Rarely does one have the opportunity, or perhaps, challenge of standing face to face with a large, hairy, stiletto-horned beast. My wife and I did this week, high atop a rocky ridge. The encounter was a bit nerve wracking as a male mountain goat seemed unduly interested in us. (I assume he was a mature, as opposed to juvenile, male because males tend to be loners; by the way, males are known as billies, females as nannies.)

Our face off with Mr. Goat began on a ridge of Iron Peak in the Cascades. Looking north toward Mt. Stuart, I noticed a white dot moving below us at the pass we had recently ascended. My binoculars revealed it to be a mountain goat. I am sure he did not see us but he followed the trail that we had taken to reach our high spot. Plodding along and periodically stopping, he slowly made his way toward our location. Since we did not want to disturb the goat or be disturbed by him, we gathered our gear, abandoned our lookout spot, and retreated to the nearby grove of whitebark pines. Not surprisingly at the elevation where we were—about 6,200 feet—the whitebarks were not terribly large or abundant.

Marjorie and I split up, she to a more dense area of small trees, and me to be close to a dead tree with a foot-wide trunk. I hoped that I might get a photo of the billy with Mt. Stuart rising behind. (No luck on that hope.) The goat clearly noticed us and walked along the trail toward me. About 15 feet away, he stopped and looked at me. He was quite handsome with his long white hairs, dark eyes and nose, and long goatee. Until this moment, I hadn’t really thought of the origin of goatee as coming from a goat…okay, I can be rather slow.

But he was also a bit menacing. Those two sharp horns looked like they could do some damage. He was also shedding his winter hair, which gave him a bit of a stereotypical “caveman” look of wearing a furry tunic over a bare shoulder. Although the billy had lost most of his cold-weather outfit, patches of his eight-inch long outer hairs remained; clearly he was well-insulated for his mountain home and I am guessing he may not have appreciated the record early season heat that was sweatering the region in a too warm embrace.

I knew through my research for In the Range of Fire and Ice that mountain goats live in an antagonistic society. The goal is not violence or injury but establishment of stable and highly linear social dominance. During antagonistic interactions, mountain goats tend to avoid physical contact though of course, there may be no other recourse except to attempt to inflict a wound or two. When this happens, the aggressor will strike up and sideways to try and drive their horns into their opponent’s belly and rear, the latter protected by a rump shield of thick skin. In a typical encounter, rivals circle each other head to flank, known to goat biologists as antiparallel fighting. One other primary method of aggression—the present threat—is to present one’s broadside, arching the back, and trying to look big. Mountain goats may also quickly rush an opponent or threaten an adversary by brandishing their horns aggressively. To enhance their position, aggressors may snort or grunt and stamp their hooves. Sometimes, however, all it takes to show dominance is a hard stare.

Mr. Goat didn’t give me a hard stare but he seemed a tad too focused on me, clearly looking in my direction, where I stood behind my stump. We faced off for a minute or two; apparently I wasn’t that interesting and he wandered back over toward Marjorie. As the billy got closer, Marjorie realized that she looked a bit goat-like with a her white sun hat and light colored clothing so she removed her hat and bent down.

Satisfied with Marjorie’s reduced status, the goat peed for about a minute, then turned back toward me. This time he came within about five feet of me as I continued to hide and tried not to make any noise behind my stump. He proceeded to give me a sort of Dirty Harry Eyeball: don’t mess with me, kid. When he eventually decided I was just as boring and unintimidating as I think I am, the billy moved away. I quickly headed down and in the opposite direction toward Marjorie and then the two of us returned down trail and back to the pass. As we looked back, we saw that our furry friend followed, again, not quickly but seemingly in our direction. It took a while for our hearts to stop racing.

I once heard mountain goats described as “big marshmallows,” with their white woolly coat, the outer hairs of which make them seem plush and soft, which can lead hikers to thinking of goats as relatively benign. In addition, they have the appealing habit, at least for some, of not always running away like deer or elk and of giving people the opportunity to observe the goats being wild animals. “The problem with the goats’ friendliness is the potential for miscommunication. We think we understand them and yet, if we stab them with a [trekking] pole, that’s a declaration of war, and something you don’t want to do with a big, testosterone-filled billy,” says Cliff Rice, retired WDFW biologist.

Not that everyone is out stabbing goats with their hiking poles, but sometimes simply having food, peeing, or hiking in the wrong location can trigger a response. “Goats live in an aggressive society, and we need to be aware of and respect them and their habits,” he says. Clearly, they are not marshmallows; they are large, wild animals used to getting their way with their formidable horns, and it would be wise to treat them as such.

If you want to know more about mountain goats, I have one chapter in my next book In the Range of Fire and Ice devoted to them, their life histories, and deep connections to Indigenous people in the PNW. You just have to wait until September, when the book hits bookstores.

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