A few years ago an officer of the United States army and a party of friends were hunting goats in the Bitter Root Mountains, near Missoula, Mont. They followed two--a male and female--to the top of a rough and dangerous peak, when the game, before they could get a shot at it, started down the opposite side and took refuge from the hunters under a shelving rock. Here it was, owing to the nature of the rocks and ice, absolutely impossible for the hunters to follow them on foot, but the intrepid officer, not to be baffled in the pursuit, tied a long rope securely around his body, just under his arms, laid down, and grasping his rifle slid quietly down, on a bed of ice, some sixty or seventy feet, while his companions held on to the other end of the rope and controlled his perilous descent. Finally, when he had gone far enough to be able to see the game, he signaled his friends, who stopped him, and raising on his elbows he fired and killed both goats, and was then drawn up again in safety. Such, however, was the nature of the rocks between him and the carcasses that it was utterly impossible to reach them after he had killed them, and he was compelled reluctantly to abandon them. Several members of the party tried to reach them from other points, but were unable to do so, and they were all obliged to return empty-handed to camp.
In another instance this same officer, upon crawling out on the edge of a shelving rock and looking down over a precipice hundreds of feet below, saw two goats near the base, but they were actually inside of a perpendicular line running down from the edge of the rock he occupied, and he was therefore unable to bring his rifle to bear upon them without projecting his body out over the edge of the rock further than was safe. After discussing the matter for some minutes, one of his friends offered to hold his feet and thus enable him to extend his head and shoulders far enough out to get his aim. By this means both of the goats were killed, but a party had to go around and ascend the mountain from the other side in order to secure them.
The same party, while climbing the rugged and almost perpendicular face of Little Mountain to bring down some goats they had already killed, came suddenly upon a large buck in a narrow V-shaped fissure in the rock, from which there was no escape but by the opening at which they had entered, and across this they formed a skirmish line. The goat climbed upon a narrow projection on one of the walls of the fissure just out of reach of the tallest man in the party, and as they had no rifles with them (having left them below to lighten the labor of the ascent), they tried to dislodge him by throwing rocks at him, but their footing was so insecure and there was such great danger of their falling that they could not hurl these with sufficient force to bring him down though several of them hit him. If they had had a rope they could easily have lassoed him, but there was no such thing at hand. They finally decided to leave one of the men to guard their prisoner, and on their return to camp another man took a rifle, went back, killed the goat, and the two bore him triumphantly down to camp. The gentleman says: "Had I not been an eye witness, and had I subsequently been shown the place where the goat stood thus at bay, I could scarcely have believed it possible for anything larger than a fly to have found footing there."