This story, “Mountain Goat with a Handgun,” appeared in the June 1957 issue of Outdoor Life.
I WAS WORKING my way around the last perpendicular cliff below camp when the wind and rain hit me, covering my eyeglasses with a coating of water. I cased the glasses and groped on through the storm as best I could.
At last I spotted our spike camp hanging only a few feet from the edge of a sheer rock cliff. Bill Bond, the Washington logger who was my companion hunter, had built what he called a drying fire, one that threw heat like a blast furnace. It was what I needed; there wasn’t a dry stitch of clothing on me.
“Well, Al,” said Bill, “I’ve found a goat for you.”
I squinted at him suspiciously through the fog and steam the fire was raising from my clothing. Bill is a great kidder. Previous similar remarks were just jokes to brighten the bleak tentless camp we’d set up. Noting my lack of interest, Bill became serious.
“I mean it, Al. Watch that cliff about a mile from here. When the fog lifts for a moment, notice the white spot right in the middle of the cliff.” As Bill’s apparent sincerity seeped in, goat fever gave a fresh surge through my veins. I fixed my binoculars on the distant cliff and waited for the clouds and rain to open a gap I could see through.
GOAT FEVER had stricken me before, and I had satisfied the yearning with a rifle in British Columbia. That successful hunt quieted the urge for some time. But then I became intrigued with the possibility of taking a goat with a handgun.
I had been hunting and experimenting with .357 Magnums, testing various bullets. Only a few months previous I had used a .357 revolver to kill a black bear on Washington’s Olympic peninsula.
My bear, a yearling taken on a planned handgun hunt, sauntered out of the brush 40 yards from where I waited. One shot behind the shoulder put him down for good.
Bears are classed as predators where I got mine, so it’s perfectly legal to hunt them with a pistol. But since a rifle is specified for the hunting of many other big-game animals, I had to search the state game laws to learn what trophy I could try for next.
It developed that there was no law against hunting mountain goats with a pistol in this state. One reason for that, I suppose, was that lawmakers never guessed anyone would want to hunt these cliff-climbing animals with a handgun. Goats? Most people simply assume that they require a long-range rifle. However my tests with .357 Magnums suggested that the big revolver would do the job if I handled it right. It was a challenge.
There was to be a drawing of 400 goat permits for the year, so I hopefully filled out an application. Bill Bond, logging contractor and ardent hunter, asked me to send in his name along with my own. Thus we’d both get permits if our single application was selected in the drawing. It’s safer to have a companion on a trip into rugged country, and Bill’s an experienced and capable partner.
Three days after the drawing date we received our permits. We began our preparations by engaging Lauren Simons to pack us into goat country. Simons lives at Merritt, Washington, and is an old hand at packing in the remote Cascade Mountains of Chelan County.
With that part well in hand, I began a systematic training program, shooting my revolver at ranges up to 200 yards. The final results were gratifying, and the days dragged until it was time to go.
SIMONS PACKED us into the White River Watershed, just south of Glacier Peak in the Cascades. We set up a base camp and the next morning started to range the peaks.
Bill had his .270 rifle, a Model 70 Winchester with a 4X scope. I carried a Colt Python .357 Magnum revolver in my shoulder holster. The cylinders of my handgun contained cartridges with lead bullets that I’d hollow-pointed with hand tools of my own design. The destructiveness of those hollow-points in test shots kept me from feeling entirely foolish about my armament.
From camp we climbed four hours to reach a high pass. Directly below us were large fields of blueberries which gave way to steep, scrub-timbered slopes. Both sides of the pass were extremely rugged, with cliffs breaking off into slides.
About 500 feet below the summit was a small lake. Bill decided to skirt the lower end of the lake and hunt the cliffs beyond. I chose to hunt the summit. We agreed to meet at the lake before dark.
After some scouting and scanning that turned up nothing but goat tracks and beds on the summit, I heard three shots from a distance. Bill’s shots? I decided to drop down to the lake and wait for him. He might need help packing in a goat.
I waited at the lake until dusk. Then, miles from camp and without a flashlight, I figured I’d better head for the tent while daylight remained.
I’d been in camp 20 minutes before Bill came plodding down the trail with out his pack. His story was short and sweet: A careful stalk had put him within 100 yards of two good billies and he’d downed one of them. With daylight fading, he’d gutted the goat, cached his pack and camera beside it, and started at once for camp. He’d pushed himself to beat darkness and was exhausted.
That night we decided that our next daylight effort would be to set up a spike camp near the high-altitude lake. That way Bill would be closer to the job of skinning and quartering his dead goat and I’d be in a better position to locate a live one.
We drew a miserable day for the job of back-packing camp gear to the site we’d picked for an outpost camp. Rain poured down on us, wet brush drenched our legs, and sweat generated by the long climb steamed our clothing from the skin out.
Late in the day, with mist blowing through the peaks and cutting visibility to 100 yards, we dropped our packs on a ledge near the lake and strung up a nylon tarp to shelter our sleeping bags. Dried out by a roaring fire built in front of the lean-to, we crawled into the bags for nine hours of sleep. Neither of us noticed that the ground was hard.
Dawn was only a little lighter than the night’s darkness. Rain and fog persisted. We ate a couple of sandwiches apiece, then set out into the fog to locate Bill’s goat. When we found the fallen animal Bill went to work with his knife while I scanned the small basin with binoculars. But the cliffs and slides were shrouded by fog, rain, and mist. It was discouraging. I scouted and glassed the ledges as best I could until noon, then joined Bill to haul his goat to our spike camp.
We were thoroughly drenched when we reached our small shelter. There was still a little fire burning. We soon had it roaring, so that it dried us out faster than the rain could wet us down. Bill made coffee while I sliced up some goat steaks, which I consider top-notch eating. In parts of Alaska the Natives prefer goat meat to deer and can it for winter use.
As we feasted on steak and bread, the weather cleared a bit. With a good meal under my belt, my clothes half dried, and a somewhat slackened storm, I decided to do some more hunting. Bill was busy in camp fleshing out the goat cape.
I climbed around one slide after an other, glassing every light spot or rock that might turn out to be a goat. But the storm revived and drove me to camp — where Bill pointed out the goat he’d located while taking a breather from his fleshing job.
As I watched this animal through a rift in the fog, another, larger goat appeared on the face of the same cliff. Both animals were making their way to a green spot below a rockslide, where they started to browse. With a long range rifle, I probably could have got close enough to bag one of these before darkness blotted them out. But my only hope for a shot at handgun range was to wait and start a stalk at first sign of daylight. The goats would likely feed again in the morning before moving out.
BEFORE DAWN I was dressed, fed, and champing at the bit. As soon as I could see, I gave the mountain a good glassing. Both goats were moving along the face of the cliff and leaving the area. Evidently they had fed before daylight.
There was only one way to get closer, and that was to cross some blueberry fields in plain view of the goats. The first and smaller animal apparently had a premeditated objective in mind, for it climbed at a fairly steady pace and soon went over the summit. The larger goat was in no hurry.
I began my crossing of the berry field, doing my best to take advantage of every shrub to keep from being seen. At one time the goat acted as if it would bed down on a rock ledge. Then I saw that the beast had spotted me. He moved on around the mountain, out of sight.
My only chance now was to try the same route the goats had taken, precarious as it was. Time after time I was turned back as hand and footholds petered out. Finally I found a small ravine among the sheer cliffs and worked up it to the top.
The summit of this mountain was fairly level, a broken flat sprinkled with brush and scrub trees. Goat beds, old and new, were everywhere. But nowhere could I find the goats I’d followed up here. It was as if the ominous clouds that now hung overhead had blotted the animals off the mountain.
Soon snowflakes were floating down. That did it. The climb down from this place was hazardous enough without waiting for snow to grease the rocks. I had to get down ahead of the snow storm that was building up.
I reached the blueberry fields with nothing worse than shaken nerves, and as I stood there at the bottom catching my breath, I glanced up at the cliffs. There, not far from the route I’d taken up and down, was a goat, bedded down on a bare rock.
My binoculars showed that he was already watching me, so I made elaborate pretense of idling about through the berry bushes as if I had no interest in getting closer to him. All the time I was edging toward some scrubby evergreens that offered concealment for a stalk.
Would the goat get spooky once I was out of its sight? Reaching the timber, I watched through the evergreen screen to see what the animal would do. For a long time it stared in my direction. Finally, it looked away, then shook its head as if flies were bothering it. Apparently the goat was satisfied that I was no threat.
How mistaken he was. If ever I had my neck bowed with determination, this was the time. The scrub timber grew in patches. When these gave out I crouched or crawled on my belly in the shallow draws that ran down the mountain. Then I began climbing up terrain so steep that the trees rooted there were curved like giant hockey clubs.
Then the slope became even steeper. Once I flushed a blue grouse from under my feet. I was so tense that the bird startled me into slipping down a small embankment with a clatter of rolling rocks. Fearing the worst, I sneaked a look at the goat. He appeared calm.
At last I took off my hat and pack and crawled toward a ledge that would put me within 60 yards of the goat. If I could make it to there I would make my play.
I squirmed ahead to the rock ledge and peered over. The goat was looking directly at me. Only the top of my head and my eyes were showing. I had drawn my .357 Magnum from the shoulder holster. I steadied it at eye level and fired.
At the shot the goat flopped on its side. I watched a small red spot appear on its throat and enlarge against the white coat. I had expected to fire more than one shot, but the goat never got to its feet. I quickly pulled my camera from a case on my belt and snapped a picture.
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A second later the animal kicked itself over the edge of the rock. Four hundred feet below a dead tree root stopped the flight of the plunging beast. I scrambled down and found that my goat was a nanny, and that during its fall it had broken off a horn.
The broken horn spoiled the head for mounting, but that was a minor disappointment. I’d taken my goat with a handgun.
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