The Brothers Who Stared at Goats

Like all good hunting stories, this one did not really start when my brother Josh and I jumped from the boat onto the beach last Friday, or when Josh stepped off the plane in Alaska the day before. It didn’t even start back in March when I found out I had drawn a highly coveted goat tag. And while it may have started when my dad and I descended that same mountain, successful but goatless last November on a late season registration hunt, even that would not quite capture the beginning of this hunt. But for now, that is close enough I guess. Or maybe it started 19 years ago when we first began teasing Josh about stuffing his pockets with bacon before walking around the woods in Alaska, as he was already the slowest in the family.

“Dad! I pulled the draw tag for the same area we hunted back in November! Season starts in August and goes until October 15. I’ve got a family trip with the in-laws to California in October so I am planning on hunting mid-September. Can you come?”

It was hard hearing that my Dad wouldn’t be able to make this hunt with me. Probably about as hard as it was for him to tell me he couldn’t.

After having helped my Dad on a Utah goat hunt, and then again last November up here in Alaska I was dying to have a tag of my own to chase billies in the cliffs. I immediate set to make plans with various willing idiots—err, pack-mules. Still not right . . . friends and acquaintances . . . hoping that come September at least one of them would still be planning on joining me. I booked a water transport with Bixler McClure at Seward Ocean Excursions, laughing at his disbelief that I was headed back up for goats again, having snagged a draw tag this time. Over the next several months, life, as it is wont to do, picked off my pack-mules one by one until late July came and I had no one guaranteed to join me.

Now, as you may have gathered by now, I am many kinds of stupid. But hunting goats in grizzly country alone? My brain damage isn’t that severe. Yet.

“Josh, here’s the deal. I REALLY need somebody to come with me, or else I am not going to be able to make this trip. Please. I just need somebody willing to hike up a mountain several miles from a beach through a grizzly infested temperate rainforest, to then climb cliffs with the intent of carrying a dead animal down them. And maybe pick up a bear or three along the way. Oh, and while it might be sunny and gorgeous, it will probably be 40 degrees and raining, if not snowing.”

This is where I have to hand it to my youngest brother. While he may not have been bitten as hard as me by that bloodthirsty bug, he got a double helping of loyalty. It also helps that the guy is in great shape, so I figured I could make him my Sherpa.

Over the next 6 weeks we went over packing lists, and I lined up some final pieces of gear. Then, stupidly, the weekend before the goat hunt I went and shot a moose. You may remember him, Charlie. That act of stupidity will come back into play here in a bit.

Josh arrived at noon on a Thursday, and I still had to work. As I struggled to focus that afternoon, my wife was ever so helpful by sending me pictures and videos of my brother tenderly playing with my children. As much as I love living in Alaska, hearing my young children ask, “When are you going to take me to see our family?” is a knife more keen than I ever could have expected. Watching Josh tout one kid on his shoulders while chasing the other around the swing-set, or tickle-fighting them in the living room was better than any hunt I have ever been on. Plus, finally I can pick and eat berries without Gabby insisting that we save them for Uncle Josh!

We packed our bags for the final time Thursday night, with me eliminating more items from Josh’s pack than keeping.

“Trust me, you’ll be just fine. Why do you need more than 1 pair of underwear?! It’s only 4 days! . . . you already have a shirt no need to bring 2 let alone 4 . . .”

“WHAT?! Ugh…fine…”

“Dude, trust me. Every ounce we leave here is an ounce you don’t have the schlepp up and down the mountain. Plus, if we get a goat you’ll really thank me. Or a bear. Or three.”

“Ha! Ok, I trust you.”

Another idiot. Excellent. But after 25 years of being my little brother, this one should have known better. Although, he did make sure that we did not bring any bacon with us. Huh.

We left Anchorage in the dark hours of the morning and drove the 2.5 hours to Seward where we’d meet the boat. We bounced from topic to topic catching up, with a few lackluster glows and faint bands from the Aurora to interrupt our thoughts here and there. As we loaded up on Bixler’s boat, our thoughts and eyes turned to the cliffs.

The weather was stunning, with the forecast showing it wouldn’t last past that evening.

“Ok Josh, we’re just gonna have to hit it HARD today. Gun up the mountain, find a goat, bang, flop, chop, and let’s blitz back to the beach for a pick up tonight. Sound good?”

“Perfect.”

“Sounds like a good idea to me, just call me if you need that early pick up and I’ll make it work.” Bixler replied.

As we hopped off the beach, and started to climb reality set in. Josh took a practice shot with the .45-70 so that if he needed to use it he wouldn’t be shooting it for the first time at a charging bear. He slaughtered that stump, giving me some modicum of hope that he’d be able to do it if the stump grew claws and teeth.

As we began to climb I rambled on about the various mushrooms we saw, and which ones I knew we could eat and which ones would leave us glued to the toilet wishing for death. I regaled him with the depths of my stupidity and prowess showing him repeatedly which ravines most resembled the hellacious path my victims and I had packed my moose out of the weekend before.

A couple hours later we finally summited the ridge and left the forest for the alpine tundra. Within seconds I had spotted a black bear feeding in Nopeifornia (combining all the worst aspects of Nopeistan and California, guaranteeing that I wouldn’t ever chase a critter over there).

As I said, “I see a bear” you could feel the tension and anxiety build off of Josh.

“How close?” He panicked (ok, fine, he was quite calm but you could tell it was a façade).

“Way over there on that other ridge. No way we’re getting him, but good to know they are out and about.”

“Ope. I’ve got goats! Looks like a nanny and a kid. Also, nowhere close to being accessible.”

And so we continued, aiming for a depression that I remembered from the prior November that would make for a good campsite. As we unloaded our gear, we didn’t bother to set up camp, opting instead to quickly push onward with lighter packs and try to kill a goat while the sun was shining.

Around noon, we crested a ridge and I immediately hit the deck raising my rifle and jacking a round into the chamber, then grabbing my rangefinder. “JOSH! Let’s shoot a bear!” I whispered excitedly, pointing to the black bear feeding 209 yards upwind of us in a clearing. As Josh wrangled Ava to keep her from alerting the bear, I kept adjusting my rest and moving the crosshairs from the base of the bears neck to squarely on his shoulders.

“Hmmm…ugh…do we really want to kill this bear?” I asked myself and Josh aloud. “I mean it is a decent one, but not huge…plus, the shot might screw up an easy goat we don’t know that could be just ahead…plus, we only have today of good weather, and this will kill a few hours….there are SOOOO many easier places we could go to kill a black bear too….”

As I debated and lamented our good fortune, I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. I immediately pivoted the rifle.

“Second bear. Bigger. Black. Up and to the left, just a bit closer.”

“Got him.”

Without thinking I began to squeeze the trigger, crosshairs rock solid on this bears shoulder. And then I stopped. The memory of the last time I pulled that trigger popped in my head, and occupied my thoughts with packing that moose out 6 days before.

“Nope. I’m not gonna do it. I want to shoot a goat, let’s leave these bears.” I decided.

“Ok, cool.” Josh replied supportively.

Seriously, I lucked out in the brother department—for both of them. I know a lot of guys (maybe myself included up until a week and a half ago) that would have been pissed that I didn’t finish pulling the trigger on that bear. Honestly, I probably could have managed to drop both of them as I have 3 tags. But at peace with my decision we continued to ease up the ridge towards the peak, along the edge of a 300’ cliff.

Five minutes after leaving the bears behind, I found them. “Goat. That’s a billy. That is a good billy. Hand me the spotting scope would you, Josh?”

About 1,000 yards across a canyon with more cliffs and impossible scree fields than I could count was a beautiful billy mountain goat. There he sat surveying his kingdom. Muscular, and blocky with a horses face and two thick, black curved horns jutting above a snow white visage. Say what you will, but few things invoke the majesty of a mountain goat at rest.

“Ok Josh here’s your job: DO NOT LET ME TALK US INTO TRYING TO GET UP THERE AND GET THAT GOAT. Understand?”

“Sure thing, Johnny.” Josh chuckled.

“Huh, I guess all this warm weather has slowed the growth of their coats. I would have thought the hair would be longer already.” I remarked with a tinge of disappointment. “Oh well, I really only had this time to make it work anyways. It is what it is.”
As we sat there a few minutes longer, Josh quipped slyly, “Whacha doin’ there Johnny? Trying to figure out how to get that goat?”

“Of course I am.” I mumbled shamefully. “But we just can’t. If we go up and around that point, we still can’t get across that set of cliffs, let alone over and down to where he is. And that is assuming he doesn’t take a step after I shoot. We can’t get down these cliffs right here, and approach from below him for two reasons, 1) it’s like a 300’ sheer drop with three more sets of cliffs to descend and then climb before seeing the goat again; and 2) he would see us coming a mile away and run off into no man’s land and it would never work. It just can’t be done. We just can’t do it.”

I would mutter variations of this over and over again for the next couple hours. And yet, still, we somehow kept finding ourselves inching just one more ridge up. One more rise over. Closer and closer to the insurmountable obstacle we dubbed, “Madonna” for obvious reasons.

“Great. There are more billies over there. I can see three. Two are really nice, +9” and then there’s the little guy.”

“oh, I see them now.”

“And there’s a bear. Black. Over by that group of nannies and kids. Come on…chase them! Goats are delicious. Way better than those berries.”

Try as we might, our telepathy never came to the rescue and the bear and goats lived peacefully ever after. Stupid vegetarian bear. Dirty hippy.

As we continued onward, I would remark to Josh how different this all looked without a few feet of snow everywhere. Together we would marvel that our dad and I had climbed here in November in that snow.

We reached the base of Madonna, not even 600 yards in a direct line from the billies, and were disappointed at the lack of goats in the bowl tucked behind the peak that we had hoped to find.

“Well. Let’s head up to that ridge, we should be able to see Bear Glacier and maybe there will be some more goats on the far side within the realm of possibility.”

“JD…that is getting pretty close there to trying to get around Madonna….whatcha doin’ buddy?”

“Shut up. Pitter-patter, let’s get at her.”

We filled up our water bottles in a small spring and climbed another 200’ in elevation to the ridge. The view was breathtaking. Goatless, but breathtaking. We removed our packs, and decided to spend some time there hoping something would wander our way. The sun sparkled on the turquoise waters of Resurrection Bay behind us, and the ice-blue lake at the toe of the glacier in front of us. Far out into the Gulf of Alaska we could see the storm building, and we knew we were running out of time. Between intermittent bursts of wonder at the beauty, we recovered from our 7-mile and more than 3000’ elevation gain hike. As we both would say throughout the weekend, that was one of the greatest naps either of us have ever been privileged to take. Other people can have their beaches. I’ll take 50-degree sunshine on a mountain top over looking glaciers any day.

Suddenly the breeze shifted from our backs to our faces, and Ava bolted up from her dreams, woofing insistently with her low alarm-bark.

“Josh, grab your rifle. Now.” I whispered intently as I peered down the cliff below us, gripping my own gun. “That is what Ava does when she smells a brown bear. And I guess moose too after how she was a couple weeks ago. But I don’t think we’re likely to have a moose climb up on us here.”

After 5 minutes of intense peering down and around the rocky crags, vainly straining for any indication of what Ava might have smelled, we decided to move. As we followed a goat trail up the ridge to the base of Madonna, it only confirmed that on the backside of the peak were more impossible cliffs. And so we skirted the peak back and around to where we had left the other goats. Sure enough, as we rounded the corner, there they were. We had billies between 400-600 yards, a gun that has performed well beyond those ranges in my hands, a tag in my pocket and the season was open.

“Hand me the spotter, Josh.” I said before struggling to find enough of a spot to both sit and set up the tripod without sliding backwards or falling forwards off the cliff.

Just then, a fourth billy crested the saddle on the far side of Madonna, below the highest point of Callisto Peak. Immediately, I knew he was something special. I had helped pack an exceptional goat off this mountain and handled 2 others the same size and larger, the previous November that other hunters had taken. None of those goats were in the same class as this billy. The King was holding an audience, and I was stuck at the gates, able to complete my regicide but unable to then take his crown.

“I just can’t. I can’t. We could make it over to there, but then nope. We could go down, but then nope. Nope. Nope. Nope.” I frantically muttered over and over.

“Wow. This must be killing you Johnny.” Josh chimed in helpfully.

Yes, snarkasm this deep is genetic. I deserved that.

“Honestly, Josh. I’m pretty sure we could get down and even back over to him. But then there is just no way we could get him back. Before last week with Charlie the Moose, I would have said that is future-Jonathon’s problem and shot him. But now, I just can’t. Maybe with 3 more guys. And ropes. But even then. UGH. Nope. Let’s just go set up camp.”

As I turned my back on the billies, I admired my brother more than ever before for his good sense in not encouraging me that we could figure it out. We really could not. I love my wife and kids too much to risk that on any animal. I love my brother too much to risk him. I could never have guessed walking away from such an animal within shooting range would be so easy. And I have a moose to thank for that.

We set up camp about a mile down the ridge, keeping sight of the now 18 goats we had found. “Let’s just see how tonight goes, and hope we have some visibility in the morning. Maybe they’ll wander onto our side and we’ll get lucky. There was plenty of sign over there.” I surmised.

“You know, I think Ava’s alert up on that ridge might have been her catching a whiff of the King. He could have been passing below us on that set of cliffs before he came around Madonna. The timing is about right too.” I wondered aloud.

“Could be. Do you regret not shooting one of those bears earlier though?” Josh asked.

“Weirdly, no. I’ve not yet killed a bear, but I’ve come close several times. In each of those instances when I didn’t shoot it was for some safety concern or other things not really in my control. But today, I had everything I needed to kill either one of those bears. I was halfway through the 3.5lbs of pressure on my trigger at one point! But I consciously chose to let them live—and I have no regrets about that at all. I’m kinda surprised actually.” I confessed.

The evening approached, and as daylight faded the clouds rolled in hiding the goats from our view. Throughout the night I would wake up and look to see if the aurora was visible, only to be greeted by a wall of water vapor hiding the stars. As the first glow of the morning came, the decision to stay in our sleeping bags was easy. Hard to chase goats in the cliffs when you cannot see more than 100 yards.

“Ah. Now I see why you were saying it probably makes sense to just call the boat and bail. This is ridiculous! We can’t see ANYTHING, and unless a goat just waltzes into our camp…”

“Yep. And between you and me, I’d rather be snuggling and playing with my kids for 2 days as opposed to staring mindlessly at clouds in a little tent with you. Been there. Done that before. That 16-day caribou/bear hunt I did with Dad was ROUGH. At least this time it isn’t crazy windy.”

Finally around noon on Saturday the clouds opened up for a brief moment and we were able to relocate the goats across the canyon. All 18 of them had either remained in their beds from the night before, or worse, traveled the opposite direction down the canyon wall into Nopeifornia. And there was another bear, feeding on berries like some weirdo instead of chasing the goats my way.

We put on our rain gear and strapped on our packs and headed back towards the ridge where we’d left the bears the day before. “Ok, today, if I see one of those bears I’ll shoot them and we’ll just head back to the beach. I still don’t regret not pulling the trigger yesterday though.” I pronounced.


We reached the ridge just in time for the clouds to close our visibility back under 500 yards. Right then, a wolf began to howl in the bottom of the canyon between us and the goats.

“Is that…” Josh began, before I cut him off saying, “Yep, wolf!”

“Awesome.” We both whispered at each other as the cries faded away in the fog.

“I’m gonna go look over this side and see if I can find anything.” Josh said a while later, before heading to a ridge 100 yards to my left, Ava in tow.

After five minutes I decided to pull out my phone and check the forecast again, as this is one of the lucky areas in Alaska that you can hunt and still have good signal on your cell. Rain increasing throughout the day, cloud ceiling to drop below 2,500’, and winds picking up overnight. Sunday and Monday even worse. Perfect. I then decided to start taking some pictures, as we would no longer need to save phone battery since we were probably headed out that evening.

Before I could take a picture of the clearing where I had passed on the first bear I caught movement out to my left. A wolverine was bounding across the top of the ridge Josh and Ava were on, just further to their right and out of sight. I had a clear shooting lane, and quickly ranged the wolverine at 300 yards.

“JOSH! JOSH! WOLVERINE!!!” I quietly shouted at him, hoping to get his attention before firing a shot. I finally got his attention and focused all my efforts on the animal scurrying to and fro on the ridge. Eventually, the wolverine disappeared into some dwarf spruce off the far side. We walked over there and sat for a moment hoping to catch a glimpse of him in the ravine but to no avail.

“Josh, this is incredible, thanks for coming up. But honestly, looking at the weather, I think we need to head back today if Bixler can get us. Maybe we’ll grab the family and go somewhere else, looking for bears and birds, maybe try some fishing, I don’t know. But there’s not likely to be any visibility before Monday evening at this rate. Are you ok with that?” I asked.

“I was wondering the same thing actually. Sounds good, let’s do it! Besides, your kids are freaking adorable and I would love some more Uncle Josh time!”

What a freaking stud.

I called Bixler, and explained the situation. He said that sounded like the right idea, and that he could probably get us out that evening—earlier being better than later. I let him know I’d call back after we had camp struck and on our backs and that we could be back at the beach in under 2 hours after that.

We reached camp, gorged food and drinks to cut some weight, and then headed back down the mountain. A few times we cut very fresh bear sign, including beds that still had that unmistakable sour-sweat smell of a grizzly. Upon reaching Seward, I called my wife and Josh called his fiancé to let them know we were no longer at risk of being a bear snack.

We spent the next couple days playing with my kids, driving around looking for bears and grouse, and climbing another mountain. We found a few birds on Monday, got some great dog work in, and called it a trip. While we didn’t kill a goat or a bear, I would not change anything about this hunt. I hadn’t had that much one-on-one time with my brother Josh in more than ten years, and I could not be more proud of the man he has become. One of these days I’m sure we’ll find ourselves staring at goats again together, and maybe then we’ll get a chance to kill one. Or not. Either way, I look forward to it.

Awesome!

sounds like a fantastic trip!

justanotherhunter,

You write a great story!

Mark

Great story. Keep them coming!

This and the moose story are great. Your one hell of a story teller. Kind of reminds me of when I was young and dumb. Now I'm old, probably still dumb when it come to hunting. Physical limitations keep me from getting into trouble.

Dave