CHAPTER XXV.
HUNTING THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN GOAT.
HERE is, perhaps, no large mammal in this country of which the scientific world and the reading public in general knows so little as of the Rocky Mountain goat (Aplocerus Montanus). There are several reasons for this. First, its limited range. It is confined to a small area of the Rocky Mountains, principally west of the main divide; to Western Montana, Eastern Idaho, the Cascade Range in Washington Territory, a small portion of British Columbia, and to Alaska. Secondly, its habitat is the tops or near the tops of the highest and most rugged peaks and cliffs, where none but the hardiest and most daring hunter may venture in pursuit of it, and so comparatively very few are ever killed and brought into the settlements. Third, it can not be successfully domesticated. Its favorite food is so different from that generally growing in or near any settlement, the atmosphere it breathes, the mean temperature in which it lives, and the ground, or rather rocks, on which it is accustomed to walk, so widely different from those surrounding any human habitation, that the few young that have been captured and brought down to the settlements have soon died. So that none of them are found in parks and zoological gardens, as are specimens of nearly all other large wild animals.
There are fewer mounted skins of this animal in Eastern museums than of any other species indigenous to this country, and hence the public and naturalists have had fewer opportunities to study and become familiar with it than with other wild mammals. Yet it is one of the most beautiful and interesting of all our American quadrupeds, and probably no sportsman or naturalist has ever yet mustered courage and hardihood enough to go where he could kill a Rocky Mountain goat without feeling amply repaid for all the labor and hardship encountered by being able to behold this mystic creature in his lofty mountain home. In view of the limited facilities people have had for studying this animal a somewhat minute description of it may not be amiss here.
In size it is but a trifle larger than the Merino sheep, which, in fact, it closely resembles in many respects. The form of its body is robust, fore parts rather thicker than hinder parts, with a slight hump over shoulders, similar to that of the American bison. Its color is entirely white, or, in some instances, of a light creamy shade. Hair long and pendant. A beard-like tuft of hair on the chin. Long coarse hair, more abundant, on shoulders, neck, and back. Under and intermixed with this long hair there is a close coat of fine, silky, white wool, equal in fineness to that of the Cashmere goat. Hair on face and legs short and without wool. Horns (which are present in both sexes) jet black, small, conical, nearly erect, polished, and curving slightly backward; ringed or wrinkled at the base, much like those of the chamois. Muzzle and hoofs also black. False or accessory hoofs present. Dentition: Incisors, 8 lower; canines, none; molars, 12 upper, 12 lower; total 32. The mountain goat brings forth two or three young at a time, usually late in May or early in June. Slightly gregarious, being frequently found in small bands in winter, but in summer season not more than a single family is usually seen together, and in summer and fall the older males may frequently be found entirely alone. The nose is nearly straight, ears rather long, pointed, and lined with long hair. Tail six to eight inches long, clothed with long hair. Legs thick and short. Hoofs grooved on sole and provided with a thick spongy mass of cartilage in centre, projecting below the outer edges of hoof, enabling the animal to cling firmly to steep or smooth rocks. The dimensions of one adult male specimen measured are as follows: Length from tip of nose to root of tail, 3 feet 7 inches; length of tail, 7 inches; length of head, 11-3/4 inches; length of horns, 8-1/2 inches; diameter of horns at base, 1 inch. Its estimated gross weight is 130 pounds.
The food of the mountain goat consists principally, in summer, of the leaves of the alder and of various mountain shrubs, and in winter of mosses and lichens that grow on the rocks.
Aplocerus Montanus is much more closely allied to the antelope than to the domestic goat, and has few characteristics in common with the latter genus. He is an agile, fearless climber, and appears to delight in scaling the tallest, grandest, and most rugged crags and cliffs to be found in the ranges which he inhabits, not so much in quest of his favorite food, for this grows abundantly lower down, but apparently from a mere spirit of daring; from a desire to breathe the rarest and purest atmosphere obtainable, and to view the grandest scenery under the sun without having his vision in the least obstructed by intervening objects. These forbidding and almost inaccessible crags are the favorite, and nearly the exclusive, haunts of this strange creature, and the hunter who follows it thither must indeed be a daring mountaineer. The goat is frequently found at altitudes of 10,000 to 14,000 feet, where the atmosphere is so rare as to render it difficult indeed for man to climb, yet this fearless creature nimbly leaps from crag to crag, over deep yawning chasms, with no more fear than the domestic lamb feels when bounding over the greensward in an Eastern farmyard.
The hunter literally takes his life in his hand when pursuing the goat, for he must pass over many places where a misstep or a slip of a few inches would plunge him over a precipice, where he would fall thousands of feet, or be hurled into some narrow and deep fissure in the rocks whence escape would be impossible.
Over such rugged and perilous ground he may climb, hour after hour, until he has passed the highest ranges of the elk, the mountain sheep, and all the other game, for the mountain goat, "the American chamois," as he has been aptly termed, ranges higher than any of them. He may toil on until he is far above timber line, and is working his way over and around vast drifts and beds of perpetual snow and ice. Finally he sights his game—a fine handsome specimen—standing fearlessly on some jutting crag, deliberately feeding on some tender lichens or, perhaps, peering proudly out over the lower world. The hunter now changes his course until he can conceal himself behind some neighboring rock, and then crawls stealthily and cautiously up to within rifle range of the game. Then, peering cautiously from behind his cover, he takes careful aim and fires. He is a dead shot and the rifle ball pierces the heart of the quarry, but to his dismay it makes a convulsive bound and down it goes over the precipice, rebounding from crag to crag, until it finally reaches a resting place hundreds of feet below. It may go to where he can never reach it, or may land where he can recover it on his return down the mountain side; but if the latter, it may be torn to fragments and scattered here and there until the hide is useless, the horns are broken off, the skull crushed so that the head is unfit to mount, and the flesh so bruised and mangled that he can scarcely save enough of it to make him a dinner.