THE MOUNTAIN-GOAT 221 



adays, however, are not given to shooting tlie young 

 of game animals and the laws protect them at all times 

 in many States. Neither the head nor the robe makes 

 an especially desirable trophy. Both the musk-ox and 

 the white goat might well be stricken from the list of 

 big game and left to be taken by those who now do 

 their hunting with the camera. The mountains where 

 the white goats are found are far more picturesque and 

 interesting than the Barren Grounds inhabited by the 

 musk-oxen. There is a pleasure in the wild scramble 

 to lofty peaks where the views are sublime. Although 

 I have never killed a goat, I have climbed his moun- 

 tains to the tops and have seen range after range of 

 bare rocks and snow-clad peaks, which extended as far 

 as the eye could reach, to melt into blue lines at the 

 horizon. I have camped many times beside the crystal 

 Alpine lakes and trout streams which abound in the 

 wild goats' country. There is usually ample oppor- 

 tunity to get a deer or elk in the woods, on the moun- 

 tain-sides and in the valleys, and there are a number 

 of varieties of the woodland grouse which may be shot 

 often within a few yards of the camp. In many places 

 the mountain-sheep, a far better game animal than the 

 goat, will be found quite near, although not associated 

 with the goat, and the flesh of the former is one of the 

 best known to North American sportsmen. 



The sportsman who desires the head of a goat should 

 select a guide, who knows the mountains where 

 the goats live, and travel with a pack train to a good 

 camping-place beside a lake or mountain-brook, well 

 up near the timber-line, or possibly above it. Having 

 selected a mountain or high range, where the goats are 



