Mountain Climbing
for Billy Goat
By Jim Beyer
Dan Hauck is always looking for something to do in the off-season. He heard that they have a late season billy goat hunt in British Columbia so he booked a hunt with Bolen Lewis Trophy Guiding service. Last February, Dan flew up to Terrace, BC in the Coastal Range, about 50 miles east of Prince Rupert.
Dan described the hunt this way. They spent six days driving around on snowmobiles and looking up trying to spot the goats with scopes. “It is like antelope hunting. You see so many goats up there. We would see 40, 50 or 60 goats in one day.”
“My guide knew exactly what we were getting ourselves into. We would see six or seven billies every day, and he would say no, no, no. We were looking for just the right one,” Dan said.
They spotted the mountain goat the night before and though he was good enough. “We got up the next morning and rode the snowmobiles quite a bit to find him.” He was still there, but way up on top of the rocks. “A sheep or goat hunt is going to be arduous, because you are climbing mountains. Luckily, I only had to climb it once, because I could not have done it back-to-back days to get it down.”
They started at an elevation of only 700 or 800 feet, but the goat was at 3,000 or 4,000 feet. “We spotted him first thing in the morning and it took us four hours to get to him. We couldn’t see him the whole time we were climbing. It was one step forward and two steps back on the ice, then the outfitter pulled out some crampons, something I never used before. We put them on and up the mountain we went,” Dan said.
The guide said, “there are two billies, take that one.” Dan used a Thompson Center .50 caliber Omega. Muzzleloader, with a bipod. It is a modern rifle with a scope, but the rifle shoots black powder. It has a 28-inch stainless-steel barrel, short stock, weighs 7 pounds and is very accurate. “The goat was only about 140 yards away. I shot him a little high. I thought I was right on the money,” Dan said.
“He went right down and rolled, and rolled, and rolled, and rolled, and slid. We had to chase it down the mountain again. That was the scariest moment of my hunting career. The guide was a little guy, 180 pounds and I am 230 pounds. He had to lower me over a rock crevasse to get me into the avalanche chute. He belayed me over the ledge because the goat rode an avalanche down about 800 yards. We had to ice ax and crampon down this glacial avalanche chute to get to him. I was sliding on my butt most of the time, but then I figured out how to walk with my crampons. This was his first experience with mountaineering. It was a blast—exhilarating!” Dan said.
“Our snowmobiles were parked at the bottom of the avalanche chute that the goat slid down,. It was only two hours to pack him out, because he did most of the work. It was vertical. We rough scored him at 51 5/8. That was 5/8ths above the world record. The final, official score was 48 4/8ths so the goat’s horns shrank by three inches over the 60 days that the horns must dry. The goat is in the top ten, perhaps fifth or sixth, taken by a muzzleloader.
Dan Hauck grew up in Riverton and has hunted since he was a teenager. He is now in his mid-30s. He hunted caribou and brown bear up in Alaska, mountain goat in BC, elk in Togwotee pass, and buffalo on the Crow Reservation in Montana.
Bolen Lewis Guide: www.bolenlewis.com
Thompson Center Arms: http://www.tcarms.com
“We spotted him first thing in the morning and it took us four hours to get to him.”
Dan Hauck
Photo Credit: Dan Hauck