Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/433799
S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S 1 2 7 goats would be impossible to follow and the sun would drop over the horizon. I was running out of terrain and time. I knew I had to reach into my reserves and move up faster to get a shot. With an all-out effort I covered about 300 yards to get within shooting range of the far side of the ledge. One of the billies paused and looked back, giving me a shot but I waited— something told me the big billy would come back and to see what caused all the excitement. Sure enough he did. The image of him above me on that windy ridge will be with me forever. Adrenaline filled my blood but my heart and lungs burned. Above 12,000 feet and light-headed, I looked down the barrel at the shot of a lifetime. I did my best to put the puzzle back together, knowing he wouldn't linger more than a few seconds. At the crack of my rifle, a hard thwack whip-snapped through the clear air and he dropped hard. I saw his head and hump rise, however, as he disappeared toward the disaster of cliffs beyond the ridge. He had been quartering toward me and either I had center-punched him and he was dead on his feet or had broken a shoulder. None of it would matter if he made it into those cliffs. In a hobbling run across a pyramid of watermelon- and grapefruit-size boulders, I caught a glimpse of him at 100 yards, making his way to the edge. On shaky legs and with a heaving chest, I could barely keep him in the scope. I had a moment before he would be gone and instinctively snapped an offhand shot. The bullet walloped him hard, and he hurtled downhill, hooves spinning like a windmill as he accelerated over the crest of the rim and out of sight. The excitement of the moment had turned nauseating. I felt certain I'd find only a hairy wad of hamburger at the bottom of the cliff. But at the edge above the abyss I saw a tuft of white hair a hundred yards below. More than a century earlier a hard-rock miner had cut a gash no more than two yards wide into the mountainside. The billy fell into it dead perfect. If he had dropped two feet to the left or right, he would have surely tumbled 1,500 feet all the way to the bottom. t here are truly certain magic moments that burn deep in a hunter's soul, and this was one of them. Kneeling next to him I ran my hands through his magnificent coat and sensed his wildness with awe. One of his horns had been chipped, but he was in great shape, even after crashing down the near-vertical slope. I found out later that without the missing tip, his thick curved black daggers might have made Boone and Crockett. It really didn't matter, as this hunt is one of my all-time best life experiences, and that's not a reading on a tape measure. Note: While finishing this story, I received grim news of a solo Colorado hunter who fell to his death while packing out his goat of a lifetime. His name was Ted Leach, and although we never met, I feel a kindred spirit and would like to dedicate this story to him. MeMORABILIA My first hunt for mountain goat and the memories from it will always be special. In addition to killing the billy and the great adventure, I came away with a couple "artifacts" that will help me recall those days in the Colorado wilderness. First, when I clambered down the cliff to claim the goat, I found a rusty tin can. The goat had fallen into a gash dug out of the mountainside more than a century ago by a miner, and I imagine that the can had belonged to him. Someone had hacked into the can with a knife and likely ate cold beans from it. I would have liked to have met that man, who probably wandered this remote area dreaming of riches. And when I got home, I boiled out the goat's skull, which is normally thoughtless, greasy work, but something stopped me. This goat's mouth gave me a feeling of peeking into King Tut's tomb, because its teeth appeared to be plated with gold. I'm not talking about tan stains but a plating that looked like polished gold. I dug into the mystery and learned that, although uncommon, the combination of old age and enzymes in a goat's mouth can react with mountain knotweed to coat its teeth with a golden luster. —Ted Schnack