Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Backpack Hunting Mountain goat gear review

Admittedly I could take in a lot more stuff because I had goats with me, but I love the gear reviews in this section, so figured I’d throw out a few thoughts on stuff.

Clothing

The Kuiu attack pants were super versatile and I wore them the whole trip. Love the hip zips. I’ll say it, they cool the junk. As it cooled off, I zipped them up. Pockets were perfect, and just the right amount of stretch. Temps ranged from the low 80s down low to the 20s up high. They did great and I love them.
I also had some older cabelas thin micro fleece pants but never wore them.

I mostly wore a Mountain Hardware Photon 1/4 zip not quite blaze orange dot air ventilated shirt the first two days. It definitely vents and kept me pretty cool. It stunk a little bit, but not much. Also wore Cabelas instinct shirt. It’s ok, not really sure if it’s anything special.

For skivvies, I mostly wore extra long Nike Combat in the hopes to avoid chafing. They did fine, but I also made sure to use baby wipes at night to take any salt off. Chafing has been a problem in the past, but I stayed in front of it between gear and cleaning. Never used body glide, but have considered it.

For socks, I started off with Cabelas cooling synthetic socks. They sucked for me. For some reason, the backs of my heels really began to hurt on day one going up hill. I switched to merino wool and the problems went away. These were two year old Cabelas Meindel Fit IQ boots that I wore almost daily. They were broken in. I never got too hot with the the merino socks. Not sure the brand. This was my first time with merino wool socks, and I’m pretty pleased.

For outer layers I really brought more than I needed but none of them took up much room or weight individually. I brought the Kuiu super down ultra, first lite Uncompahgre vest and Black Diamond Access. Oh and orange Kuiu Guide vest. Never wore the guide vest. I did find the Uncompahgre vest to offer just right warmth when the sun went Down and it layered well enough on a tight fitting Black diamond jacket when it got cold. Didn’t really wear the Kuiu jacket much, but did use it as more padding inside the other jacket as a pillow with the First Lite vest surrounding the other two because I preferred how it felt.

I brought two pair of tactical gloves. One insulated pair and one vented pair, both from Oakley. Never wore them but should have when in the brush to save my hands when holding onto trees and bushes to control my ascent or descent. My hands were a wreck after day three.

Now, I’ll also add that my buddy Adam is not a gear whore like me. He wore jeans and some other kind of cotton pants, a big heavy flannel, some cotton T-shirts and he never complained once about his gear.

For rain gear, we only brought plastic ponchos.

More to come on the other gear....

Meant to add this a while ago. For gun stuff, I brought a Kimber in 280 AI, Leupold Vx-3i and strapped it to my frame pack to keep my hands free . I brought a gun case which was stupid. It was new gun and I didn't want to beat it up. Should have left that behind. 20 rounds of ammo seems like overkill and a waste of space and weight on this hunt, especially when you only use one shot. But I knew the reputation for mountain goats to be tough or need follow up shots to prevent suicide spills and I wanted to have a few available if I had to deal with any critters that wanted to eat my goats or if I had to put a goat down.
I brought a Primos Triggerstick and buddy used Swiss Gear hiking staff. At the moment of truth, I tossed the trigger sick and found an old log to lay over. But I wasn't sure that would be an option. Timberline was right below the cliffs, so that worked out well. If I needed to get above prone in the rocks above, I probably would have used it. Wife has really taken to liking it for antelope and deer. It held up damn well as I used it as a hiking staff for 3 days is some rough stuff including to really control some descents.
For optics I brought 12x50 Vortex Diamondback. They worked well but still needed to bust out the little 20-40x Konus compact spotting scope and little aluminum tripod on occasion. There were some white rocks we saw on a distant hillside that we were sure were goats until we put the scope on them.
Tent was an older Mountain Hardware dome tent. It was just big enough for two guys. We opted not to use it two of the nights out and just slept on the ground. It's pain in the butt to set up and we also couldn't pack in just it's carrying bag because it was too bulky for the pack goats to put on one side in a pannier. I have some larger pannier this year, so that won't be an issue. Didn't put any sleeping pads on the goats, strapped those to our frames after the pain it had been on their first overnight trying to keep those balanced.
I strapped my Badlands Diablo daypack to my frame, which was pointless. The thinking was I might have a basecamp and would want to day hunt from there. That didn't happen, so we just carried everything with us wherever we went. Making a daypack just more gear storage. Could have saved bulk and weight on myself by just putting the gear in there into a dry bag or something similar. I don't envision leaving the goats behind right now on a hunt, so they can act as my daypack. Obviously cant risk them getting scattered by a bear or something and taking my water with them, but I think that's all I need and I have a Kuiu Attack pack that would suffice for something like that.
Other stuff, what's not to like about Jet Boils?
For water filtration, found a WalMart squeeze filtration system that I think is faster than the pumps I've used in the past. Also liked that it had a second bag. Needed that second bag because my buddy oversqueezed one on day 4, tearing a hole around the cap. I'll buy some more bags for next time. When we found water on day 2 (none to be found on day 1), we filled all the bags plus our bladders. We did not have the bags full on the way in, forcing us to have a dry camp on the first night with none of the mapped springs or creeks running.