The year was 1991 and I had drawn a mountain goat tag in the Seven Devils Mountains. My good friend, Rich Laine, was not too happy because he had tried for 14 years to draw this tag and I had gotten one on my first try! Since 1983, I had been writing my hiking guide for the Devils, "Hiking Idaho's Seven Devils", and I had encountered goats on virtually every trip I took. They would walk right into camp and hang around, even in the daytime. My wife, Penny, and I once witnessed a goat touch the front screen of our tent with its nose! I figured this was one animal I could get.
I had scouted my two favorite goat areas that summer: Upper Cannon Lake in the northern Devils and Crystal Lake in the southern Devils. I had found a really nice billy at Crystal Lake, so that's where I decided to go.
I took Friday off school and on Thursday afternoon I headed to the trailhead one mile before Black Lake. It's actually a road that goes all the way into Rankin Mill, and one can take an ATV the first 4 miles to Paradise Flat. I had no ATV so I walked into Paradise Flat and made it right before dark. Here was my problem: I was all alone. This was something that I had to do myself and I wondered if I could. My father-in-law, Herb Woods, had taught me everything I know about hunting, and I was going to put what he taught me to the ultimate test.
Since I was alone, that first night was very unsettling, and I hardly slept a wink because I could hear animals all around me throughout the night. At one point, I looked out of my tent with my flashlight to see which animals were out there, and it suddenly dawned on me that I might not like what I saw, so I immediately got back in my tent. When the Sun finally rose after an endless night, I sprung out of my tent and began the long hike up to the lake at around 6:30 in the morning.
When I got there and set up camp, I actually tried to take a nap and realized I was trying to sleep while I had the hunt of a lifetime. So I crawled out of my bag and readied myself for a hunt. I went to a high knob above the lake and my heart skipped a beat when I saw a goat bedded down at the bottom of a cliff. I waited a long time for it to get up, and I saw him pee like a male horse, which is a sure way to tell the gender. This was the Boone and Crockett billy I had scouted and the hunt was on.
To be continued........
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