A Few Days Too Late..

I took my bow and some new arrows (thanks mom and dad!) to my favorite target shooting beach a couple days ago. After shooting 40-50 arrows at my new archery range that I built in the forest, I took a wander down the beach. When I got to the end, I found this dead goat:

It's a bit gory, so I chose the distant picture to post. The goat had died a few days ago by falling off that cliff from above. I am 98% sure of this outcome because I've been watching the mother and two young (now one) living up there for the last month. In this next picture, the dead goat is in the lower left, but if you look in the upper right you can actually see the nanny up there feeding (look for the white speck):

Here's a close-up of that picture. You can see her other baby (down and to her right) is also tempting fate:


I've seen the goats living close to the edge of these cliffs for the last year and it's inevitable for me to run the 'falling off' scenario through my head, no matter how sure-footed they are. This incident must have been a rush for that little goat, if only 1-2 seconds long. It fell on a pile of rocks so I imagine it was over quickly. I walked away uttering some swear words - not because of the unfortunate death, but because I didn't discover it quickly enough to salvage the meat.