to go.”
That was reason enough for me to book with Freelance Outdoor Adventures again, this time for a mountain goat and blacktail deer combo hunt in the same area as my 2019 bear hunt.
I arrived in Anchorage on the evening of October 13th, and it was on to Kodiak the following morning. When I arrived at the airport, I met up with Lance Kronberger, John, and my other guide, Kai Wolfe. We also met up with Lance’s other goat hunters, Sean and Tom, from California. From there, we went to the Kodiak Best Western. Once we all got settled in that evening, we had dinner at The Chart Room. During our meal, Lance announced to me, “Your hunt is going to be little tougher than Sean and Tom’s. It’s a little further back, a little steeper, and there’s a few alders and salmonberry bushes to get through.” And so, the adventure began.
The next morning, after breakfast, we all headed down to Sea Hawk Air to get ready for the floatplane to take us into the field. John, Kai, and I didn’t depart until the afternoon. We arrived at our location around 4:00 p.m., whereupon we set up camp in the cove of a bay surrounded by alders to protect us from any winds. Once camp was situated, it was hurry up and wait for the hunt to start on the morning of October 16th.
We woke up to grey skies. There was a low ceiling, and it was foggy and damp, similar to the 20 other days I had spent hunting bears on Kodiak. We left camp and began a long stroll down the beach in the direction towards the mountains before Kaiugnak Bay. We started glassing around 9ish. Kai found goats, but we needed a closer look. The next two hours were spent making our way through alders and salmonberry. At around 12:30 p.m., we reached the base of the mountain and found the goats in the same spot. There were some good billies. An hour later, we started our ascent.
As we were climbing, and just as we were topping a saddle about three-quarters of the way up, busted. We had not been able to see that the goats were making their way towards us. When they spotted us, they went to our right into a jagged, vertical area. We hurried to see if we could cut them off. When we found them again, there wasn’t any chance for a recovery if I attempted a shot.
However, our disappointment didn’t last long. As patches of fog were rolling through, off to the left and up top, we saw more goats. There were shooter billies, and the fog would give us cover. We worked our way towards them undetected before getting to 180 yards across from them. John and Kai directed me on which one after I set up. The .300 WSM reported, and my billy dropped.
The congratulations started with John telling me that spot would make for great pictures and an easy trek back to camp. He also said it would’ve been bad had the goat gone over the side. A few minutes later, as we started to make our way towards the billy, I looked in that direction and asked, “Is that my goat?” Sure enough, he was now up and slowly limping towards the edge. A couple more shots and he was down once more. We waited to make sure. A minute or so later, he was up again. Another shot.
This time, he was down for good right on the edge. As we were watching to make certain he expired, he kicked one last time. That started him rolling over the side and tumbling down the mountain several hundred yards before finally becoming lodged in a ravine.
We would now have to make our way to him, and there was no way for us to get to the bottom of the mountain from there. Instead, we would have to go back up to come back down. We reached the billy at around 4:30 p.m. The obligatory pictures were taken followed by caping and quartering.
From where we were, John said we would need to get back to the top on the opposite side from where I shot the billy by 7:00 p.m. or we would be spending the night on the mountain. We reached the designated spot at 7:18 p.m. The next couple of hours were spent having to sidehill across the slippery, wet face of the mountain, and on ledges, if you can call them that, where even sheep don’t want to go.
Once we reached the base of the mountain, darkness and shoulder-high salmonberry greeted us. We made our way for the next couple of hours navigating with headlamps, sometimes through a drizzle, reaching camp just before midnight. Day one was a success but also a grind.
The next morning, we slept in and didn’t start to deer hunt until about 10:00 a.m. We spent the day mostly glassing the low hillsides not too far from camp and looking for blacktails on the opposite side from where we found the goats. It was rather uneventful. We ended up back at camp around 7ish. For some reason, I think John and Kai were just letting me get my legs back after our goat marathon.
On day three, October 18th, we started around 8:30 a.m. and decided we would go look on top of a little bench near where we saw a good buck on day one. That bench led to another, which led to another, until we were at the top mountain around noon. We had gained enough elevation to see over the mountains into Kaiugnak Bay, which was outside the unit we were hunting. From there, John and Kai glassed up a buck across from us on the other mountainside. It would require a descent through more salmonberry and a creek crossing and then up through even more salmonberry. It would be a two- plus hour stalk.
When we reached the creek, we used the noise of the flowing waters to provide cover until we reached as close as we could get. When we peeked up, we were able to set up about 320 yards away and then the shot. The buck dropped. Admittedly, it was a lucky shot because we could not find a bullet hole until Kai noticed a small hole in the neck, not where I was aiming. We went through the same routine of pictures, caping, and quartering before packing for the hike back. We arrived back to camp at around 6:00 p.m. Day three was a success too, a longer distance but not as steep of a grind.
The next day was rainy, but Sea Hawk was still able to pick us up. John and Kai were shuttled to the opposite side of the bay to my 2019 bear camp location where they would set up camp for their upcoming fall brown bear hunters. On the way back, we stopped to pick up Lance, Sean, and Tom, who each had success getting a goat too.
Fast forward and I just received a text message from Dewey’s Wildlife Studio with a photo of the full-body mount. I texted it to John and said, “I think I may need to do it again,” reminding him that he said most sheep hunters usually have only one goat. He replied, “You might be the hunter with a lot of goats and one sheep.”
Thanks to Lance Kronberger, John Rydeen, and Kai Wolfe for all their efforts!
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