Hunter: Nicholas Booth
Species: Rocky Mountain Elk and Mountain Goat
Location: Utah (Beaver unit) and Idaho (Hells Canyon)
Outfitters: Martin Hunting (elk), Hells Canyon Outfitters (goat)
Hunting mountain goats was a twenty-plus-year dream that started in high school while chasing them in my home state of Utah. My buddy Richard and I would scale the Cottonwood canyons with more courage than common sense to get close to these unique animals. That proximity became an obsession: these goats became the focal point of my photography class my junior year, and I was determined to have an opportunity to hunt one in the future.
On an early morning in May 2025, that dream became a reality (many years before I thought it would) upon opening up an email during an early morning workout. “Idaho”, “mountain goat”, and “SUCCESSFUL DRAW” sprawled across my phone screen, and my disbelief couldn’t be measured. I refreshed my email multiple times to make sure it wasn’t a mistake and immediately forwarded the news to Richard to share in my shock. Less than a two percent chance to draw the tag and my number had been drawn!
I continued to share my luck and amazement with my local friends and hunting buddies. Just one problem: I had yet to share the news with my wife, who had just had some great success of her own by being named the varsity volleyball coach for our local high school. For those not in the know, high school volleyball season and hunting dates don’t necessarily mesh well. It was time to share that excitement with Chelsey, but before I had a chance, good fortune struck again…
Not a week later, while in my early morning workout, an email from the Utah DWR flashed on my phone. Having lived in Arizona for the last ten years, I was anticipating my non-resident general season archery deer tag back in Utah. While scrolling through the other species I thought I had no shot of drawing in Utah, my jaw dropped when I saw a “SUCCESSFUL” label next to my limited entry elk section. With less than a 0.5% chance of drawing, I was staring at a Beaver East muzzleloader bull elk tag. Again, refreshing my screen didn’t prove the email to be an error. My excitement was hard to contain. Then I realized I was in a really, really big pickle and needed to tell my wife… And yes, I drew the Utah archery deer tag too! As luck would have it, I didn’t get a chance to tell my wife about my hunts. That honor fell to a local friend of mine, Mike. At one of our son’s baseball games, he spilled the beans by telling my wife how cool it was that I drew a mountain goat tag and then how amazing it was that I’d followed it up with a slammer elk tag. My wife questioned, “What?”
Mike followed up with, “Yeah, and it’s pretty cool that one is in Idaho and the other in Utah! My wife shared a puzzled and shocked look with Mike. At this point, Mike understood the snake pit he had stepped into and stated, “I’m just going to shut my mouth now!” Long story short, my wife was just as shocked as I was, but she was supportive, and we created a game plan for the fall hunts and volleyball. I contacted Huntin’ Fool at the suggestion of a friend, and with their help, I enlisted the help of Martin Hunting for my Utah elk hunt and Hells Canyon Outfitters for my Idaho goat hunt. With drawing two tags that had extreme draw odds, the Huntin’ Fool crew and my two guides also encouraged me to buy a lottery ticket. That turned out to be unsuccessful, but you can’t win them all, I guess!
The time between successful draws and actual hunting can drag on. I was able to hunt my Utah archery deer tag and was successful in taking a nice three-by-three with my bow and doubled up with my brother-in-law. But in all honesty, my sights were set on September all along.
As the end of September drew near, I joined up with Jake Moss and Tyson Barney from the Martin Hunting crew. We hit the mountains for an epic week of hunting. We were able to call in and glass up many quality bulls. One of my goals for the hunt was to soak up some intense rutting action, and the Beaver unit did not disappoint. We did close to ten miles a day searching for the right opportunity. Our travels even took us into the aftermath of a gored bull that we ultimately found dead later on in the hunt. We’d witnessed and heard the sparring take place a canyon away from us earlier the previous day.
Midweek, we were able to work in on a beautiful six-by-six bull that had been calling back and forth with us. In a thick grove of trees, we stalked to within sixty yards, and I was able to watch this bull rake and lick an aspen tree. I decided to shoot, but trying to find a window was extremely difficult. Impatience, a rushed shot on my part, and several hours of searching for blood later, we were left with heartache and a failed opportunity.
On the last day of the hunt, I was able to find success on a bull we had passed up on earlier in the week. I knew going into my hunt that I wanted a bull with some uniqueness and character, and I was able to connect with a mature eighty-by-six bull that had a split G2. The sheer size and mass of this bull was something I had yet to see in my hunting career. To me, he was a bull of a lifetime that came with stories for a lifetime. The three of us earned that bull in September, but more importantly, I was able to forge some awesome friendships with a great set of guys.
With the days of bugling bulls in the rearview, it was time to set my sights on Idaho. I joined up with Jeff Wieber from Hells Canyon Outfitters in early November for an adventure of a lifetime. While planning this hunt, we decided we would airboat up the Snake River in the Hells Canyon region and camp on the jet boat. Jeff was top-notch in his navigation of the canyon and river, and we were into goats within minutes of our arrival. This was something I had dreamed about for years, and I was finally glassing and picking over mountain goats in some of the most rugged country in the United States.
Jeff and I were able to glass many goats and strategize the best way to approach this goat herd for our first two days. Location, location, location. The location of goats became very important. We saw a number of good billies, and on the night of day two, we put to bed a billy we hoped to find the following morning. As daylight cracked, we drifted the boat down to the canyon where we’d last spotted the herd and found the billy within thirty yards of where we had left him. He was pushing a nanny, and we got set up for a 650-yard shot. The image of my billy standing on the rock looking down our way prior to shooting is a memory burned into my brain. We were able to connect, and a childhood dream came to a monumental conclusion on a beautiful 9-inch mountain goat.
Jeff and I just stared at the goat for an hour and took in the views of the canyon, river, and country we were blessed to be in. After loading the goat in our packs, we returned to the river, and Jeff suggested we try to get on a sturgeon prior to boating out of the canyon. After a quick change in location and putting some rods in the water, Jeff had me onto a giant sturgeon within ten minutes. I had no idea what I was in for, and it became another memory forged in my mind. After a fifteen-minute back-and-forth fight with the monster, I was able to land a nine-and-a-half-foot, 400-plus-pound sturgeon. My arms were sore, my legs were shaky, and that sturgeon, a true living dinosaur, became the cherry on top of an epic fall season in the outdoors.
The fall of 2025 was a year full of good fortune, dreams becoming reality, and once-in-a-lifetime experiences. I hit the lottery on two tags I had no business drawing; I completed what my friends called the “trifecta” by filling all three of my fall tags; and I was able to top it off with a monster fish that many anglers dream of experiencing—all while still being married at the start of 2026!
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