Art is correct on many points. Knowing and observing animal behavior is key. We will never know all the facts that occurred from this incident, however it is a safe bet that Art comments about confronting the goat contributed to the man being attacked and gored. It was drilled into my head almost a lifetime ago, the safest reaction to an close encounter with almost any animal is to back off and give the animal and you some space. 99.99% of the time this will work and human and animal will both live on.

The 2 photos of mine below illustrate the different behaviors I observed a couple of years ago in the Canadian Rockies.

The first photo here is a mountain goat which is the same species that attacked and gored the hiker.

In this particular case, the goat did not seem to care that we were close by (but not too close to cause a confrontation) and it simply walked past while keeping a wary on us. Notice the horns on the goat? It is easy to see how the goat was able to gore the hiker.


This mountain sheep on the other hand was quite aggressive even though he was a fair distance away. More then once he turned directly toward us with head lowered and feet dug in charge mode. Based on it's aggressive behavior, and keeping an extremely close eye on the sheep, we slowly backed away and down a small knoll out of eyesight. The sheep then came over the knoll and proceeded to stare us down while we cleared completely out of the area.