Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game 7 in, 8 out

Hard to say where all this adventure starts, but if you want some background on the pack goats, start here.

https://www.24hourcampfire.com/ubbt...75945/more-on-the-packgoats#Post12975945

For those more interested in this mountain goat hunt, I found out I drew the license back in May. However, Colorado had some wicked snows this past year and I couldn’t get close to my goat country until August, and even then I didn’t find a mountain goat for various reasons related to gambling on getting into the most remote section of the unit.

So, the season opened and I haven’t seen a goat and from some discussions with those in the know, it sounded like all the DIY guys were headed to the easiest place. My plan was to stay mobile and drainage and ridge hop until I found a goat, letting the 7 kids carry nearly everything on their first hunt as 18 month olds. I had budgeted 5 days for this, had to be back at least briefly and the season would remain open for a few more days if I needed to make an additional banzai run.

I had room for one person to come along, and my buddy Adam volunteered. I had been on his mountain goat hunt 10 years ago and he blew off a muzzleloader hunt for me on this adventure. He was the right guy for the job as he could put up with damn near anything and has with some of my hair brained schemes.

Day 1

We got to the trailhead, loaded the goats and headed out just before 2pm. The goal was to get into Big Devil Basin that night but we pretty quickly realized this 3500 feet we had to gain wasn’t going to happen by that night. We trudged up the mountain on a decent trail and found our first mountain goats on a distant mountainside by about 4pm.


In examining the map, The goats were at the head of Manson Creek, which butted up to Big Devil and cliffed out if we headed directly at them from our current location. So we stayed the course.





However, we found no water in any spring or ephemeral drainage on the way up. So by 7pm we set camp and set out to investigate the last springs indicated on the map and GPS, but with no luck. We had been conservative enough with water for ourselves on the way in so we figured we’d be ok to get to Big Devil, but would be fughed if there was no water there. There was not enough spare water for a hot meal that night, so we simply ate our sandwiches for dinner. The step counter said we did 7.5 miles, which may have been a little optimistic but we were ready for bed as soon as it got dark. Elevation gain was about 2500 feet. To expedite the repacking in the morning, we decided not to bother with getting the tent out. Besides, it was a beautiful night.