144 THE WILDERNESS HUNTER. 



of most expeditions after white goat. There 

 are places where the goats live in mountains 

 close to bodies of water, either ocean fiords 

 or large lakes ; and in such places canoes 

 can be used, to the greatly increased comfort 

 and lessened labor of the hunters. In other 

 places, where the mountains are low and the 

 goats spend all the year in the timber, a 

 pack-train can be taken right up to the hunt- 

 ing grounds. But generally one must go on 

 foot, carrying everything on one's back, and at 

 night lying out in the open or under a brush 

 lean-to ; meanwhile living on spruce grouse 

 and ptarmigan, with an occasional meal of 

 trout, and in times of scarcity squirrels, or 

 anything else. Such a trip entails severe 

 fatigue and not a little hardship. The actual 

 hunting, also, implies difficult and laborious 

 climbing, for the goats live by choice among 

 the highest and most inaccessible mountains ; 

 though where they are found, as they some- 

 times are, in comparatively low forest-clad 

 ranges, I have occasionally killed them with 

 little trouble by lying in wait beside the well- 

 trodden game trails they make in the timber. 

 In any event the hard work is to get up to 

 the grounds where the game is found. Once 

 the animals are spied there is but little call 

 for the craft of the still-hunter in approaching 

 them. Of all American game the white goat 

 is the least wary and most stupid. In places 

 where it is much hunted it of course gradually 

 grows wilder and becomes difficult to ap- 

 proach and kill ; and much of its silly tame- 

 ness is doubtless due to the inaccessible 

 nature of its haunts, which renders it ordina 



