Fastriot- here you go!
We drove up to the spot we were going to hike form Friday after work/school. It poured rain all night and the little two man tent that I bought back in 1999 leaked ad got both of our down sleeping bags wet at the foot end and up one side each. The next morning we put them in the car with the heater blasting while we got packed up. We had slept in a little till 8am since it was raining out and the mountain was fogged in. As we were packing up the skies started to clear
We had 4km of bushwacking until we broke treeline.
Once we were up on the mountain we spotted a lone goat about 1km away on a small cliff that was lower down then us and just above treeline. We watched the goat for a couple minutes as we were walking along a ridge. I was confident that we were far enough away that the goat wouldn't spook even though we were skylined. My daughter said hey he's running away we scared him! He ran down the cliff and disappeared into the trees. I was standing there in disbelief we'd spooked the goat from that far away......and my daughter said a bear! I looked through the binos and a grizz was running down the cliff hot on the trail of the goat! We aren't sure what happened as we lost sight of both in the timber. Later that day we camped where we were could glass too billies up in the cliffs and closer to camp was a one-horned nanny and her kid.
The next morning we awoke to the sound of snow on the tent, the new, first time being used floorless Black Diamond Megalight. My seam sealing held up and we stayed dry. The snow was wet and mixed with rain. Also the mountain was fogged in so we stayed dry in the tent until 10am. At 10 it stopped raining/snowing so we got out and milled around. Then the clouds started to lift. We decided to load our packs and go look for the billies.
We were about 1km from camp and I kept stopping to glass with the binos as we went. I looked up on the ridge and there looking at us was a goat about 175m away. He must have just come over the ridge as I had glassed that area a few times as we approached it. I slung off my pack, grabbed the rifle from it, chambered a round, put on the safety, handed it to my daughter and said "get ready". We were in the middle of a boulder field and she climbed on top of a rock that was 3 ft high, 2ft wide, and 5ft long. It was flat topped and sloping uphill a little. She couldn't get enough elevation with the bench model (9") bi-pod, so after I got the spotter and tripod from my pack I threw it on the rock. With the addiation of the pack the rifle could now be lined up on the goat. As I was setting up the spotter she said there is it's kid just coming over the ridge top (due to the big goat and smaller goat she thought it was the nanny and kid we saw the night before). A quick look through the spotter at the bottom, bigger goat I could tell from his bases that he was a billy. I then shifted my focus to the smaller goat that was 10 yards higher up and could see that it was not the kid but a small billy, probably a two year old. I said shoot that bottom one, he's a nice billy. She shot and hit him in the center of the shoulder and due to the angle it exited just behind and on top of the far shoulder. The little billy took off running and the hit billy was picking his way down the cliff, feeling a lil sick I imagine. When he was facing us she fired one into his lower neck frontal and he was down. Luckly he died on a small ledge and didn't fall down the cliff.
Up the cliff we went to get pics, remove the cape and head, and de-bone and bag the meat.
We hiked back to camp that night and stashed the meat a couple hundreds yards from camp. I slept light that night listening for the grizz, but all was fine.
The next morning was cold and clear. while we were packing up a golden eagle flew right over us, about 40m up. My daughter impressed me taking a shoulder of meat and the cape! Her bag was full so I took her sleeping bag, camp and the rest of the meat and head. At home I weighed her pack that was 40lbs.
Rifle for the hunt was a 243 Axis, not exactly a bear stopper!
