Hunting Feral Goats on Maui
By Dan Larsson
My wife will be the first to tell you that I don't make a good tourist. I've seen the ocean and the beach. Next! So, when she talked me into going to Maui on her work trip, she baited me with the opportunity to hunt the island. That sounded rough! While there are various easy, private land hunts with guides who know just where to find stellar goats, axis deer, and pua'a (pigs), I wanted something more challenging and DIY (Do-It-Yourself).
Not everyone will get to draw a mountain goat license, and I sure had not (I drew one the following fall). The Hawaiian Ibex is a feral goat that lacks some of the big white goat's majesty but is still a worthy opponent. I've hunted bighorn sheep and looked down on mountain goats while hunting muleys. These pacific goats live in the terrain of similar difficulty to that of bighorns. The island of Maui begins below sea level and reaches 10,023 feet elevation in just 6 miles. The public hunting units tend to lie around 7,000-9,000 feet above sea level and are a mess of lava flows, loose rocks, and shifting sands.
For months, I researched the internet like crazy, and some of my friends thought I was crazy as well. YouTube videos are one of the best and overlooked scouting techniques one can use to find hunting spots. If you have a secret location, don't post it on YouTube and tell everyone where it is. Food for thought. My wife must have grown quite weary of all the late nights in bed as I studied Hawaii hunting videos. It was there that I found what to expect and where to find the goats. Therefore we rented a jeep, and it's a good thing we did.
A $105 hunting license is suitable for two goats per day in some areas. Check the regulations carefully as these changes when the bird season opens in the fall/winter but is usually only a conflict on weekends. These goats have no natural predators, and Hawaii wants their numbers reduced. On the big island, they have had to resort to aerial management of the species.
To hunt with a rifle in Hawaii, you need to know that you must register your guns with the local police station within 48 hours of arrival. The station was not busy, so this step took me less than an hour to get fingerprinted and the guns inspected and signed off. You can use pretty much anything that isn't fully automatic and has a magazine with ten or fewer rounds. At the time, they needed a cashier's check or money order for $43.25 to process the background check. You can register more than one gun for the same price and do not have to redo the paperwork for those guns on your next trip unless current laws change. This intimidates many hunters who bring their bows instead as archery equipment does not have to be registered. Either way, Hawaii is a blast to hunt!
My wife hunted with me the first day out. We climbed straight up from the road and kept climbing. Goats are amazingly vocal, and we could hear them for half an hour before we spotted them. They were way above us, spread out and browsing along slowly. We would walk 30 yards uphill, stop and rest, and repeat. The lava rocks are tough to traverse, and so is my wife's good favor if I push up the mountain too quickly. Finally, we made it to a rock shelf and started to sidehill up to a ledge where we might get a shot at the herd.
We followed the herd over the hill, and they kept slipping away from us. The clouds were coming across the island and floating up over the hill, causing a wet mist that helped us move closer. Then, just as we were getting within a couple of hundred yards, a short thunderstorm came upon us, and it began to rain. The goats were getting away while we huddled under a scrub bush. I left my wife with my raincoat and followed the herd as quickly and quietly as I could. They would bed down when it would rain and move when it stopped.
I made it to the top of a ravine and had them under 200 yards. I picked the biggest-bodied billy and squeezed off a shot. He ran across a couple of canyons, and I shot again. I watched intently and then hustled over the ravines and up to him. He had a nice beard and horns of a similar length to that of a mountain goat. I brought him down the hill where my wife met me. We took some pictures and processed his carcass into my backpack. Hawaii does not have any wanton waste laws, but I believe in utilizing the meat if possible. It was down, down, and more down to the jeep. We were both exhausted and sore. The goat was put on ice, and we headed down the mountain. I rarely sunburn, but something about that mountain in the sun and mist at elevation burnt me worse than I can remember. If you go, take sunscreen!
Up at 4 a.m. the next day, I hunted alone on the other side of the unit. There were goats there at first light, but they were just out of the huntable area. I was hoping for an axis buck, but there were none to be seen. The biologist told me 99 percent of the axis deer on the island reside on private land. So, I hiked back to the jeep and headed up the mountain to the end of the road. Hiking along a route like Montana's gated logging roads, I headed off into the rocks following an old stone fence. I have no idea how long that fence had been there, but it was fascinating. I navigated over a couple more ridges on a goat path and stepped down into a gully when I saw the goat.
I made the mistake of thinking I would hear the goats and know where to look based on the day before. You can listen to their bleats from approximately 600 yards, and so I was not careful. The goat hadn't seen me, and it wasn't alone. Hunkering into a bush, I slipped my pack off and set it on the brush. The biggest billy I had seen stepped out at 134 yards. He was coal black with upsweeping horns. After ranging him, I rested the Ruger .308 win over the pack. The billy stood there and let me aim and squeeze. When the rifle came down from the recoil, he was gone. I swept both ways with the scope but didn't see him running off with the smaller goats. Suddenly I saw a brown and black goat with a white spot step up and look towards where the first billy had been. He also had excellent headgear. So, I repeated the sequence, and he went down also. I was floored! I moved down the mountain to where they lay 30 feet apart.
As usual, this is when the work began. I took some pictures with my self-timer and mini-tripod and got right to work. It is a super dirty environment, and I took great care to keep the meat and capes as clean as possible. Every day I spent on the mountain, a cloud would come off the ocean and stream up the mountain and mist just afternoon. As it began to mist and rain, I donned my raincoat and kept cutting away. A few hours later, I had the goats and gear all loaded up. My pack probably weighed in around 80lbs. As I moved away from the kill site, I found a spent .270 and a couple of .308 shells. This must be a frequent spot for goat activity. The YouTube videos showed the locals hunting this spot. I hiked up until I found my goat trail and traced my way back to the road and eventually the jeep. Two days of this kind of hunting just about did my legs in. The care that must be taken and the strain on this terrain is different but similar to the tundra bumps in the far cold North.
My wife's work put us up in the Grand Wailea hotel. I'm pretty sure this is a 400-500$ a night hotel. For a couple of days, I had a big cooler sitting in the shower full of ice from the machine a few doors down. Pop the drain, and the melting ice went straight down the drain while the meat in Ziploc bags stayed nice and cold. The housekeeper had quite a surprise when I showed her the goat heads and meat! My wife is still laughing about that one.
There are no official resources for having your meat frozen or your trophy horns or hides shipped on the island. The only dry ice on Maui is available from the Airgas shop by the airport.
I wanted to take the meat home but hadn't found dry ice yet. So, I took the meat to some churches until I found a family that could use it. At the 4th church, I met a guy named Jr. who was thrilled to have the meat, and we had an exciting chat. He is a tree trimmer and was about the church grounds attending to their trees. During our chat, he had a machete tucked under his arm as if it was a part of him. It was only partly intimidating under the arm of this huge Samoan man. If this were a text message, I'd put a smiley face here instead of this sentence.
One of the goats measured 22 inches, and the other was 23 inches from tip to tip. I didn't expect these kinds of trophies from public land! What an awesome hunt! They now reside on my wall side by side as they were when I found them.