Although it was always my dream, I never actually believed I’d get the opportunity to hunt mountain goats, let alone harvest two 10"+ billies in less than a year!
In 2021, I was absolutely floored when I drew my lifelong dream tag – a Washington state mountain goat tag in my backyard. After 19 days of hunting, I harvested a beautiful 10.25" billy on a snowy day in late November. Throughout my hunt, I was regularly posting pictures of the billies I was seeing on social media and getting a ton of help from hunters across the U.S. and Canada in field judging the goats I was seeing. Marvin McCloud, in particular, was exceptionally helpful in estimating horn length and mass on goats. After the hunt was done, I connected with him to thank him for his help and inquire more as to his extensive goat knowledge. One thing led to the other and I ended up booking an Alaska goat hunt through Primo Expeditions, the outfitter Marvin has been working with for the last decade.
September couldn’t come soon enough! I was already hooked on goat hunting, and I couldn’t wait for a second opportunity to achieve my original goal of a Booner billy with a bow. I arrived in Ketchikan with my close friend and photographer, Clint Easley, early in September to torrential rains and a pretty brutal forecast. My outfitter made clear that weather was usually the limiting factor on a hunt like this, but with 10 days ahead of us, we were confident we’d get the break we needed to get our goat.
After a rained-out day in town, it looked like we may be getting a break in the weather the next day. After a four-hour hike up swollen creeks, devils club-choked clear-cuts, and ankle-deep muddy muskegs, we finally made camp in the alpine. Rain was still coming down, but it looked like we would have a break the next day. We found the only flat spot we could find and set up our tents under a tarp that Cole, our guide, had packed up the mountain. We were able to glass a few good billies that evening between breaks in the rain and couldn’t wait for some better visibility the next day.
We woke up early the next day to thick fog, but the rain had finally subsided and the forecast looked good for the next few days. Cole and Clint hung out in the tents, but I was so antsy to get hunting that I got dressed and hiked a quarter mile loop around our camping spot, successfully spotting four different goats (all nannies and kids) despite the thick fog. My GPS indicated that I had hiked more than three miles before Clint and Cole ever got out of the tent!
At around 11 a.m., the fog finally broke and we actually started hunting the mountain. We glassed every nook and cranny on the mountain for hours, spotting only one goat bedded right at the edge of an 800-foot cliff about 1,400 feet below us. We could tell he was a billy, but he never gave us a good look at his horns. Considering his poor location and the fact that Cole had chased a monster billy in another basin the year prior, we opted to keep hunting.
With less than an hour of daylight left, we still had not spotted another goat, so we decided to make a move by dropping into the bottom of the basin below camp where the billies traditionally feed out of the timber into the meadows. Right at dusk, we spotted a billy less than 100 yards away and were able to get in position as he continued to feed our way. I had my bow ready and was able to come to full draw at 45 yards, but after getting a better view of his horns, we decided he wasn’t big enough for this early in the hunt.
We arrived back at camp full of optimism and hope for the next day, but after checking the weather, that optimism quickly faded. Rather than high clouds and visibility, the forecast had changed completely with a hurricane coming in. For the next 36 hours, we endured sustained 70+ mph winds and more than 5" of falling rain. There were multiple times throughout the next day that we were literally holding our tent down in hopes that the rainfly wouldn’t blow right off the mountain.
Finally on day four on the mountain, the weather broke. We had one day of food left, which we planned to stretch to two. One day of hunting and one day for hiking off the mountain. As soon as the fog broke around 10 a.m., we started moving to various glassing points, hoping to pick up a billy to stalk. We were still having a hard time turning up a good billy when we picked up that same billy from the first night bedded in the exact same location 1,400 feet below us at the edge of a cliff. This time, though, he gave us a better view of his horns/head. We could make out a good Roman nose and count at least five growth rings through our spotter. We knew this was a billy worth pursuing, but his location was terrible being so close to such a huge cliff. We decided to watch him until 4 p.m. in hopes he would get up and start feeding uphill and away from the cliff.
Finally, at 3:57 p.m., he stood up and started feeding uphill, exactly what we needed. We quickly gathered our gear to drop into his basin for a stalk. This presented a problem considering the wet, muddy, cliff-riddled 50-degree slope we had to navigate to get into his basin. Luckily, we had crampons and ice axes along for just this sort of situation.
After quickly dropping more than 1,000 feet, we knew we were in his bedroom, we just had to find him. The terrain was very broken up with small openings of 75-100 yard visibility. We were also turning up other goats at similar elevations that were distracting us as we had to make sure they weren’t our target goat. Just after spotting our third goat, we were pulling out the spotter to take a look when we glanced below us to spot a very large billy staring at us at 60 yards down a very steep chute. Although we were open and visible, the billy could only see our heads and we had the wind in our favor.
Cole quickly signaled to me that he was a shooter billy but that we should wait until he was out of the chute before shooting. That was good news as my heartrate had quickly elevated to roughly 200 BPM and I was shaking like a leaf. I nocked an arrow, ranged a few locations where I thought he would walk, and started focusing on calming down and getting my heartrate under control. After a nine-minute stare down, the goat finally calmed down and started slowly feeding again. A few minutes later, he was broadside at 37 yards and my heartrate was under control, so I was able to place a perfect, double lung shot on the goat.
Despite a perfectly-placed shot, the goat still went a long way. It was nearly dusk when we finally located him in a nasty creek drainage, mere feet from the 800-foot cliff we were trying to avoid! We had a long way back to camp and needed to move quick. We gutted the goat and covered him in a tarp and then covered the tarp in sticks/branches in hopes of reducing predator interference. We ended up making the 1,400-foot climb back to camp in under 30 minutes in order to make it through the cliffs before dark.
The next morning, we got to the goat shortly after sunrise and finally had time to truly appreciate our feat. My goat aged 9.5 years old and had 10.5" horns. A true mountain monarch! He had broomed off a quarter inch on one horn and still green scored 52". He would be 52.5" had he not broomed off that one side.
I’m still in awe of these animals. They are without a doubt the toughest animal I have ever hunted and live in some of the harshest country and most relentless weather conditions possible. Not only was I lucky enough to harvest two 10" billies in less than 10 months, but I was even able to achieve my lofty goal of a Booner billy with a bow! Huge thanks to my wife and family for letting me pursue my passion the way I have. God certainly kept me safe in some nasty country and nasty conditions. God is good for sure!
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