The Best Way to Move Mountain Goats? Helicopters. | National Geographic

[Music] [Applause] [Music] So the way we catch goats is we don't tranquilize them at all. They just, what they do is they take a helicopter and they fly until they find a goat. They can have it in an area that's relatively flat; they can catch it, and they shoot a net out of a net gun, which basically entangles the animal.

Then they have what's called a mug, or get out and immobilize the animal. They hobble its legs so it can't kick. They'll blindfold it so it can't see. Then they'll put the animal in a bag and they'll sling it beneath the helicopter back to a staging area for [Music] [Music] processing.

Yeah, the reason we net is that, you know, there's different options that you could do. One to try to trap them up in that out-of-country would be very difficult. If we tranquilize them, usually it takes at least 5 minutes before that dart works, so they could really run anywhere, off a cliff or just get in the spots where you don’t want to.

We do a physical examination when they come in. We take some samples for health surveillance and we look for injuries, and if there are any, we treat them. We just assure that the animals are treated the way they should be. We'll do some ultrasound measurements from it, take some other various measurements on the end, put a radio collar on it, and then take it and put it into a box where it'll be transported to a different unit and then released as soon as [Music] possible. [Music]