Mountain goat hunting

Hunting season will be here sooner than you know. Several different hunts around the state will open in August. Some on the 1st and others around August 10th. I just received another email from Fish and Game explaining a change in the regulations for hunting mountain goats in Southeast. I don’t know how many folks from the Valley are apt to go there to hunt goats, but you never know what opportunities might arise.

My mountain hunting days are behind me for the most part, but I was curious what the change was and why. The change is that before you can go hunting mountain goats in Southeast, you must have taken and passed a gender identification quiz. Upon successfully completing the quiz, you will receive a certification notice stating that you have successfully passed. You are then required to carry a copy of the certification with you while you’re hunting.

Quoting from the email, the what and the why for the regulation is that “…hunters are now required to take an online mountain goat identification quiz before hunting goats in Southeast Alaska whether hunting with a registration or draw permit. The quiz tests a hunter’s ability to identify male vs. female goats…. The hunter’s information will automatically be placed on a list of those who have passed the quiz once they pass.”

Continuing, “The goal of the new requirement is to encourage hunters to select male goats for harvest. Selectively targeting males for harvest is important for sustainably managing goat populations. Mountain goats have low reproductive rates and often do not reproduce every year. Reducing female harvest helps to maintain the reproductive potential of the population. Females without kids are still eligible for harvest in most areas of Southeast Alaska, however, reducing female harvest will provide more harvest opportunity in the future.”

I eliminated the reference to the website location of the quiz to keep things simple here. If you’re interested, you can look it up on the Fish and Game website. After reading the email, I clicked on the link to the quiz just to see how hard it was and how well (or not) I would do when I took the test.

There are 25 questions, most of which reference specific photographs accompanying the questions. You must get at least 20 answers correct to pass. I took the quiz just to see how well I could do. I had no expectations; I was simply curious. I didn’t think the quiz was that tough, but you do need to pay close attention to the question wording and the photos that the questions referenced. I ended up with a score of 24 correct answers. I have my certificate and am eligible to go hunting for goats in Southeast, not that I have any plans to do so.

I’ve only ever been on one mountain goat hunt where I had a tag, and that was over three decades ago. I was on one other hunt back in the late 1980’s where I was accompanying the permit holder. I came close to getting a shot on the first trip, but my partner fired just as I had begun squeezing my trigger. We were shooting from significantly different angles and were separated by several hundred yards. He made a great shot and the goat dropped in place. A major storm front moved into the mountain ridges where we were, and we got drenched while coming out from the hunting area.

The second hunt had a short timeline because the permit holder had only planned for about four days to hunt. The weather wasn’t too bad except for heavy fog a couple of mornings and one evening. If we could have stayed for a full week to ten days, as I originally suggested during our hunt planning, my partner probably would have gotten a goat, or at least, a shot opportunity.

I had brought along a scoped, 22-caliber revolver on this second hunt and harvested about a half-dozen ptarmigan one day. That turned out to be the only game harvested on that trip. We had a couple of good dinners from that effort.

By the time this is printed, I hope to have all the construction materials on site and work begun on building my replacement storage building. My contractor hopes to have the building up and usable by the end of July. He’s got other jobs after this one and needs to get things moving along. I hope it goes well.