CHAPTER XIII 



PHOTOGRAPHING A MOUNTAIN GOAT AT SIX FEET 



Wild-Animal Photography — A Subject on the Crags — At the Head of 

 the Grand Slide — The Billy Goat at Bay — Exposures at Six Feet 

 — The Glaring Eyes of the Camera Stops a Charge — At Last 

 the Subject Stands Calmly and looks Pleasant — In Peril from a 

 " Dead " Knee — A Sleepless Night from the Perils of the Day. 



At last the camera has fully and fairly captured the 

 elusive, crag-defying Rocky Mountain goat. Oreamnos 

 has stood for his picture, at short range, looking pleasant 

 and otherwise, and the pictures call for neither an " if " 

 nor an apology. They are all that the most ambitious 

 wild-animal photographer could reasonably desire. 



In photographing rare wild animals in their haunts, 

 the camera always begins at long range and reduces the 

 focal distance by slow, and sometimes painful degrees. 

 To the difficulties always present in photographing a 

 large wild animal in its haunts must be added the dan- 

 gerous crag-climbing necessary in securing fine pictures 

 of the mountain goat. 



So far as I know, the first photographs ever made 

 of Oreamnos in his native haunts were taken by the late 

 E. A. Stanfield, on the rock walls of the Stickine River, 

 northern British Columbia, in 1898, not far from where 

 he afterward lost his life in that dangerous stream. This 

 was a single negative showing two goats in the middle 

 distance, and three others, far away, sticking against the 



