The 22-23 Winter Didn't Help Things!
But They've Been Getting Over-Hunted For Several Years As Well!
Mountain Goat Management For The Last many Years Has Been Like A Double Edged Sword!
I Remember Back In The Day It Was Billies Only!
The Way It Should Have Always Been!
But I Also Remember When I Started Seeing Nannies With Longer Horns Than Alot Of The Billies!
To Average JOE BLOW Hunter That Hasn't Spent Some Time In The Backwoods Can't Tell A Billy From A Nanny!
Quite A Few Nannies Got Shot By Joe Blows That Thought They Were Shooting a Billy!
Quite A Few Nannies Were Left To ROT After Joe Blow Starts The Gutting Process & See's It's Not A Billy!
And Then Moves On To Shoot Another Goat!
When The DWR Made It An Either Sex Hunt I Had Mixed Emotions!
I Was Kinda Glad In A Way,Maybe Fewer Goats Would Be Wasted?
I Don't Like Hunting Females Of Any Species,They Are What Puts New Life On The Ground!
I Also Knew The Goats Would Get Over Hunted!
Goats Seem To Be A tough Animal!
I've Seen Many Of Them Winter At 8000'-9000' In Elevation & They could'of Moved Lower If They Needed to!
I've Seen The Numbers Getting Lower & Lower For Many Years Now Long Before the 22-23 Winter So They Can't Blame That Winter On The Goat Numbers Of Today!
Everybody/Every Hunter Wants A Billy!
The Last Several Years Here Where We Are Not Every Goat Hunter Could Find A Billy!
So Towards The End Of Their Hunt What Did Most Of Them Do Since It's A OIL Hunt?
Some Of Them Resorted To Shoot Nannies!
It's Legal!
I'm Not Mad At Them!
But Here The HELL We Are!
They Can Baffle Alot Of People With The 22-23 Winter Which Didn't Help Matters But There's A Little More To It Than That On The Mountain Goats!
Good Hunters Are Still Gonna Find Them A Billy But They're Also Gonna Earn Them With Way More Work Than It Once Was!
Do you attribute this to winterkill?
It is very disheartening that our goat herds are not growing by 10 to 20% every year resulting in two or three more tags each year.