Mo7tntain Gaine. 129 



In spite of the white goat's pugnacity, its clumsiness 

 renders it no very difficuh prey when taken unawares by 

 either wolf or cougar, its two chief enemies. They cannot 

 often catch it when it is above timber line ; but it is always 

 in sore peril from them when it ventures into the forest. 

 Bears, also, prey upon it in the early spring ; and one mid- 

 winter my friend Willis found a wolverine eating a goat 

 which it had killed in a snowdrift at the foot of a cliff. 

 The savage little beast growled and showed fight when 

 he came near the body. Eagles are great enemies of 

 the young kids, as they are of the young lambs of the 

 bighorn. 



The white goat is the only game beast of America 

 which has not decreased in numbers since the arrival of the 

 white man. Although in certain localities it is now decreas- 

 ing, yet, taken as a whole, it is probably quite as plentiful 

 now as it was fifty years back ; for in the early part of the 

 present century there were Indian tribes who hunted it 

 perseveringly to make the skins into robes, whereas now 

 they get blankets from the traders and no longer persecute 

 the goats. The early trappers and mountain-men knew 

 but little of the animal. Whether they were after beaver, 

 or were hunting big game, or were merely exploring, they 

 kept to the valleys ; there was no inducement for them to 

 climb to the tops of the mountains ; so it resulted that there 

 was no animal with which the old hunters were so un- 

 familiar as with the white goat. The professional hunters 

 of to-day likewise bother it but little ; they do not care 

 to undergo severe toil for an animal with worthless flesh 

 and a hide of little value — for it is only in the late fall and 



