The goat was doomed to die, no matter what was happening in the playoffs.
The fact that, once dead, it wound up with a Chicago Cubs hat atop its still-warm head is the result of an Anchorage man's passion for his hometown baseball team and his business partner's good fortune in winning a permit for a Kodiak goat hunt.
As he zeroed in for his first shot on the first day of his first mountain goat hunt, Jason Motyka took aim at the Curse of the Billy Goat, the hex that has haunted the Cubs since 1945, the last time they played in the World Series.
With one squeeze of the trigger, Motyka got his goat. When the animal fell, Motyka turned to a camera and smiled.
"The curse is over," he said.
Four days later, the Cubs won their first pennant in 71 years.
Among those cheering like crazy was David McCarthy, who along with Motyka owns 49th State Brewing Co. in downtown Anchorage.
McCarthy, 41, was born in Chicago and spent half a dozen years working across the street from Wrigley Field for a Chicago man who runs two bars and three rooftop restaurants located a Sammy Sosa home run away from the ballpark.
McCarthy has been a Cubs fan forever. His wife, Della, is also from Illinois, the daughter of a man who in retirement traveled more than 200 miles one-way to work as an usher at Wrigley Field. When his father-in-law died, McCarthy said, "They buried him in his Cubs shirt."
Little surprise, then, that when the Cubs finally made it back to the World Series, McCarthy turned a private dining room at 49th State into a place for Cubs fans to watch the games.
First on the scene for Tuesday's series opener was Kent Haina, a pilot for UPS. His loyalty to the Cubs dates back to the 17 years he spent as an American Airlines pilot based in Chicago.
As the Cubs closed in on the National League pennant late last week, Haina started a Facebook group for Cubs fans in Alaska. The Chicago Sun-Times tracked him down Sunday for a story about far-flung Cubs fans and quoted Haina saying he was hosting a viewing party for Tuesday's game.
"When I saw the party might turn into something bigger than could fit in my condo," Haina said, "I started shopping around."
McCarthy was more than happy to offer space at 49th State, where two flags wave on the flagpole outside — the Alaska flag and a Cubs flag.
Like most Cubs fans, McCarthy is all too familiar with the Curse of the Billy Goat. The legend of the curse dates back to the 1945 World Series, when Billy Sianis, the owner of Chicago's Billy Goat Tavern, brought his goat to Game 4. The smell of the goat was overwhelming and Sianis was told to leave.
"The Cubs ain't gonna win no more!" Sianis allegedly said as he left the stadium.
There's debate whether the curse meant the Cubs would never win another pennant or would never win another World Series, but at any rate, long-suffering Cubs fans have long blamed their team's futility on the curse.
"They've been the Bad News Bears for so long, but I've always loved them," McCarthy said.
Several days ago, Motyka told McCarthy he was taking a few days off to go hunting because he'd won a lottery for one of the state's coveted permits for a Kodiak goat.
For McCarthy, it felt like destiny.
"I said, 'Jason, you gotta go shoot the goat, you gotta break the curse,' '' McCarthy said. "And he said, 'What curse?' ''
McCarthy gave Motyka a brief history lesson and sent him a link to the Wikipedia entry about the curse.
"Oh my gosh, this is serious," Motyka remembers thinking.
Before Motyka left town, McCarthy gave him a Cubs hat. "You're on a mission," McCarthy told his friend.
Sufficiently outfitted and motivated, Motyka flew to Kodiak with girlfriend Jamie Klaes and another friend. The group decided to make a video of their adventure for McCarthy.
"I was going to harvest a goat either way," Motyka said, "but because of his love for (the Cubs) I thought, wouldn't it be funny if we … called this the Hunt for the Curse?
"Not to be disrespectful to nature or to the animal. (But) maybe this is a way to tie into the people of Chicago, because (hunting) is something we're passionate about the way they are passionate about baseball."
Motyka shot the mountain goat Oct. 18, the day the Cubs lost to the Dodgers 6-0 to fall into a 2-games-to-1 hole in the National League Championship Series, only to roar back with three straight wins.
Motyka and his hunting partners quartered the 170-pound animal on site and packed it out — a 6-mile hike to the road. On Sunday, the day after the Cubs clinched the pennant, Klaes made a goat stew enjoyed by all.
"It was fantastic. More tender than I expected," said McCarthy, sounding like the culinary school graduate that he is.
McCarthy texted his brother with news that the curse may be over, including a photo of the dead goat wearing the Cubs hat.
The brother, an attorney in Chicago, was borderline horrified.
"You guys shot a goat for the Cubs?" he said.
No, no, no, said Motyka, who speaks in an almost reverential tone about the respect he feels for the animals he hunts. Curse or no curse, playoffs or no playoffs, the goat hunt was going to happen. Every part of the animal he bagged will be used, Motyka said.
And if there really is a curse against the Cubs, and if a Kodiak mountain goat helped break it?
"It's a little gift from Alaska to the city of Chicago," Motyka said.