The G.O.A.T.’s Goat

The G.O.A.T.’s Goat by Chad Boles

The air whistled across the West Texas desert. Screaming copper pierced the space between me and the target. Six-hundred-fifty yards down range the bullet hit the cliff face with a pop – a miss.

“You hit the rock above him,” Steve (Rokks) said.

“Damn it,” spit through my teeth involuntarily. I gauged the bucket of harassment I was going to endure for missing the largest aoudad ram we’d seen all week.

“And you wasted two hours of my time at the range,” Steve joked, sort of.

The sun winked in my scope, blurred by sweat and the dry grass rising to the height of the reticle. “He’s up. Thank God. I didn’t wound him.” The aoudad ram and his harem, invisible to the unaided eye, wandered off their rock perches and slipped over the mountain ridge.

“Don’t worry about it. We’ll find him tomorrow,” Steve encouraged and then reverted back to coach. “Let’s walk back to the group. Emile didn’t miss his ram at eight-hundred-fifty yards, and he’s got your miss on video.” We lifted from our position in the flattened grass and began my walk of shame back to the side-by-side.

“That was a good ram,” Terry (Houin) said, when we arrived. “I’m disappointed.” Great teachers are truth tellers.

“You think you’re disappointed,” I replied. I was humbled before the entire group standing around more camera gear than a Scorsese movie set. Video taken at one thousand yards recorded a bullet crest the ram’s back and ricochet off a boulder. A clear miss. The big ram didn’t even jerk. He just gave me the middle finger and exited stage left.

A few months before, the email landed in my inbox. Field Ethos Outrider was pimping a trip to Cibolo Creek Ranch for aoudads in March. “Hmm,” I thought. “I get an itchy trigger finger in March.” Sold.

Rolling in after dark from El Paso, I met my new friends who were down for long range action. The best of America’s rifle makers flexed on dining room tables and wall benches. Scopes wrapped in waxed canvas and mounted suppressors stoked the gun glamour we all crave. Terry and Steve’s reputation preceded them. Clint and Jake were two class A dudes from Indiana on their second trip back. Emile and Jenna, a farming power couple from Natchez, MS, provided a Jesus effect on the whole group. Last, and anything but least, Evan. Have you ever met someone so nice it seemed sinful to heckle them? That was Evan, a pheasant farmer from South Dakota. Steve’s lovely wife, Ashley, and their two boys – our hope for the future - fed us plates full of elk chorizo and bison barbacoa.

As is our community’s vibe, bravado filled the first night of shaking hands, sipping top shelf Tequila and scrolling through cell phone story hour. The next morning, things got serious. Or as serious as Steve’s merengue beat blaring from his boom box. I had no idea what I was in for.

Terry asked, “You want to hunt with me, Jake and Clint?”

Instinctively, if not selfishly, I said, “Hell yes. Let’s party. Should I bring my gun?”

“No. You’re gate bitch,” Terry instructed. “You’ll get one tomorrow after you practice on the range this afternoon.”

Having hunted open country for some time now, my assigned role was not a new one. Word around camp was Terry, a Tier One operator, was handing out merit badges. I was going to earn one with gate opening skill that would stun valets at the Ritz.

Blazing, bouncing and crawling over rocks, the ride was worth the price of admission. That is until Clint sitting in the back seat said, “See those two on the far ridge?” The trip’s value rose exponentially.

Jake and Terry confirmed the spot. Clint earned his junior spotter badge, and I sat blind to it all. Clint guided my first-day-eyes down past the mesquite trees and spanish daggers. “They’re standing at the end of the sun light under that clump of Ocotillos.” Two sets of ram’s horns glinted in the sunshine.

“Oh, now I see them.” I pressed the button on my binoculars. “1,200 yards.”

“That’s a good call, FNG, but you have to be first,” Terry trained. His ‘transfer of knowledge’ began to drip on my forehead.

“Clint,” I said, incredulous to his vision. “When you’re not spotting aoudads, do you map the moon for NASA?”

He delivered sarcasm in a measured voice, the hallmark of his intellect. “Sure.”

Terry and Jake, already out the door and setting up spotting scopes for a look see, began measuring size. “Looks like two good ones.”

“The one on the left is a little bigger.”

I stood quietly glassing them, mesmerized by the wrap-around horns and their leg chaps billowing with honey colored fur. Coming back to the moment, I blurted out, “Well, let’s go shoot ‘em.” Jake, Clint and Terry were already hiking down the mountainside.

Jake shout whispered back, “They can hear as good as deer and they saw us when we rounded the corner like we were in their front yard. They have ten times human vision.”

I stumbled as far as I dared through the thorns, rocks and loose scree, and stopped quietly behind them halfway through the pursuit. The first air bursting scream came from Jake’s gun. It landed. ‘Thwap’. The ram laid over dead. Jake stoned him. Minutes later, waiting on the right shot, Clint followed. And just like that, I witnessed the rare two-fer. “Why have I not done this before,” I thought.

That afternoon, the knowledge transfer went into overdrive. We went to a high plains range built for ship shooters like Terry; gusty wind and long distances. With the group gathered round, Terry asked, “On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate your shooting?” After an awkward pause, he urged, “Anyone?”

Based on the movies I’d seen, I assumed he’d start shooting one of us at a time until someone answered. So I blurted out, “Seven.”

With a look of disbelief I half expected, he said, “Okay. Chad can spell his name. Chad, tell us why we need a level scope.” Terry had found his huckleberry. Also a role I was born to.

Train cars of college physics rear ended each other in my brain and left mangled tracks of dumbass. “Uh, because, uh.”

“C’mon, Chad. Use your words.”

“Because the y-axis, um.”

“Okay,” Terry redirected. “Let’s go back to the beginning. Chad, try spelling your name.”

Emile moved the instruction along. “Because if the x axis isn’t level, your long-range shots will get thrown off the steel.”

Steve either saw me as a project or took me on because no one else would. We quickened our bonding ceremony with R-rated humor that spared no protected groups, including our own. Instantly, he shortened my eye relief from a pool noodle down to a spool of thread, corrected the parallax out of my optic and adjusted my thumb grip. The love for my favorite hole puncher grew deeper within the dimensions of humidity and altitude. I was getting learnt in the physics of high speed, twisting bullets, all the while taking pictures of Steve’s range gear. Exact replicas were waiting on my door step when I got home. In the previously mentioned Steve’s “two hours”, he had me banging long range steel in a 15-mph wind. I was making dots you could cover with a beer can bottom.

Days later, I skulked to the side-by-side for the load out the morning after my miss. I crossed paths with Terry and tried to reassure him. “Yesterday was the past. Tomorrow’s the future and today’s the day,” I pronounced.

He put his hands on my shoulders, grimaced and said hopefully, “Be sure of it.”

“I prayed on it. I’m sure.”

From behind me, Steve walked up, questioned my gender and asked if I forgot bullets. Their good cop, bad cop roles swirled like a Texas dust devil. Emotional gorillas danced on my back as each vehicle raced to our separate hunting areas spread out over God’s wide open.

Glassing a cliff face mid-morning, Steve spotted a shooter at 1,000 yards, bedded down high atop a rock slide. I confirmed. His horns were wide with the smallest gap at the base. We unlimbered my upgraded rifle skills and started hiking, straight up.

We closed the distance by half and lost a pound or two in the process. We rested on a mountain saddle. Lucky for us, it was scattered with the flat rocks of rattle snake housing. We glassed the cliff face again. Our quarry dropped down into a shadow just below the ridge, but still presented his best side. Steve said, “Get prone. Pull the shooting bag under your stock and get him in your scope. He’s a good one.”

“On it.” I shifted my binocs to one side and laid into the comfortable position of a properly fitted rifle. “I got him.”

“Shoot when ready.”

That’s one thing I don’t need to be told twice. I uncorked the Barnes Triple Shock come spinning broadhead. ‘Shoooo-thawp.”

“He’s hit. Spewing, too. Stay where you are.” The ram bounced down a few feet behind an ocotillo. He revealed his other side and Steve said, “Hit em’ again.”

Out with the old and in with the new. ‘Shoooo-thwap.’ Waiting for the call, my stomach was working on a knot-tying merit badge of its own.

My purgatory near its end, Steve said, “He’s done. Those rams are tough as nails. Let’s go haul him out. You ready?”

No amount of razzing could wipe the grin off my face. “Yessir. Let’s do this thing.” Championships being built in the training room, I was ready. We manipulated our way to the peak overcoming boot slips and shaky rock slabs, ever mindful for rattles. The thorn splinters in my thighs wouldn’t release for days. And there he was. One hole on each side resembling a two-way street.

Caped, photographed and packed onto the back pack frame, Steve hoisted it up. I grabbed the pack in the middle of his maneuver and slipped it on.

“What are you doing? That’s what I’m for.”

“No, sir,” I said. “This one’s going down with me. You’ve done more than enough.” That decision became my biggest mistake of the week. The trip down gets Western - and fast. The dancing gorillas jumped off my back and took up shop in my thighs and knees.

Not so safely back at the road bed, word came in Evan tagged his ram, too. A round up meeting was called under a sometimes-working cell tower.

Jake and Clint drove up with Trent, a local bolt-on guide with kid brother energy and rangefinder eyes. Terry, adorning the shining face of Moses after a burning bush moment, chauffeured Emile, Jenna and Evan next to us.

“I feel enlightened,” Terry testified. “Emile and Jenna make me want to be a better person. Good job, Evan. Good job, Chad.” Evan and I looked at each other shocked, but we weren’t about to question Faith.

We stuffed the morning’s horns in the freezer and cheered one another’s success. The rest of the day we pounded ewes with 300-yard chip shots and ploughed through coolers full of cold snacks. Emile and Jenna snuffed out trophies and climbed high peaks. Jake and Clint scoured the vastness for Axis deer. The pressure was off and we were collecting.

Blasting back to the ranch at speeds reached only in celebration, Steve blared CCR’s Fortunate Son. Interrupting my best John Foggerty imitation, Clint grinned at me and yelled over the roar, “You having fun, yet?”

I choked up with dust funneling into the open windows. Jake leaned forward in the seat and hollered, “You gonna’ cry, man?” I wiped something from my eyes. “C’mon, Chad. Use your words,” he urged, bursting the hunter hauler into a riot.

“The fun factor shot through the roof days ago,” I guaranteed. Where there is no pain nor suffering, there is no reward.

Back at the ranch and full as thieving banditos, we swapped more stories around a campfire built for rancheros. I never saw a merit badge, but Terry said they existed. So, I’m coming back to fill my sash.