Despite what some people might think, 80% of mountain hunting is glassing, waiting behind good optics. It’s not about how much or how hard you can hike, but how smart you can hunt. You have to let the glass do the walkingfor you, patiently waiting for the right moment. Rushing a stalk and spooking an animal can cost you days of searching for another chance. Patience is what this stalk requires. In any experience, bedded animals have nothing else to do but look for signs of danger, so I prefer to stalk animals when they are on the move and are distracted by feeding and walking. Ibex typically only move early in themornings and late in the afternoons, spending the midday hours lying down in the shade.
Various methods can be used when hunting an ibex. The most difficult one is hiding. If a hunter makes even the smallest mistake: a careless noise or unnecessary move – he/she is the most likely to be discovered with no chance to shoot. Successful hiding is possible even in small areas because ibexes have great affinity with their habitat and will only leave it if strongly troubled by people entering either in the hunt season or at other times. A hunter who wants to hide in an unknown place had better learn about it. In any case, he/she is going to need a binocular, telescopic sight and clothes unseen on-ground during the season. Though rain and wind are not too pleasant, the noise and moving of branches help a hunter to approach the animal. Besides coming from the leeward side one needs backing sunshine. It is better to start in the early morning because the ibex usually grazes at the time, and then goes looking for an afternoon-rest place.
One of the best ways is to find a convenient observation point on a top and watch the surroundings with a binocular or spotting scope. At the same time, animals’ often good merging into the background must be reckoned with. Some contrasts of the background such as green flora can simplify the hunt, but a hunter needs a very good sight to see an animal if it keeps backed by rocks or stony ground especially in cross-country with harsh shadows. One can always start from watching the down before climbing, but ibexes are very sharp-sighted and very attentive to any upward movement because their natural enemies, wolves, usually come so.
Like most alpine hunting, mountain goat hunting is a spot-and-stalk method. The goat’s habit of hanging around steep cliff faces and along knife-edge ridgelines makes it a fairly easy animal to find once you get into the appropriate terrain. Because of the extreme steepness of terrain we move around, the animals are often glassed from below. Getting up to the highest point of land requires too much effort and entails too many risks. Thanks to their coloration and the openness of high mountain country, it’s possible to spot mountain goats at greater distances than probably any other big game animal. An exception is when mountain goats are at lower elevations at or near timberline. But even goats that are bedding in timber will still keep steep cliffs to their back as escape cover. During morning and evening hours, they will move up to the cliff faces, or out to open bowls, basins, and timber-free ledgeswhere they can find their preferred foods. If you’re hunting goats in such a situation, make sure that you’re glassing during the early and late hours of the day while otherwise hidden goats are visible.
Of course, not all mountain goats are in such difficult places to reach. Often a mountain goat can be stalked in a fairly straightforward manner. If you’re a competent marksman who can handle shots of around 300 yards, goats can be approached from directly below if there’s adequate cover to conceal your movements. But since the animals are sensitive to threats coming from below, there’s a good chance that they’ll spot you before too long.When they do, they’ll head for the cliffs if they’ve been experiencing any hunting pressure. A better bet is to use a gulley that lies off to one side or another of the goat you’re after. You can scramble up the bottom of the gulley until you’re even with the goat and then move laterally to a point where you can make your shot.
A mountain goat hunter should bring along whatever climbing equipment he or she is comfortable using. A rope and carabiners can come in handy for retrieving a downed animal in a difficult spot, or for securing an animal that might go over an edge during the butchering process. If you get into a situation where you can approach from above, the goats might not even think to look up. But if they see you above them, they’ll likely panic. They are very shy about threats from above and will probably make a hasty retreat by moving along the face below you to a safe position. No matter the direction of your approach, uphill, side-hill, from above, keep this in mind, if a mountain goat sees you, he isn’t going to forget about you just because you duck behind some boulders. When you vanish from sight, he’s going to get nervous about where you went and will probably leave much more quickly than if you stayed out in the open and attempted a slow, direct approach.
Before a shot one must think if the target animal will fall into an abyss where it’s going to be impossible to fetch it from or get damaged. Sometimes the target may be had to move for a “safer” place through the hunter’s shout or shot provided it doesn’t see where the noise comes from.
