WHERE THE WHITE GOATS GET THEIR SALT. 
G. O. SHIELDS. 
Photos by the Author. 
There is in the Canadian Rockies one of 
the greatest goat licks to be found any- 
where. It appears to have been used hun- 
dreds of years, and in that time many 
tons of earth have been eaten and 
carried away by these strange animals. 
The formation is a light, chalky clay, and 
appears to contain a large percentage of 
some form of salt that the animals require 
in the summer, when eating young grass 
or other plants. 
This clay was deposited by the river ages 
ago, when it was a much larger stream than 
now, and when the normal stage of 
water was probably 20 or 30 feet above 
where it is at the present day. The bank 
has an average height of 30 or 40 feet above 
the present water line and is about 200 
feet long. It is covered with spruce and 
pine trees, some of which are a foot in di- 
ameter, and among them is a heavy growth 
of grass and weeds. 
There are trails leading into the lick from 
the surrounding mountains, which average 
a foot to 2 feet in width, and which are in 
places worn a foot deep in the hard earth. 
As we traveled up the river on which this 
lick is situated, we saw goat tracks any- 
where from a week to a month old, 20, 30 
and even 40 miles away, all headed up 
stream. These indicated that the goats 
were making their spring migrations to 
their Saratoga, so to speak. It is not un- 
reasonable to suppose that goats living 100 
miles distant gather about this lick and 
spend the summer there, ranging back each 
day 5 to 10 miles to get their food. Their 
trails can be followed 4 or 5 miles back 
before the animals seem to scatter out to 
feed. One of these trails leads up the river 
about a mile, to where a big drift has 
formed, which extends entirely across the 
stream. Trees of all sizes have jammed 
in there and piled up, one on another, form- 
ing a complete bridge across the stream, 
and the goats walk these foot logs night 
and morning, as they go to and from their 
salt feast. 
We were seriously in need of fresh meat 
when we arrived at our camp near the lick, 
and Wright went up there to get a young 
goat. There was nothing doing at the lick 
at that time, so he followed the trail up 
the river, crossed the drift on the same 
logs the goats used, picked up the trail on 
the opposite side and followed it up a 
mountain 2 or 3 miles away. There the 
animals habitually scattered out and roamed 
in search of the food they needed to carry 
on their business. 
175 
Wright climbed to an altitude of about 
1,200 feet above the river, when he landed 
on a sharp ridge, and looking up, saw a 
band of 22 goats, old, young and middle 
aged, big, little and middle sized. He 
slipped up to them, picked out a goat that 
would make a few square meals for us, 
killed him and brought him to camp. 
Wright said he could have loaded the pack 
train in 5 minutes if he had been disposed 
to use his opportunity. 
At the first shot, some of the goats trotted 
away, but most of them stayed about, or 
walked toward him and tried to find out if 
the thing was still loaded. He was within 
40 feet of some of the big old Billies, but 
had meat enough for present purposes, so 
did not disturb them. Unfortunately, he 
did not take his camera with him that day. 
The goats have eaten into the side of 
the hill in places, so far that the roots 
of the trees hang down over the excavation. 
The eager and hungry animals keep on dig- 
ging and eating clay until now and then a 
large chunk of the overhanging bank falls 
on them, crumbles and tumbles down into 
the river. They have loosened some large 
rocks which have rolled down part way. 
Many standing trees and several old logs 
that had lain on this hill for years have 
been undermined and have slid down into 
the river. 
The cupidity of these poor brutes has 
proved the destruction of most of them. 
The time has evidently been when thou 
sands of goats used the lick, where but a 
few, perhaps 100, use it now. All about 
there on the river banks are remains of old 
Indian camps, and in each of these is a veri- 
table bone yard. The Indians have evi- 
dently made a practice of going there every 
summer, for perhaps too years past, killing 
goats and drying the meat for winter use; 
yet the poor brutes crave the salt so eagerly 
that they keep on going back every summer 
to get more, just as an old toper will keep 
going back to a saloon for more whiskey, 
even though he may have been kicked out 
of it a dozen times. 
There are unprincipled pot hunters who 
go to these licks now, and kill 10 or 20 
goats, where each man should be satisfied 
with one. It requires no hunting whatever. 
If a man is too lazy to climb the hills, he 
can simply sit down anywhere within rifle 
range of the cut bank an hour before sun- 
set, or at daybreak, and pot his goats when 
they come in to get their supper or break- 
fast of salt mud. 
