The flesh of the goat is edible, but in the adult animal is dry and tasteless. When kids of less than a year old can be obtained, their flesh is tender and toothsome. They are not hunted, therefore, for meat, for in the ranges where they are found, deer, mountain sheep, or elks can be obtained much lower down and are much more desirable for the table.
During a sojourn of a month in the Bitter Root Mountains, near Missoula, Mont., last fall I had some very exciting, not to say dangerous, experiences in hunting this animal. We were camped in Lost Horse Cañon, through which flows a typical mountain stream. The walls on both sides are very abrupt and from three to four thousand feet in height. That on the north is covered from bottom to top with great masses of granite that have been broken loose from the cliffs at the top by earthquakes, the action of frost, or other agency, and have tumbled down, breaking into irregular-shaped fragments, of all sizes, lodging and piling on top of each other in such a manner as to form a gigantic sort of pavement from the top of the mountain to the foot. There were narrow strips of the mountain side that had escaped these fallen masses. Here the outcropping granite remained in its natural shape--irregular ledges with small patches of earth intervening. Pines, hemlocks, cedars, and various kinds of shrubs grew in these places as far up the mountain side as the timber line.
I ascended this north wall one morning and after a weary and toilsome climb of about two miles, and when in snow about six inches deep, I came upon the track of a very large goat. It was some hours old, but he had been feeding deliberately along the mountain side, and as they are not rapid travelers in any case, I knew he was not a great distance away. I took up the trail and followed it. It led over a succession of these vast rock piles, which, owing to their being covered with snow, made the traveling doubly dangerous. A slight misstep at any point, or an unfortunate slip would be liable to let my foot drop in between two of these rocks and throw me in such a way as to break a leg, an arm, or possibly my head. The greatest care was therefore necessary in picking my way over this dangerous country, and I was frequently struck with the wise provisions which Nature makes for fulfilling her ends when I saw where the animal I was pursuing had bounded lightly from rock to rock over chasms many feet in width; or where he had walked up the sharp edge of some slab of granite not more than three or four inches wide and lying at a high angle; or where he had walked up over a flat slab of it, tilted so steep that no other large animal in the mountains could have followed him. There were many of his passages in which I could not follow, but I had to make slow and tortuous detours, coming upon his trail again beyond these most dangerous points.
