The Bovidae of B.C.

I recently just returned from my first Mountain Goat hunt in Northern British Colombia and it was so much more than I ever could’ve expected…

This was taken during our hike back to the day tent camp.

In the months prior to this hunt, I was hiking and training daily here in Colorado to get ready for what I was getting myself into. I’ve never been on a mountain hunt like this so I knew very little and was going off of what I heard from my parents and others. Over the course the training and prepping, I not only shed a bit of weight but I also found myself enjoying hiking more and more (I’ve always been a larger guy and was never one for cardio). My buddy back from Illinois is coming out to film this hunt and he had been training too. The week leading up to the hunt, my nerves started to kick in, more and more day by day. I began to worry so much that I made myself sick thinking about what if I’m not ready?

The day we left, Aubrey and my parents brought us to Denver (~3 hour ride), from which we said our goodbyes and took off to Vancouver. After dealing with the usual issues at airports, we flew out of Vancouver to Smithers, BC, where we stayed the night. The next morning, we took off to camp in an Otter!

As we landed in camp, the other hunters flew out. After getting a light lunch, they flew us out of the main camp on a Super Cruiser (Two Seater Airplane) to a tent camp they’d set up earlier. Brandon and I had met our awesome crew for the week, Aron Snyder, Guytano (I’m sorry if that’s spelt wrong), and Mr Steve (the other hunter) upon landing. Immediately after, we dumped our packs, Aron and Guytano took out everything we really didn’t need and lightened our packs quite a lot, which we really appreciated later! As soon as we were all packed back up, we began our expedition into the mountains.

We only hiked around 3 or so miles up to where we’d be setting up camp and day hunting from. In those three miles though, I quickly realized how unprepared I really was for this hunt, I had been hiking 2-5 miles a day training but our landscape is quite a bit different in Colorado than in Northern B.C. Going through some underbrush right off the bat made the rest seemingly that much more difficult, but, I’m in freakin Northern B.C. on a mountain goat hunt!?! It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity and I’ll absolutely make the most of it!

After a pretty good nights rest, we got up just as we began getting the soft lighting from the sun behind the mountains, had a quick breakfast, and headed out! Brandon nor I could keep up with the other guys, which definitely took a toll on our mental strength, yet we kept climbing and they were great with keeping us motivated. As we were hoping to begin to get some sun, the morning fog rolled in and made it nearly impossible to see anything farther than 100 yards. We’d hunker down for a short time, let the fog lift, move across the mountain faces and shale, the fog would come back, and we’d hunker down again. That followed through most of the day… fog, no fog, fog, no fog. After around 8 miles through and across mountains, we find ourselves looking down cliff faces with an incredible lake quite a few hundred feet below the cliff we were on. Up to this point, around 3PM, we hadn’t seen any game and I was already telling myself to prepare for at least another day of hiking like this… that quickly changed though as soon as I heard Aron say “RJ get down and crawl here!” Aron had spotted an absolute stud of a goat within 80 yards of us, nearly straight below us! The moment I heard him say that there was a damn good goat, I didn’t know what to do. Out of instinct, I got in position to shoot, we made the call, and shot… After hiking for a good part of the day and just taking in all of God’s incredible country, the moments leading up to the shot felt like mere milliseconds but as soon as I squeezed that trigger and I saw the goat start tumbling off the cliff… it felt like a week had gone by. After we saw the goat go down the huge rockslide and lost sight of him, I truthfully didn’t have a single thought going through my mind. I didn’t know what to think, or say to the camera, or anything. I thanked Aron right away and just sat there in shock. Aron and everyone else jumped up to see if we could get Mr Steve his goat there too, unfortunately though there didn’t seem to be any other goat in the area. As we all began our decent down around the cliffs, I just felt a weight off my shoulders. Not a bad weight but weight that I had felt leading up to the hunt, the weight that made me feel sick, the weight that I wasn’t strong enough, in shape enough, mentally tough enough to accomplish what I had just accomplished. Granted, I couldn’t have done any of it without the rest of the crew by any means and I still can’t thank them all enough for everything they did to help. Getting around to the rockslide, Aron and Guytano made their way up the slide and asked us to wait down due to how dangerous it can be, and they brought the goat down! The incredible thing is that the goat was literally covered by rocks and fell over 150 feet, yet it didn’t even break its tips! There is nothing like the first moment you lay your hands on your animal, it’s the moment you know you’ve done it. The adrenaline, the shaking, the shot, the tracking/bloodtrailing, it all adds up and leads to this one moment of accomplishment, guaranteed a moment of success that I will never forget. As soon as the guys brought the goat down from the rockslide, it began pouring on us to the point where Brandon and Steve went to the timber to start a fire to warm us all up and dry off before our trip back. While they were starting the fire, Aron, Guytano, and I finished cleaning and quartering the goat. The craziest thing too is as soon as we got to the fire with the other guys, the rain stopped, and the sun came out for the first time all day long, including a rainbow of course! After drying off a little and warming up, we began our journey back to the spike camp. I had the hardest time as soon as it hit about 11-12PM and we were still side-hilling, my ankles were beginning to give out nearly every step and my legs just wanted to collapse. Thankfully with the help of the other guys and motivation from everyone that it’s just the final stretch, we made it back without any injury to anyone. We arrive back to the spike camp around 1:30 AM and we were all far past beat for the day.

The next morning we all slept in a bit, cleaned our gear and started a fire to try to help dry off as much as we could. We had hiked most of that area the previous day so we decided to hike back to the main tent camp that afternoon with all of our gear. Unknown to us, Ron (the outfitter and pilot) was able and coming to get Brandon and I that afternoon to take us back to the main lodge where we spent the rest of our time. We do know that Mr Steve was able to get his goat as well! Which we asked every morning the news about hahah!

Again, I want to thank everyone that made this hunt happen and pushed us through the thick of it. Ron, Maria, Aron, Guytano, Mr. Steve, my parents, and everyone! North River Outfitting, thank you so much for this insane opportunity and helping us make this happen!