By Caleb Buck

Why Goats?

“You take your goats on hunting trips!?”

This is a question I hear often when I meet new people. Many seem intrigued by what exactly that means and are curious to learn more about how these cute critters, famous for goat yoga, could possibly contribute to a backcountry hunting trip. I had reached that point in my life where my 20’s were long gone, but my desire for adventures in the mountains was stronger than ever. Now in my late 30s, I take a more intentional approach to planning future adventures, understanding that my physical abilities will degrade over time. Incorporating packgoats into my hunts was a deliberate choice to stay afield for as many years as possible. Packgoats help carry gear in and the harvest back out, easing the strain on my body so I can hunt safer, go farther, and keep returning to the mountains for years to come.

The Upside

While all pack animals are valued for their ability to carry gear, packgoats offer several distinct advantages over larger species. Most notably, they can travel anywhere a human can. Their compact size and natural agility allow them to move easily over fallen trees and rocky terrain, making it easy for them to stay at your side throughout an entire hunt. This allows you to remain engaged in your adventure instead of worrying about getting back to camp to feed and check on your animals.

Another benefit is that a well-trained packgoat recognizes you as the leader of the herd and naturally wants to follow. This means you don’t always need to hold their lead, a heavy-duty leash. However, it’s still smart to keep control of the lead in areas where they’re more likely to spook or wander, such as near a trailhead. Because of this instinctive desire to stay with you, you’ll often have a free hand to grab your binoculars or rangefinder when you need them.

"Packgoats help carry gear in and the harvest back out, easing the strain on my body so I can hunt safer, go farther, and keep returning to the mountains for years to come."

A less obvious advantage is the opportunity to learn about herd and prey animal behavior by observing your packgoats in the mountains. While goat behavior doesn’t perfectly mirror that of elk, paying attention to details such as preferred browse or chosen travel routes can offer valuable insight. Over time, these observations can help you think more like an elk and better understand how prey animals use the landscape.

The Downside

Owning pack animals comes with responsibility both at home and in the field. While packgoats offer many benefits, they also come with unique challenges that should be carefully considered. Their agility and ability to go anywhere is beneficial in the mountains, but it can be a problem at home. Goats are notorious escape artists and standard barb wire fencing is ineffective at containing them. Some sort of woven fencing is a must and even then you may still have the occasional escapee.

Another important consideration is the susceptibility of goats to various parasites. There are a wide range of parasites that thrive in warm, damp environments, and many goat breeds have not developed a natural resistance to these foreign organisms. As a result, high-humidity climates can be particularly challenging for new goat owners and failing to manage your goats for parasites can have fatal consequences.The final downside I want to mention applies to all pack animals. Bringing pack animals along on hunting or hiking trips adds extra responsibilities in the field. Although they can contribute to a hunt by reducing the physical weight of your backpack, their presence also introduces extra daily tasks that will occupy some of your time and mental energy. Seeing your animals return to the trailhead after a successful hunt is extremely rewarding, but they can introduce distractions that may affect the overall experience.

Training

When it comes to training packgoats, it is worth noting that the same training strategies that work well for humans don’t necessarily work well for goats. Physical fitness is certainly important, but the trust and bond that is developed while training a pack animal is arguably more important. If you push a packgoat too hard during training, you risk potentially damaging your relationship with that animal and their willingness to trust you in the field. It is important to understand their limits and learn how to identify when they have reached that limit.

The physical aspects of training a goat involve spending time hiking (or even running) with your animals and getting them used to the feel of their packs. Their pack includes a saddle that distributes weight and panniers on each side for gear. Once a goat is comfortable with its pack, weight can be added gradually during training hikes, taking care not to increase the load too quickly.How much weight can a pack goat carry? According to the North American Packgoat Association, most can carry 10–20% of their body weight, while top performers can handle up to 30%. This means an average packgoat weighing 200 pounds can carry a load of 20-40 pounds while an elite-level packgoat could carry as much as 60 pounds. Similarly to humans, terrain difficulty and distance also play a key role in determining a safe load.

Logistics

Any adventure that involves pack animals requires thorough planning. Not only are you planning for your own health, safety, and success, but you are now responsible for your animals as well. In addition to physical training and gear, transportation to the trailhead is another important logistical hurdle that needs to be addressed.

Packgoats are smaller than horses or llamas which allows for greater flexibility in transportation. Many packgoat owners utilize an enclosed hauler mounted in the bed of their truck which allows the goats to enjoy the ride utilizing the vehicle’s soft suspension. This approach eliminates the need to rent or own a trailer, but you sacrifice being able to haul your own gear and coolers in the bed.

"It was as if they were slowly discovering some long-forgotten connection to the mountains of Europe where their ancestors originated, an oddly poetic homecoming of sorts."

For long trips where large coolers or freezers are required, a stock trailer or a second vehicle are almost a necessity. Using a stock trailer can provide your animals with more room to move around during the ride, but the suspension of a trailer is much less forgiving and this needs to be considered when you are planning your trip.

The Hunt

I was four years into raising goats when I took them on their first major trip, a backcountry archery elk hunt in Wyoming’s Wind River Range. This trip became the first major test of my skills as a packgoat owner as we planned to pack in 10 miles and set up a lightweight base camp.

The first lesson I learned was during training. I used local trails to replicate the 10-mile route we would be hiking in Wyoming, cautiously increasing pack weight and mileage each week. While this approach worked for me, I came to realize that combining heavy weight and long miles every week during training was negatively impacting the attitude of my animals. I corrected this in our last month of training, but still planned on everyone being able to haul meat back to the trailhead after a successful hunt.

I arrived several days earlier than the rest of my hunting party, giving my animals and I time to acclimate and recover after our ~1200-mile drive from Missouri to Wyoming. It was really rewarding to see my goats experiencing big mountains for the first time and watching them develop confidence during our trip. It was as if they were slowly discovering some long-forgotten connection to the mountains of Europe where their ancestors originated, an oddly poetic homecoming of sorts.

I did everything I could to prepare for the trip, but I still wasn’t sure how my goats would behave once we encountered a screaming bull. Would my goats run in fear? Would they get in the way of the shooter? Would they spook the elk? I was eager to find out. We met bugles on our first afternoon of hunting and I volunteered to be the caller so I could closely observe how my goats responded. I tried to keep my goats back from the shooter by attaching the alpha goat’s lead to a tree, but this ended up being difficult to manage while we were moving quickly and calling.

The next day I changed my tactic and allowed the goats to freely roam while we hunted, but I always kept a close eye on them. Late in the afternoon, we were trailing distant bugles when a single bugle erupted from directly behind us. We quickly found ourselves in a heated match of Rocky Mountain Marco Polo while the goats meandered between us like nothing was going on. I pushed forward quickly into a shooting lane as I saw the silhouette of a bull moving towards us through the trees. As I waited with arrow nocked, the goats approached me from behind and stood next to me while I shot.

Overcome by the excitement, I don’t recall specific details about how the goats reacted after the shot, but I can say that they didn't create any problems in that setup. I was really proud of my goats in that moment, but we still had a huge job ahead of us.

The Packout

After recovering the bull and quartering the meat, we shuttled our load two miles back to camp, leaving a ten-mile hike back to the trailhead.

In the two days that followed we were able to shuttle all 300 pounds of elk meat plus antlers back to the truck, but this is where I encountered my most notable failure. That was too many miles for my goats. 10 miles to the trailhead with a pack full of meat and 10 miles back to camp each day was an unreasonable expectation for them and I ended up having one goat lay down on me on our last day hauling meat.

"After taking the time to reflect, I now fully appreciate how incredible our adventure was and the opportunity it has presented me for personal growth."

After shuffling his load onto my pack, we finished the remaining eight miles with frequent breaks, but I ultimately decided to leave my goats at the trailhead, returning to camp without them to get the rest of our gear. I spent those last miles, and the many months that followed, beating myself up over this. Even though I had successfully filled my elk tag and my family’s freezer, I felt like I had failed my goats.

The Future

Going forward, I will limit my elk hunts with packgoats to much shorter distances. If I do find myself hunting elk 10 miles from the trailhead again, I will plan to employ a
professional packer to come do the heavy lifting so that the goats and I can spend as many days as possible enjoying the mountains.

The time I spend in the mountains plays a critical role in my development as a husband, father, hunter, and human. Whether watching a sunrise in silence or laughing with friends beneath a starry sky, there is countless wisdom to be learned in each of these moments. These are the experiences I long for and why I have chosen to use packgoats.