World-record mountain goat shot with bow by Kansas native in Alaska – The Topeka Capital-Journal
Posted: December 24, 2020 at 7:57 am
A Council Grove native who took down a mountain goat earlier this fall in southeast Alaska can now lay claim to a world record.
Kaleb Baird, 33, a Council Grove High School graduate, shot the massivebilly goat on Sept. 11 of this year. On Dec. 5, the Pope and Young Club convened a special panel of judges in Prescott, Ariz., to measure the potential world record, and the judges scored the goat at53 4/8 inches, making it the largest bow-harvested mountain goat in North America by just two-eighths of an inch.
The previous record was set just10months prior, on Feb. 15, by fellow Alaskan Rosey Roseland. Roseland'sgoat was taken onRevillagigedo Island in Alaska and measured53 2/8 inches officially.
"Congratulations to Kaleb Baird on his very special Rocky Mountain Goat, and the Pope and Young Club's new World Record," Eli Randall, director of records for the Pope and Young Club, said in a news release shortly after Baird'srecord goatwas scored.
Randall said Baird's goat was the third Rocky Mountain goat to meet the criteria to go through a special panel in the last 12 1/2 months.
Baird's goat will be on display at the Pope and Young's Biennial Awards Convention from April 14-17, 2021, in Reno, Nev. The event marks the 60th anniversary of the club.
Baird now joins Paslie Werth, of Cimarron, and Brian Butcher, of Andover, as recent Kansans to harvest world-class animals.
Werth, 14, set a Boone and Crockett world record with her 42-point whitetail buck shot Sept. 6, pulling in a net score of 271 4/8 inches following a mandatory 60-day drying periodto secure her deer's place in history as the largest nontypical whitetail harvested by a female in the world, as well as making her the youngest record holder in Kansas. The deer is currently the fifth-largest buck of any kind taken in state history, and broke Jamie Remmers' 23-year-old state record for largest nontypical whitetail harvested by a female at 257 1/8 inches.
"The Butcher Buck," meanwhile, is perhaps the most legendary rackin the state. The gnarly, 67-point nontypical spread unofficially measured an astounding 321 3/8 inches last October when it was taken in Chase County. The deer is set to be officially measured in 2022 and is thought to be good for the fourth-largest nontypical deer ever taken.
Kaleb's father Ken Baird, a 1969 Topeka High graduate who now lives in Manhattan, got him started on the sport at a young age when they lived in Council Grove.
"When he was knee-high to a grasshopper, I'd take him pheasant hunting," Ken said. "He started real young."
Council Grove also was where Kaleb got his start in bowhunting, as he would go deer hunting each year. But the Bairds soon began to expand their journeys as Ken started working in Alaska.
"I had a fishing boat for quite a few years up in Alaska and I thought I'd start taking him up there in southeast Alaska, and he just has always loved to hunt," Ken said. " ... How I got started up in Alaska is when I graduated from Topeka High, I went to the University of Alaska, and I met a bunch of guys up there. Always kept going back up there."
He said there's nothing else quite like the wilderness in the 49th state.
"They call it the Last Frontier, and it really is," Ken said. "It's beautiful country."
Kaleb joined his father in the Alaska fishing industry in 2014, and would go back and forth from Council Grove for nearly fiveyears before moving up to Petersburg, Alaska, early last year as a full-time resident. He said he mainly fishes commercially for salmon.
After gaining residency, Kaleb put in for a lottery permit for a "pretty unique" mountain goat herd. About 150 hunters applied for the permit last year, and the stategave out just two billy tags. And as luck would have it, Kaleb got a tag.
Mountain goat season in Alaska runs Aug. 1 through the end of the year, meaning he had some time to plan his goat hunt.
Between COVID-19, his hectic work schedule and the uncertain weather, however, Kaleb couldn't line anybody up to go with him, so he decided to go alone in the second week of September.
That meant when he finallydid shoot his trophy billy goat in September, he had a long haul to get it back home a journey that lasted about almost three days in bear country, according to Kaleb's father.
Kaleb, who lives on a remoteisland in the southeast part of Alaska, had to get a water transporter to get to the even more remote hunting area a stretch of mainland just north of Ketchikan. He said the ride was about two hours from his island.
He hiked up the mountain with about eight days of supplies on his back.
"I hadn't been in this country before," Kaleb said. "I'd talked to some biologists and guys who had hunted it years and years ago. This hunt was closed for a lot of years and this was the reinitiation, I guess, was these two billy tags they allowed for this year.
"I didn't really know what to expect."
On the fourth day, Kaleb spotted his goat. It took him about a half-day to get up the mountain to where he needed to be. By the time he got where the goat was when he started, it had already relocated, meaning he had to keep moving.
"I did find him and another smaller billy together late in the afternoon when I was about to give up," Kaleb said. "It worked out, I just kind of stumbled into him at 30 yards. Put a good shot on him, and he decided he was going to dive off into a big avalanche chute and dropped about seven- or eight-hundred foot in elevation probably in a matter of seconds."
It took Kaleb a couple hours to get down to the goat after it fell. Once he reached it, he was able to quarter it up and pack away the meat. In Alaska, he said, you've got to salvage all the edible meat, which includes "neck meat, tenderloins, backstraps, ribs, everything."
"Then the real work began," Kaleb said.
From where the goat ended up after getting shot in the avalanche chute, Kaleb said, there was another 600- to 700-foot decline that was quite treacherous.
"I knew I couldn't go back up the hill with him, my only option was to go down, but I didn't know exactly what was below," Kaleb said. "So I took him all at once. What I did was, I basically just tied all the meat bags together and I would kind of throw them in front of me a little ways and then I'd step down a couple steps and lower the meat down."
To make matters worse, he was trying to get down the mountain in darkness, as he had reachedthe goat around5 p.m. and the sun set around 7:30 p.m. He began running out of steam, and decided to set up camp for the night on a ledge with his meat. The next morning, when he resumed his descent, he was met with an unexpected visitor.
"That's when I came across a black bear that had found the carcass up above me from the night before," Kaleb said. "The chute was super narrow and steep, and it was inevitable that we were going to cross paths.
"But he didn't give me too much of an issue. I let him know I was around and he went on his way and I went on mine."
Before his trip, Kaleb had joked with his friends that he was going to shoot a record goat.
While it may seem like a premonition, it was actually just an educated guess.
"This particular goat herd, it had been known back 20, 30 years ago for some of the biggest billies to come out of the state of Alaska," Kaleb said. "And then they closed the hunt. It was kind of an isolated herd that they wanted to do some studies on and monitor for a while. There was some logging going on in the area and a few other reasons.
"This herd just has abnormally large horn genetics, so going in I knew with the caveat it hadn't been huntedin 16, 18 yearsit was kind of a double whammy that the potential was there for a really big billy."
As this was his first real mountain goat hunt, he said he was by no means a field judge and really didn't know when he saw the goat that it was a potential world record. He said the smaller billy that was with his goat gave him some perspective as far as it being a good-sizedgoat, but other than that he didn't know for sure.
However, before he went on his hunt, he had to study up, taking an online course on identification and studying online what he was looking for in a trophy goat.
"It was obvious this billy had some incredible mass when I first found him," Kaleb said. "... I had a pretty good idea this was a pretty substantial billy."
And as massive as the goat's horns were, they were actually damaged a little by the fall, as Kaleb said it clippedabout an inch off the right side.
Aside from mountain goats, Alaska has a variety of big game species to pursue, including bear, moose, Sitka black-tailed deer and elk.
And as luck would have it, Kaleb actually drew an elk tag this year, as well as his goat tag.
"Because of this goat hunt, that was kind of first and foremost," Kaleb said. "It took up most of my free time. I'd love to get another crack at hunting elk here, it's kind of neat. It's a really tough area to hunt."
Read more:
World-record mountain goat shot with bow by Kansas native in Alaska - The Topeka Capital-Journal
- President Biden, stop working to reverse the rights of half of America - msnNOW - February 19th, 2021
- Noninvasive probe monitors health of 'friendly' gut bacteria - Medical News Today - February 19th, 2021
- Suza: Self-reflection strengthens diversity and inclusion | Opinion | iowastatedaily.com - Iowa State Daily - February 19th, 2021
- [Full text] Extra-Hepatic Hepatoid Carcinomas in Female Reproductive System: Three | CMAR - Dove Medical Press - February 17th, 2021
- The Importance of Seed Banks for Our Future - Agweb Powered by Farm Journal - February 17th, 2021
- Women Changing the Face of Science in the Middle East and North Africa - The Media Line - February 17th, 2021
- Menstrual cycles and lunar cycles: Is there a link? - Medical News Today - February 17th, 2021
- A new candidate vaccine for human brucellosis based on influenza viral vectors: a preliminary investigation for the development of an immunization... - February 17th, 2021
- Gene editing to enhance production in developing nations - Poultry World - February 11th, 2021
- Meet the all-female team at this Dubai school's science department - Gulf News - February 11th, 2021
- Awards 2020: Pig Farmer of the Year - Farmers Weekly - FarmersWeekly - February 11th, 2021
- Meet the women on the frontline of the fight against coronavirus - Happiful Magazine - February 11th, 2021
- Black Catholic Is Trailblazer in Science; She Has Been Geneticist for 56 Years - The Tablet Catholic Newspaper - February 11th, 2021
- Top quality Limousins head to Dungannon - Farming Life - February 11th, 2021
- [Full text] The Recurrent Liver Disorder of a Pregnant Mother: Intrahepatic Choles | IMCRJ - Dove Medical Press - February 11th, 2021
- In a Weird Twist, Sperm Have Been Caught Poisoning Other Sperm to Get Ahead in Mice - ScienceAlert - February 6th, 2021
- Veteran Biotechnology Executive Elizabeth Cormier-May Recruited to Lead Women's Health Startup Mammogen Inc. - PRNewswire - February 6th, 2021
- Purdue trustees ratify faculty positions, approve new degree programs, award posthumous degree, honor friends of the university - Purdue News Service - February 6th, 2021
- Former WWE Star Tyler Reks Reveals She Is A Woman Named Gabbi Tuft - SEScoops - February 6th, 2021
- [Full text] Association Between the SLC1A1 Glutamate Transporter Gene and Obsessiv | NDT - Dove Medical Press - February 6th, 2021
- Transvection regulates the sex-biased expression of a fly X-linked gene - Science Magazine - January 27th, 2021
- A growing share of lung cancer is turning up in never-smokers - STAT - January 27th, 2021
- Woodland Park Zoo welcomes their first female Malayan tiger (PHOTOS) | News - Daily Hive - January 27th, 2021
- Saudi women making their mark in science - Arab News - January 19th, 2021
- Cannabis Genetics: Study Reveals Genes Related To Sex Modification In Feminized Plants - Benzinga - January 19th, 2021
- Biden picks geneticist as science adviser, puts in Cabinet - The Associated Press - January 19th, 2021
- Challenging The World! Meet The Saudi Women Scientists - Al-Bawaba - January 19th, 2021
- Low levels of alcohol intake linked to greater risk of atrial fibrillation - Hospital Healthcare Europe - January 19th, 2021
- Everything You Need To Know About Migraines - The Swaddle - January 19th, 2021
- Anorexia nervosa: Symptoms, causes, and treatment - Medical News Today - January 19th, 2021
- Girls and Autism: One of Lynne Malcolm's favourite programs - ABC News - January 19th, 2021
- Bryan Sykes, Who Saw the Ancient Past in Genes, Dies at 73 - The New York Times - January 9th, 2021
- Identical Twins Are More Genetically Different Than We Thought: Study - The Swaddle - January 9th, 2021
- A thematic analysis of experiences of HIV risks among female sex workers in the Yunnan-Vietnam Chinese border region - BMC Blogs Network - January 9th, 2021
- A Look at the Subversive Art of lisabeth Vige Le Brunand the One Gender-Bending Portrait That Has Kept Historians Guessing - artnet News - January 2nd, 2021
- Big rewards for Section II girls as basketball avenues increase - The Daily Gazette - January 2nd, 2021
- 2021 in books: what to look forward to this year - The Guardian - January 2nd, 2021
- Sex, Genetics, and the Relationship Between the Two in Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension - AJMC.com Managed Markets Network - December 30th, 2020
- What Is the Average Shoe Size for Women? Its Bigger Than You Might Think - Footwear News - December 30th, 2020
- 'Keep calm and develop vaccines': Meet the scientists behind the Oxford jab - Telegraph.co.uk - December 30th, 2020
- IAEA Highlights and Achievements in 2020 a Year in Review | IAEA - International Atomic Energy Agency - December 30th, 2020
- New Year honours 2020: citizens awarded for response to pandemic crisis - The Guardian - December 30th, 2020
- St. Paul authors Fossil Men is a tale of discovery thats anything but old and dry - TwinCities.com-Pioneer Press - December 30th, 2020
- East Idaho ranchers find strength in unified bull auction - Post Register - December 24th, 2020
- Burning sensation in lower abdomen: Causes and treatments - Medical News Today - December 24th, 2020
- How Researchers Hope to Save the Florida Scrub-Jay From an Inbreeding Crisis - National Audubon Society - December 21st, 2020
- Eddie Izzard praised after fans notice use of she/her pronouns in latest TV appearance - The Independent - December 21st, 2020
- Special report: Twenty extraordinary women blazing trails in biopharma R&D Covid-19 and beyond - Endpoints News - December 11th, 2020
- Hyperemesis Gravidarum researcher Dr. Marlena Fejzo is on a mission to understand women's health - Motherly Inc. - December 11th, 2020
- Loeffler claims she is the candidate who will create jobs - Yahoo News - December 11th, 2020
- Nobel Prize history from the year you were born - Albany Democrat Herald - December 4th, 2020
- Nobel Prize history from the year you were born - Kenosha News - December 3rd, 2020
- Genomics, gene-editing and the Blue Revolution - Pursuit - December 3rd, 2020
- How breeding can improve lice-eating efficacy of lumpfish in salmon farms - The Fish Site - December 1st, 2020
- 5G and 'Biohackers': Technology rules! (Is that a good thing?) - People's World - December 1st, 2020
- Aspira Women's Health, Inc. Announces a Collaborative Agreement with Baylor Genetics for the Co-Development of an Ovarian Cancer Early-Detection Test... - November 23rd, 2020
- New genetic tools will deliver improved farmed fish, oysters, and shrimp. Here's what to expect - Science Magazine - November 23rd, 2020
- Fitter and Faster: U of O alum Rachel McBride is breaking through barriers and championships - The Fulcrum - November 23rd, 2020
- Fearn farming family to run first online breeding cattle sale at turn of year - Northern Times - November 23rd, 2020
- A key to the mystery of fast-evolving genes was found in junk DNA - Science News - November 23rd, 2020
- The role of a data-analytics director in genomic discovery - Siliconrepublic.com - November 23rd, 2020
- Triangle headliners: Previewing 50 webinars & events coming up rest of this month - WRAL Tech Wire - November 23rd, 2020
- Face Shaving for Women: Pros and Cons, Best Practice Tips - Healthline - November 4th, 2020
- NASCAR's only female track president ready to host championship - The Athletic - November 4th, 2020
- Four Black WomenAll CEOsHave Created A 'Call To Action' To Close The Health Gap For Black Americans - Forbes - November 4th, 2020
- Breeding program 'being worked on' to boost caribou population in Jasper National Park Jasper's source for news, sports, arts, culture, and more -... - November 4th, 2020
- Angelika Amon, cell biologist who pioneered research on chromosome imbalance, dies at 53 - MIT News - November 3rd, 2020
- Berkeley Talks transcript: How Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein' took on a life of its own - UC Berkeley - November 3rd, 2020
- UKZN boast its first black female graduate with a PhD in leisure and recreation - IOL - October 31st, 2020
- This Young Farmer Has Advice for Anyone Who Wants to Grow Food - Global Citizen - October 31st, 2020
- Help your health by taking breaks from stress - The Robesonian - October 31st, 2020
- Poor intimate hygiene linked to being one of the biggest causes of cervical cancer - Microbioz India - October 23rd, 2020
- Breastfeeding Won't Cause Your Breasts to Sag and Nine other Surprising Facts about Breasts - PR Web - October 23rd, 2020
- Female moles are intersex they have testicle-like tissue that helps them grow big and tough - CBC.ca - October 20th, 2020
- How to Stop Growing Taller and Why You Shouldn't - Healthline - October 20th, 2020
- Republican voters are taking a radical internet conspiracy theory into the mainstream - Economic Times - October 20th, 2020
- BreakPoint: Inventors of CRISPR win Nobel Prize, but should we 'rewrite the code of life'? - Chattanooga Times Free Press - October 18th, 2020
- Genetics of Height and Risk of Atrial Fibrillation: A Mendelian Randomization Study - DocWire News - October 18th, 2020
- Women Rise Above with Launch of Pink Haze - PRNewswire - October 18th, 2020
- Female Moles Have 'Ovotestes' that Produce Testosterone That Make Them Excellent Diggers - News18 - October 18th, 2020