This is the account of a goat hunt I recently went on with my wife and new friend/hunting partner Steve. He is the one that wrote the story. He posted it on the Alaska Outdoor Forum where we frequent, but figure its a good wake up call for all of us as far as what can happen with a simple misplaced step and make sure you have everything on you that you need to deal with such events. Anyways enjoy the story:

I always thought that goats where amazing creatures. As we all know they live their lives in the nastiest of places. Combine this with extreme weather and you can see why they are a difficult animal to harvest. Last year my wife and I tried but terrain and weather left the goats safe on the mountain. I wrote of our story and Alaska_lanche AKA �LUKE� read it and contacted me and suggested that Flor and I come goat hunting with him and Becca.

Well Uncle Sam decided he needed Flor in South America so she could not come. Luke and Becca were gracious enough to still ask me to tag along. Luke and I agreed that Becca would be first shooter and I would get to back her up if the stalk was beyond her skills.

Luke and I chatted several times and discussed our gear and our plan for the hunt.
The fall was gone in a blink of an eye and before I knew it was time to meet them at the Anchorage Airport. It was great to meet such a wonderful young couple. We hit it off right away and where all excited to get to Kodiak.

After a short plane ride we were in Kodiak with sunshine and fair skies. Andrews Air sent a driver and he picked us up and ran us around town so we could get some lunch and buy the few things we could not ship. Great service from those folks.

We quickly repacked our gear and the ground crew loaded our gear up in the Beaver and we were off on our adventure. The weather was clear and the views alone were worth the cost of the ride. As we flew in we saw many goats, this only added to our excitement.
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We landed on the salt and made a base camp. We were wise to use a bear fence, we later learned. We sorted out what we needed and headed up to our spike camp. The trail if you could really call it that, led up through grass, alders, and brush, to brush, grass and alders. Normal Kodiak terrain, we were in a valley with a bowl at the head and a ridge line on each side. As we made our way up we spotted 2 different brown bears walking the ridge tops. We reached our hunting area and Becca found a flat stop to camp. We spotted several goats on the ridge near camp and Luke got his spotter out to glass them. We were stoked to have five goats so near camp.
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