Seven Devils mtns in Idaho is, in my opinion, a mountain goat `factory'. Odds of drawing are 1/12 for residents. Beautiful county. Some pics and info are in my feature article on Mtn Goats in Idaho.

I am interested in hunting mountain goats in the lower 48 too, as I cant afford to go to Alaska. But as you can see, I'm from Michigan, and unfortunatly that means I'm not a resident of Idaho If anyone has any information about nonresidents hunting big billies, let me know.

RR09 ... here are the Idaho Regs (web site).

http://fishandgame.idaho.gov/

Idaho has been somewhat unique in that it has not used the pref point system - BUT THAT MAY CHANGE. As I've perused regs for the other 48, I think Idaho affords the best prospects of getting in on a lifetime hunt - though I don't know how it plays out exactly for the non-res. Where I hunted goats you could basically drive right up to where you could start hunting (though I shot mine about 8 miles in) ... other areas are more vast and harder to get into. And quite so.

Look over the regs and peg me with any further questions. I can forward you to IFG people for rules and regs questions.

I personally know a lot of the areas and terrain. I may even be guiding in some of the more extreme units. We'll see how it plays out.

Mountain Goat are awesome creatures.

Serious Hunter, do you have a pic of your goat? That was the first trophy I ever wanted to hunt when I was little reading Pederson's hunting. I did get a goat but it was a wild goat (feral) in Argentina last year.

here ... a pic of a nice billy during scouting ... couldn't find him once season opened ... I got to within 8 yards of this billie, twice.

http://www.woodengineering.com/adventures/Photos/GoatAtLakeZ.jpg

Camp first night was across the `pond' near where we took the pic of the above goat.

my goat: http://www.woodengineering.com/adventures/Photos/JeffWithGoat.jpg ... not the greatest pic.

... long story short - I used up most of my time scouting - in which we saw probably 24 goats, including some very nice billies. Once the season started, the billies vanished. I took a nice nanny - nearly 9 inch horns.

In a perfect world it would have been nice to spend the entire fall looking ... but, alas, the serious hunter is also a serious parent, engineer, teacher, and so on.

I have some other pics of stuff on my web page http://www.serioushunter.com/

jrf

Serious Hunter.....Wow, Thats amazing. I love your stories and photos, videos and that country! Great website!
What a primer for me as I am going to hunt in Unit 27 and 28 for spring bear this year.....Looks like I had better do some climbing! but I think that if I rolled some rocks down them around here.......somebody would get hurt!
Great stories. Thanks for sharing them.

Dear Hunter777 ... thanks for your comments and for taking a look.

What a geat site!! I hope to see my grand daughter out there like that someday. Beautiful photo's. Hope you have some enlarged and framed, sure you do.

Looked at your business site also. That house reminds me of a house we built in Alaska years ago. It had a 6degree prow at each end and a vaulted cieling, 20' up. 8x16 glulamn for a ridge and a 24/12 roof. 24' 2x12 rafters were special ordered, longest we could get. Weren't long enough for tails so we had to add them on with 1x6's. Couple of moose came in almost every day, inspectors I guess!

Wonderful, wonderful site

Don ... thank you very much for taking a look at my site and commenting. To know that the site and the journaling of some of my adventures provides some pleasure or inspiration to others really encourages me - and keeps me pressing on. It's pretty easy in the child-raising years to get otherwise bogged down.

One of the things I want to do this summer is go back up to where we hunted goats. I think I have a fabulous shortcut figured out into the drainage we camped in - plus I have some survival food stashed there that I want to check out (and probably should eat - if still there) - plus, we will take fishing rods, as the fishing on our goat hunt was FANTASTIC.

shatodavis & redrabbit2009, Did you get your draws in this year?