Goat Field Judging

My wife drew a OIL goat tag in Utah. I’ve been out the past 4 weekends scouting. I’m looking for any pointers on field judging goats from a distance to aid us in deciding which goat(s) to put a stalk on. There’s so many other variables like hair length, accessibility, etc. but if all things are equal, I’d like to go after one that’s older with bigger horns than one that’s smaller. I have a pic of a billy from last weekend. Curious on thoughts on his mass and length. My first instinct is that he doesn’t have much mass which makes me think he’s younger but he was a long ways away and I don’t know very well how to judge them.

First, get closer, second, get even closer. Can’t tell much from the pic, but from what I can I’d say that’s a young billy

Pic quality is not great, but I'm +90% confident that he's an 8" billy, maybe a smidge more, and bases will be close to 5". Probably 3 years old.

yotebuster17 said:

First, get closer, second, get even closer. Can’t tell much from the pic, but from what I can I’d say that’s a young billy

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Yeah. Definitely. The hunt doesn’t start until 9/7 and goes until 10/31. We probably won’t earnestly start our efforts until the end of September or first part of October to let them hair up some more. I’m trying to balance how many approaches I take my wife on to keep her from flaming out. It may be that I have to go in for closer looks before deciding if I’m going to drag her up, down, or sideways.

One thing that will help rule out young goats is getting good at identifying the "horse face" look that mature goats get. Young billies have a pretty short face, which will make 7-8" horns look proportionately similar to what a +9-10" horn on a mature billy looks like. But that baby doll face is a dead giveaway once you figure it out.