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So, our draws left us lacking a little but a few weeks ago my wife managed to snag an interesting muzzleloader buck tag off the reissue list. However, we had never hunted the unit and we wouldn’t have time to scout it. So, much as I hate to do this, we decided to pack in blind.
We picked a spot that looked very huntable in a wilderness area basically on the drive out. To us, it looked like good deer country with the combination of rocky cliffs and scattered trees, timber pockets and shrubby vegetation. However, it wasn’t particularly high country, with the trail starting at 9200 feet. We had debated going into real high alpine stuff, but with the weather forecast, we figured it could turn to snow and that would make for a rough pack trip as the goats would need more food and the deer could get pushed down into the timber.
It was a gamble.

I had to work the first couple of days of the season, so we’d be going in on day 4 of a 9 day season with only 4 days to hunt.

We arrived in the unit at dawn and Katie passed up a dinkathon buck standing in the river watching us drive by. She said she wouldn’t shoot a little one until at least a couple days in, but a part of both of us might have been relieved to just get it done with right then and there as we felt as unprepared as we ever have.

We got to the trailhead mid morning, loaded the goats with packs that we spent the previous day messing with and set off to find a camp before the weather got us. I gambled a bit by not packing a large amount of water but I wanted to keep things light to be able to get in quickly before any weather hit. Thor had about 30 pounds total, but the others were closer to 20-25 pounds each. I had basically just a 2L water bladder and some field dressing gear and first aid stuff. My wife had a similarly light load plus the rifle and possibles bag.

With this being a muzzleloader hunt, we at least needed somewhere to leave a rifle out of the rain. The trail was pretty easy going and I slimmed the fattest boys down a little bit throughout the year by putting them on a diet. They all did well with minimal huffing and puffing and very little drama, as they are pretty experienced at this point in year 4.
[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]
We got to where I wanted to camp near the junction of two trails so as to best position ourselves to not end up in a dry creek. Remember, we hadn’t scouted this, and I’ve camped places that should have had water but didn’t before. (See my mountain goat hunt from 2019 with these boys). It was a bit under 10,000 feet. The area rises to some serious elevation, but I had hoped there would at least be some resident deer around.
[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]
[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]
Just as we got the tarps up and tent up, it began to rain. The goats, being the natural a-holes they are, really didn’t want to share a tarp shelter with the lower ranked boys so we also threw their coats on. Figured the orange coats are a good idea anyway, though we didn’t see anyone around.

[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]
[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]


[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]

TBC….

Last edited by exbiologist; 09/17/22.

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Looking forward to the next chapter.

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Wow! Way cool! Do the goats need to be tied up or will they stay close by? Can’t wait for the rest of the adventure!


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Originally Posted by colorado bob
Looking forward to the next chapter.
+1

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Certainly interesting…


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Waiting to see what happens on this hunt. Interesting!


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That's cool going hunting with goats carrying the gear first I heard of goats being used that way. Mules & Horses are mostly used for that.

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I love these threads you post with the goats. I have owned goats and think they are very cool critters.
Waiting for the next installment.....

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Very cool, best of luck and be safe.

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Looking forward to the rest. Just got off a sheep hunt…those goats would have been nice smile

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This is awesome!


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Love it.

Looking forward to Part Deux.


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interesting thanks for posting , Pete53


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Originally Posted by SKane
Love it.

Looking forward to Part Deux.

This^^^


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Keep it coming, enjoy your goat adventures/


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I could die of old age before part 2 posts......

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Too bad you don't have an Ibex tag - there are some nice ones hanging out near your camp grin

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Originally Posted by MuskegMan
Too bad you don't have an Ibex tag - there are some nice ones hanging out near your camp grin

laugh laugh


[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]

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[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]


[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]

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Looks like fun.

Do your goats carry in their feed, or do they get fed by grazing what’s available?

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Holy smokes, great thread! Can't wait to see the next installment.


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Always enjoy these tales
Best of luck,and as other have mentioned,looking forward to chapter 2

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This is s new one on me! Very interesting.


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Sorry for the delays, life and stuff…[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]
So after we packed and ride out the rain, evening was coming on and we hiked up out of our valley over the ridge toward a meadow that overlooked a much larger ridge and hill side. We brought the goats with us and made Ragnar carry a pack full of rain gear and leashes and stuff.
[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]


As we settled in, the boys laid down which thankfully helps to make them less spooky to game in my opinion.
I immediately heard a bugle and some cow elk cross the meadow. While a few others crossed inside the timber behind us.
About an hour later, Nigel and Ragnar immediately stood up and looked back into the woods, staring intently. We knew something was coming but didn’t know what. A minute or two later a nice bull elk silently walked by the edge of the timber. I filmed it with the phone but hard to make him out.

[Linked Image from i.imgur.com][Linked Image from i.imgur.com]

A little before dark we saw a few more cows and heard several bugles. In the hike in and around the meadow we found no fresh deer sign, all of it pretty old.

At camp, the bulls continued to bugle off and on all night. Nothing intense but steady and put a smile on my face.

We took the goats down to the creek and they showed no interest in drinking, but we stayed down there to cook dinner, eat and filter water. The goats are weird like this, they never seem to drink on the first day. With the rain, I was even less surprised they didn’t drink this time. Still, I’ve got to give them the chance.

The next morning we hiked up a few hundred feet higher to another open hill side. The elk were still bugling a little bit off and on. We tied the goats up in the timber about a hundred yards from the meadow and the ridge. Katie immediately spotted a small herd of elk in the dark below us.

[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]

As the sun rose, we found three small bull elk hanging out with a large bull moose. A herd of 20 elk with 1 bull left the big meadow a few minutes after the sun hit grass.

We sat the the edge of the meadow glassing across the valley we were camped on and while seeing all sorts of elk, still no deer. The mountain range we were on went considerably higher so we wondered if the deer only moved through the area later in the season. So we had a hard decision to make, pack up camp and move higher or stay put and Hunt even further up mountain going through a ton of black timber on our way to higher ridges. In one direction the mountain turned to really high peaks and stayed in the wilderness, the other, there’s was a very high, gradual, open ridge line that had some motorized trails and some presumably closed roads ( looking at aerials and maps we could see logging activity but didn’t appear as those open roads accessed each cut over clearing.

I sure didn’t like the idea of packing through a wilderness only to get to motorized trails though, but we thought we needed to get higher and we were only a few miles away. Ultimately we decided we had try a new spot as we only had four total days and 1.5 into it we hadn’t seen a deer yet.

It sucked packing up wet [bleep] in a hurry but we knew it would rain again and so we wanted to get moving quickly. No meticulous folding of our stuff, we just threw it into the packs, weighed them and took off. Several goats looked off balance, but nothing we couldn’t fix with a few rocks.
[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]
We gained about 1500 feet, mostly on trail over the next few hours with only a little drizzle on us. As we created out of the wilderness into the logged area we finally saw a doe deer! We set up camp near some sort of corral that has a nice spring and big spruces for weather protection. By about three the thunder started rolling in again just as we got the tent up and the rain picked up. Didn’t bother with tarp shelters this time.

More to come…

[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]


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That night after the afternoon storm we hiked back towards where we saw the doe as there was a logged clearing just past there.
We decided to leave the goats in camp tied up on leashes. Wouldn’t you know but not 400 yards from camp we saw a smallish bear scoot across the trail. I kinda felt like I was committed to keep going and hope the bear didn’t mess with the goats. It wasn’t very large and the goats were probably quite a bit bigger than the bear, so I crossed my fingers and kept going.

We got to the edge of a cut and we could hear ATVs and saw a few in the distance. I was willing to accept that was a risk but was definitely disappointed to have packed into here the hard way. We were now over 11,000 feet and sure enough we were in deer. We decided on the hike up that the first legal buck would get our attention and sure enough we saw two yearling forkies in velvet with two other does and fawns as we’re down to only one full day left. Katie didn’t hesitate and immediately started to stalk them. I was carrying the shooting sticks and stayed behind while she crunched through the slash. She got to within 60 yards or so and took an offhand shot while the bucks were focused on the sound of an ATV on the other side of the cut. She frickin missed! The buck turned his head to look back at the shot and then trotted off with the others while Katie reloaded in a drizzle.
She was pretty hard on herself but I was secretly hoping it was a blessing in disguise.
I tried not to laugh at her so I shut my mouth out my arm around her and kept walking. We crossed a few more openings and crossed a 4wheeler trail or possibly full size vehicle two track into a pretty recent cut and saw two more bucks, this time they were nice ones. Both in velvet. Both big high four points but not very wide. They were a bit over 150 yards and Katie tried to close the distance by putting a big slash pile between her and deer but as soon as she came out from around the pile the crunching of all the sticks and crap gave her away and the bucks ran. We tried to find them in the meadow past the timber strip and found two more bucks, these two smaller but hard antlered. The stuck around long enough for Katie to get set up for a 100 yard shot but we’re already alerted to us and quickly walked off into the timber as we lost light.

[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]

I was relieved to see the goats were fine when I got back to camp and that our food haven’t been messed with.


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It’s like I’m on the hunt…but without the exhaustion and suffering. 😎 Thanks for sharing this interesting adventure. Keeping an eye out for future installments.

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Over dinner that night we did a little more map studying and decided to come back to that spot as they were at least four bucks around. But we needed to stay out of the slash so we chose a route through uncut black timber(this was hard to figure out as the aerial photos didn’t show all the logged areas) and focus on setting up in the meadow where the last two bucks were at.

[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]
We got into the meadow that morning a bit before daylight and Katie immediately saw a deer waking through the meadow but couldn’t make out antlers so we let it go. We heard a few more bugles and a cow and raghorn bull ran across the meadow.

[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]

It began to rain pretty hard and we put all our gear on and rode it out under some trees. It turned to sleet or small hail for a bit and we heard a few more distant bugles and could hear the rumble of ATVs in the area but didn’t see any.

When the storm let you we sat another cut and saw nothing else so went back to camp which was maybe only 30 minutes away and took a good nap.

That evening we went up a big higher closer to 11,300 feet and found another cut amongst a series of natural openings and sparser timber on a ridge. It was only 5:30 and we instantly found a herd of deer feeding and one buck picked its head up amongst the does and fawns. He was in velvet and was a nice solid 4 point, maybe a little smaller than the two bucks in the slash we saw the night before, but he would do.

Last edited by exbiologist; 09/19/22.

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Originally Posted by Sakoluvr
Wow! Way cool! Do the goats need to be tied up or will they stay close by? Can’t wait for the rest of the adventure!

The goats will stay close. I don’t have to tie them up at night but any time I leave them loose I wake up to hear them walking around and eating things, so I prefer that they stay tied up at night. I never leash them when hiking or when hanging around camp.


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Originally Posted by MuskegMan
Too bad you don't have an Ibex tag - there are some nice ones hanging out near your camp grin
Ha!


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Great story. Can’t wait to hear the rest. Keep it coming!!


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Doesn’t get any better than DIY hard ass work!

Good stuff man! Thanks for all your work putting the story/pics up to share. I always look forward to reading these. 👍

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One of the very best threads on here! Thanks for the effort...................

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Originally Posted by gunnut308
Doesn’t get any better than DIY hard ass work!

Good stuff man! Thanks for all your work putting the story/pics up to share. I always look forward to reading these. 👍


Big +1


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Originally Posted by exbiologist
Originally Posted by Sakoluvr
Wow! Way cool! Do the goats need to be tied up or will they stay close by? Can’t wait for the rest of the adventure!

The goats will stay close. I don’t have to tie them up at night but any time I leave them loose I wake up to hear them walking around and eating things, so I prefer that they stay tied up at night. I never leash them when hiking or when hanging around camp.

Fascinating. So they just follow your lead down the trail?

Do you transport them in a horse type trailer? Are using goats as pack animals somewhat common?

Can’t wait for more! One of the best threads ever


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Goats are always fun to have around. A friend in WY who is a mule deer super nut has 6-8 of them. We went 10-12 miles into the Wind Rivers one time for golden trout and those goats packed a bunch of beer in for me.

It was so nice of them…

There is a place in Evanston that rents them out to hunters.



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Great story, keep it coming

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Too cool!!!


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Excruciating


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All these fellas (including me) waiting with baited breath for the next episode of “As the Goat Roams”.

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Originally Posted by Sakoluvr
Originally Posted by exbiologist
Originally Posted by Sakoluvr
Wow! Way cool! Do the goats need to be tied up or will they stay close by? Can’t wait for the rest of the adventure!

The goats will stay close. I don’t have to tie them up at night but any time I leave them loose I wake up to hear them walking around and eating things, so I prefer that they stay tied up at night. I never leash them when hiking or when hanging around camp.

Fascinating. So they just follow your lead down the trail?

Do you transport them in a horse type trailer? Are using goats as pack animals somewhat common?

Can’t wait for more! One of the best threads ever

Right, they just follow. I bottle fed them since they were about 2-3 days old. I don’t use a horse trailer normally, 5 fits ok in the back of my F150 with a stock rack around the sides. When I had 7 it was a bit much and the truck would squat really badly.
I wouldn’t say they are common, but in my my circles they seem more common as pack animals than llamas. They are much friendlier but hate water and are smaller than llamas. So while each individual can’t pack as much, they seem easier to handle to me as you don’t have to physically touch them while hiking.


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The deer bedded down as we approached and lost sight of them in the logged clearing. We knew we were close and I all of a sudden caught an ear pointed at us. I told my wife to get on the sticks and get ready as they would probably bolt any second now…

[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]
But they didn’t. The doe just sat there, it never said anything. So we tried like hell to make out the buck bedded with them. She was about 35 yards away and not moving but seemed to tolerate us. So we kept side stepping, trying to get a view of the buck. Found a couple fawns and two more does.

[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]
Then three deer stood up. And then the buck. Katie was already on the sticks and the buck was under 50 yards away.

She said he’s “quartering away, should it shoot?” I said he’ll yes and then the buck pivoted back to broadside another step and Katie shot.

He ran and in the binos I could see red on his side. He stopped after 75 yards and got wobbly next to a broken tree. Then ran again.

Katie reloaded and we waited 10 minutes. I thought the shot was a little far back, but he was quartering away slightly and it was still in the ribs not the guts. Could have been a liver hit though.

We slowly walked up to the spot we last saw him and found nothing. The six other deer were standing there with no buck and they trotted off, so we felt confident he would be right there in the slash. Finding nothing, we walked back to the spot he was standing initially and found neither blood nor hair. We tried to find something all along the likely track between where he stood and and where he got wobbly. Nothing.
Now we started to semi circles in the direction he ran. Nothing. 400 yards from where we marked his last known spot over the next two hours to true dark and found nothing.
I found more elk and more does and fawns(or maybe the same ones) but no dead buck.
At dark it was a tough walk back to camp. Katie was tearing up a little bit and I was frustrated by another lack of blood trail from a muzzleloader hit.

We got back to the spot at dawn the next day. We looked again for blood and began circling and circling. Still nothing. No birds, no coyotes, no bears giving us a clue. We followed every crow and gray jay sound that seemed excited. We used our noses. Nothing.

2 hours later we decided to hike back and maybe see if the goats could help. They alert at game and are always interested in dead game, so maybe they would alert.

We saw more hunters walk through the area and asked if they had seen anything, but they were all looking for elk and hadn’t noticed any deer, much less a dead one.

About an hour and a half later we arrived with the goats and spent two more hours circling, following bird sounds and letting the goats wander. Twice they got interested in smells and and we went towards the smell, but nothing. And then they’d go back to eating.
[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]
Nothing. We were at a loss and out of time. We had to start heading back to the truck soon, and we had no clues. We were both certain of the hit and I was certain he was dead, but he wasn’t dead within 500 yards of there. It sucked. But we had to give up. The end.


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Damn tough pill to swallow there. $hitty feeling knowing something is out there, but you can’t find it and recover it. Tell your wife to keep her head up and shake it off. There will be more hunts and more shot opportunities. Sometimes things just aren’t meant to be. I appreciate you sharing the hunt. Very cool.

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damn, hoping for a happy ending

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Very interesting story, too bad about the buck, but such things happen when you hunt for a long time.
The Goats are just cool.

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Originally Posted by exbiologist
Originally Posted by Sakoluvr
Originally Posted by exbiologist
Originally Posted by Sakoluvr
Wow! Way cool! Do the goats need to be tied up or will they stay close by? Can’t wait for the rest of the adventure!

The goats will stay close. I don’t have to tie them up at night but any time I leave them loose I wake up to hear them walking around and eating things, so I prefer that they stay tied up at night. I never leash them when hiking or when hanging around camp.

Fascinating. So they just follow your lead down the trail?

Do you transport them in a horse type trailer? Are using goats as pack animals somewhat common?

Can’t wait for more! One of the best threads ever

Right, they just follow. I bottle fed them since they were about 2-3 days old. I don’t use a horse trailer normally, 5 fits ok in the back of my F150 with a stock rack around the sides. When I had 7 it was a bit much and the truck would squat really badly.
I wouldn’t say they are common, but in my my circles they seem more common as pack animals than llamas. They are much friendlier but hate water and are smaller than llamas. So while each individual can’t pack as much, they seem easier to handle to me as you don’t have to physically touch them while hiking.

What species are the goats? I have fainting goats at home, not much use other than entertainment. We bought the male and female, they had a kid which we handled since birth and she is very social and agreeable to human touch, they others not as much.

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Thanks for allowing us to tag along!


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Sorry about the buck. But thanks for taking us along in a very cool adventure.

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Using powerbelts? Just curious. I've had great blood trails with large diameter round balls though few use them. Sorry you didn't recover him.

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Yeah, Powerbelts. I think I’m about done with them.


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Originally Posted by 257Bob
What species are the goats? I have fainting goats at home, not much use other than entertainment. We bought the male and female, they had a kid which we handled since birth and she is very social and agreeable to human touch, they others not as much.

These are all alpines and alpine mixes. They are a dairy breed.


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Originally Posted by exbiologist
Yeah, Powerbelts. I think I’m about done with them.


Ive taken 5 elk ( 1 big bull and 4 cows) and 4 deer with the platinum power belts. Ive had no issues with them and they are the most accurate out of my 3 ML rifles


Wonderful report. Sorry for you and wife to lose that buck. That's hunting with primitive weapons and of course happens often with rifles. . Evaluate try and limit loss

thanks for great report

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Only bull I ever lost was with power belts. I'd go to either these:

https://www.muzzleloading-bullets.com/pricesordering/

Or a rig that will shoot big patched roundballs. But the easy button would be shooting the No Excuses. Just my experience.

Good story and love the goats.

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Rats!!! I feel sorry for your wife! Always a gut punch feeling to lose an animal, especially after a long search. Not much consolation for her, but all of us know if we hunt long enough this will happen. No rhyme or reason, it just does.

Yet, that was an excellent hunting story. Thank you for sharing and taking us along for the trip.

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Thanks for sharing.

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Well, not the outcome you and your wife were hoping for but we've all experienced some form of unexplained bizarreness.

Great story and accompanying captures!


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enjoyed the story and the pictures ,sometimes the outcome we all have experienced is one we never forget good or sad , believe me it still must have been fun . your goats are sure neat to see in the pictures.


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Originally Posted by exbiologist
Yeah, Powerbelts. I think I’m about done with them.

PBS are awful.
XTP s

The end


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Fantastic adventure none the less,at least she got some shots off.
It is never easy to know of a hit and a lost animal,but it happens.
Thanks for sharing this ,and taking us along.
Very cool indeed.

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Sorry to here about losing the deer. I tried powerbelts once. Very accurate but I found them lacking on penetration. Went back to a big heavy chunk of lead.


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I’ve found powerbelts to be very accurate in my muzzleloaders. No issues on smaller whitetails in the South, but I’m shooting only 100 grains of pellets also. Maybe the slower than max load helps expansion?

Anyway, sorry to hear you guys didn’t find the deer. If you saw red on the side, there had to be some faint blood somewhere. I’m colorblind and finding small blood traces is very difficult for me.

Awesome story and goats. I sure we she would have found her deer.

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Thank you.
I enjoyed your story.
Sorry you left empty of game, but full of memories.
A tip of the hat to you two, and the goats.

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Great thread! Thanks so much for sharing!

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Great report! Thanks for sharing! Sorry to hear about the lost animal. I'm not a fan of Powerbelts either.


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Powerbelts suck but you are screwed because of the no sabot Colorado rule. Try Thor with diameter matched to your barrel diameter. Thanks for your pack goat stories.

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I think Power Belts are ok since you’re still using a full diameter bullet.


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Nav: Thanks for the clarification. What I meant to say is that I like the Thor as a legal in CO muzzleloader bullet compared to a Powerbelt. Where sabots are legal I use Precision Rifle Dead Center duplex because they shoot so flat.

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That they do…


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