Customer Reviews

A Beast the Color of Winter: The Mountain Goat Observed

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In this book, an expert on mountain goats tells you all about mountain goats. With some old black-and-white pictures.

Doesn't sound very exciting, does it? Well, Douglas Chadwick has blown the genre apart. The book includes his personal story of becoming and being a mountain goat biologist, and the joys of wandering around Montana's high country in winter. He tells us about mountain goats and how they live in their challenging habitat. He teaches us about how to identify male and female goats of various ages, mostly in terms of how he figured it out himself. We get to observe goat sex but, again, we learn it through his eyes. (Chadwick also tells us why it matters - - it's really easy for hunters to disrupt goat reproduction.)

Chadwick also sets the stage more fully, discussing the other animals that live in goat country and how their habitats and lifestyles differ from goats. He discusses goat evolution and how the steep cliffs of goat country shape their body shape, behavior, and evolution. He criticizes state game management agencies for assuming (wrongly) that mountain goats behave like other large, hoofed animals and can therefore be hunted at the same rates, in a similarly regulated system.

Last, but certainly not least, he makes an impassioned case for preserving the species and the high country that he loves.

It's highly readable, and if you're looking at this review, you should read it. Then give it to a friend.

This is one of the best books I have ever read. Douglas Chadwick is a brillaint and sensitive observer of all natural things and has a keen insight into human nature as well. Nothing you can read will ever teach you as much about Mountain Goats as this wonderful book. I have hunted Moutain Goats and will continue to do so. Regardless of Chadwick's feelings about hunting, I admire him greatly and highly recommend this book.

Chadwick presents here the most thorough and enjoyable encyclopedia of everything Oreamanos Americanus (Mountain Goat). It takes me back to my own days roaming the high country of the Bob Marshall on long weekends, seeing early spring heards back of Gibson Reserviour playing and every munching on sedge in the snow.

A thoroughly enjoyable read for any high country affecianodo.

tim

The best book on Mt. Goats that I have read.I actually purchased a copy when it first was published and purchest additional cpies for friends.

So little has been published (studied) about the goat and before going on a 'once a life time' hunt I wanted to learn more. This is one of the few references available and the author lived among the goats (even in winter) for years to study and documented their behavior. What an interesting animal to live and thrive in such a rocky and barren environment!

This book has everything you would want to know about Oreamnos americanus including how many times goats chew their cud depending on age. We view mountain goats a lot here and this book will greatly help improve this experience. I thought this book was well written and mixed informational data and story telling very well to keep things from getting to dry.

I found the book to be very informative about the ways that goats go about their daily lives and the hierarchied structure that prevails. The problem I have with this book is the author's admission that he is against the hunting of mountain goats. This is fine to have as an opinion, but when the author admits in writing that he has performed an illegal act, harrassing animals to prevent legal hunting as well as threatening to destroy a legal road to disallow legal vehicle access, my opinion of the book plummeted.

Also the data in the book was from the 1980's and there have been many studies done since then. More recent information would have been helpful.