Goat Field Judging

SatchSquatch · 2024-08-29T09:59:50-0600

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.

yotebuster17 · 2024-08-29T11:10:49-0600

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

johnnycake · 2024-08-29T11:18:39-0600

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.

SatchSquatch · 2024-08-29T12:01:05-0600

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

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.

johnnycake · 2024-08-29T12:04:17-0600

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.

twopointdn · 2024-08-29T21:27:02-0600

The horse face advice is very good when looking for a mature Billy. They will normally have much larger body’s and pot bellies. They are difficult to judge from long distances as mentioned above. The big Billy’s will like have eyes on them before the season starts and they will be dead within the first few days of the hunt. The hair can be decent even with a September 7th opener. If you wait until to late you chance difficult access and there is no way I would have wanted to be where I killed my goat with snow on the ground. Just some things to consider. I killed my goat September 8th and he had decent hair. He has a horse face, 10 7/8“ horn length and scored 52 4/8” gross for your reference.The goat you have in your picture looks young to me.

Good luck.