Ships in the British and early American navies often carried goats, to eat the garbage and other undesirable food and to return milk and butter.

The cadets successfully made it back to the USMA and presented the goat to the entire Corps at a raucous dinnertime pep rally; however, many Navy midshipmen refused to go to classes until Bill was returned.

Bill was flown to the AFA in the bomb bay of an Air Force B-26, where he resided on a farm until Naval Intelligence tracked him to Colorado.

[10][11] In 1965 five Army cadets dressed in black with darkened faces made their way through two fences crowned with barbed wire and diverted the Marines guarding the goat's pen by having two of their college-age girlfriends turn up in a car at the entrance gate.

While the sentries attentions was diverted by the women's story of being lost and having been stood up on a blind date, the cadets were able to successfully spirit Bill away.

The passenger door opened, and first to come out were two men dressed in USAFA capes and caps, followed quickly by USNA's Bill the Goat, after which the supposed cadets threw off their outer capes/caps exposing their goat-handler sweaters.

[9] After a daring kidnapping in 1991 of West Point's four mules by 17 Navy midshipmen and two active-duty SEAL “advisers”, which involved cutting phone lines and tying up six Army employees, which caused the Army to scramble helicopters, mascot stealing was forbidden by an official high-level formal agreement in 1992.

[9][12] On November 5, 1995, a month before the Army-Navy football game, a group of seniors from the USMA staged a pre-dawn raid on the Naval Academy Dairy Farm in Gambrills, Maryland and kidnapped Bill the Goat XXVI, XXVIII, and XXIX.

The Pentagon was notified, and the three goats were returned under a policy forged by flag officers of the Army and Navy that stipulates that the "kidnapping of cadets, midshipmen or mascots will not be tolerated".

[13] However, the truce was broken in 2002, when Army cadets kidnapped the Navy mascot from the Dairy Farm during a Veterans Day weekend, wearing Grateful Dead T-shirts as a disguise.

[17] On November 24, 2012, a passerby spotted an Angora goat tied up near the Pentagon in a median at an intersection on Army Navy Drive in Arlington County, Virginia.

Calls were then placed to law enforcement officials in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, who notified the caprine's presumptive owners that their property had been found and needed a ride back home.

[8] In addition to the live Bill goats, a costumed mascot also attends the United States Naval Academy football games.

The live Bill goats rarely travel far from the Naval Academy, so the costumed mascot makes these trips solo.