“Just the week before, I’d heard from a man expressing concerned about encountering an aggressive mountain goat at Leigh Lake while hiking with his son.”

Similarly, she said, the woman and her kids encountered a goat being aggressive on a narrow section of the trail.

“The hiker said she used her handgun to fire warning shots,” Laverdure said. “The goat turned and ran up the trail but came back.

“It’s possible the goat was just frantically trying to get past the woman and her two children. The nanny may have had a kid. It had udders, but no milk. I can’t say for sure that it had a kid, but it’s likely.”

The hikers reported they did not see a young goat.

“I’m not blaming the woman in any way,” Laverdure said, “although I feel something could have been done differently.

“This woman says she normally carries bear spray, but had forgotten it in her car the previous week and it exploded while the car was parked in the sun. Had she been packing bear spray instead of a gun that day, things might be different.”

The difference between a goat trying to get by on the trail and a goat that’s aggressively charging might be detected by a trained eye, she said.