Getting a Goat Tag

Colin Kearns is the Senior Deputy Editor of Field and Stream and we had a wonderful conversation about Rick Bass who is an avid hunter and had always wanted to go hunting for a mountain goat. Rick wrote the article in a winter issue of this wonderful magazine but he had an issue. I'll let Colin take it from here. " He lives in Montana and he applied for this mountain goat tag every year. They are very rare, very difficult to get and it is a once-in-a-lifetime type thing. He never expected to draw a tag but on a habit he applied and low and behold he got one. He was very conflicted about whether or not he wanted to go shoot one of these animals because he was more fascinated by seeing them alive than seeing one dead. The whole story is about the conflict of whether or not he wanted to shoot one. Because he did draw a tag, he didn't feel he had a responsibility to at least go pursue a goat and see what he would find. I'm not going to spoil the ending but it is a very exciting story and the other element to this is that these are a very dangerous animal to hunt. It's not like they are going to attack you put the country they live in is extremely treacherous, high elevations on very steep mountain slopes in brutal blizzard conditions and even if you don't shoot one, that doesn't mean the hunt is over because you still have to get back down and it is a wild adventure.