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Mark Freeman Commentary Mellow finally claims his prize BAKER CITY � Crouching awkwardly amid sheets of broken shale jutting through last night�s snow, Ken Mellow was anything but what his name suggests. Through the cross hairs on his rifle scope, Mellow stared at the fluffy white body of a large Rocky Mountain goat, its stiff black horns revealing it�s a male. A billy, feeding on a small tuft of grass. But all Mellow seemed to see was four immense black hooves. This had to be the goat Mellow spied on a scouting mission to Eastern Oregon�s Elkhorn Mountains in July. Of the 92 goats in the Elkhorn herd, this was the goat that brought him here. "His horns were big, but I didn�t know how big," Mellow says. "But he had the huge hooves, just like the one I said I wanted. I was nervous as hell. All these questions start going through your mind. �Are you sure this is the one? Should you shoot?� "I said the heck with it. I�m gonna kill him," he says. Mellow pulled the trigger on his .338-caliber Browning rifle, firing a bullet through a crack in the timber and into the big goat�s right shoulder exactly 141 yards away. The actual shot always is the easiest part of mountain goat hunting in Oregon, where the goat tag is the toughest to win in the summer big-game hunting lottery. In Mellow�s pocket was one of just three goat tags offered by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife this year. Mountain goats are a wildlife success story in Eastern Oregon, where they were re-introduced in the mid-1980s and have blossomed in the region�s most god-awful country. They since have expanded enough to withstand limited hunting the past four years. And they�re the hottest hunting ticket in the state. With 4,301 hunters each paying $4 for the chance to draw a goat tag, the odds of drawing a tag are 1 in 1,433.66 � the toughest of any lottery tags in Oregon. Mellow never figured he would be one. A deer and elk hunter who rarely ventured far from his Central Point home, he had never drawn any limited-entry tag. But he beat big odds this year to earn the right to do what he just did � squeeze the rifle trigger and send a bullet through a goat�s left shoulder. The billy goat leaped skyward, spun 180 degrees in the air, and landed soundly on those huge black hooves. "He just stood there, looking around a few more seconds," Mellow says. "So I fired again." It may not take much marksmanship to shoot a goat, but it took some manly dedication by Mellow to reach that sheet of broken shale in the Elkhorns. In mid-June, when he drew the tag, Mellow began to reshape a life that, by his own account, generated a less-than-healthy frame for a 45-year-old man. "I was just another short, fat guy behind a desk," Mellow says. He pushed himself away from his desk as a Sherm�s Food 4 Less grocery buyer and bellied up to regular meals of chicken and salad, followed by nightly three-mile jogs on his treadmill. Mellow dropped 38 pounds in 10 weeks, all the while immersing himself in mountain goat lore. Internet research, telephone calls, a July scouting trip to the Elkhorns and an ODFW orientation course all introduced him to the ways of the billy. "Once I drew that tag, I was totally dedicated," Mellow says. "It was my whole life, every day. There wasn�t anything that was going to keep me from getting one � short of falling off a cliff." Yet he could have fallen over from the thrust of a feather-duster after his second shot tore through the big-hoofed goat�s other shoulder. As the sound of the second shot still echoed off the ridgeline, the wounded goat flinched and glanced to its side. It then leaned forward and commenced to ... feed. "I�m watching him through the scope, and he�s acting like nothing happened," Mellow says. "I couldn�t believe it, but honest to God, he went right back to eating grass. It was amazing." Then again, simple survival in this high hell of Eastern Oregon is somewhat amazing in itself. Old Oreamnos americanus, as science calls the Rocky Mountain goats, are built to survive in the highest, harshest and barren mountain tops of the Pacific Northwest, western Canada and Alaska. Both the billies and the nannies have similar snowy-white, puffy coats of coarse hair over incredibly thick skin and black horns. Unlike other big-game, they suffer little predation. Cougars and other killers rarely venture into the hostile territory and the thin air on the high side of 9,000 feet. Falls kill more young goats than anything else. Those that don�t fall graze on whatever greenery exists on the moonscapes of the Elkhorns. In winter, they will fight bitterly to defend even small tufts of exposed grass. As Mellow watched the big-hoofed goat through his scope, seeing the animal�s virtual defiance of flying lead, the pressure began to get to him. He had awoken in camp that morning, on his hunt�s Sept. 9 opening day, physically ill from nerves. He and three friends then hiked several miles, passed on five smaller billy goats in hopes of again spying the one goat Mellow really wanted, the one they saw in July. At 11 a.m., after spying the big-hoofed goat, they embarked on a two-mile hike and shimmied down a 1,000-foot ridge to get to that particular sheet of shale 141 yards from the unsuspecting goat. And two direct hits from Mellow�s rifle couldn�t get the goat�s attention away from lunch. Mellow refocused, then fired again, and again. Finally, the goat slumped to the shale. "We were amazed a goat could take that much lead," Mellow says. But the big-hoofed billy had one more amazing feat left. Its thick, black horns each measured more than 10 inches long � the longest of any billy killed by an Oregon hunter. The horns� various measurements add up to more than 50 inches on the Boone and Crockett Club scoring system. When the measurements become official next month, they will shatter the previous state record of 46� inches. Mr. Mellow got his goat, and with it will come a certain fame among Oregon�s big-game hunters who will see him as the new standard for true success on the sharp-shale slopes of the Elkhorn Mountains. "In June, I didn�t know anything about goats," Mellow laughs. "Now, I�m an expert. "But reality has hit me," he says. "For the past three months, getting a nice goat has been my life. And I did it. I actually did it." (Staff writer Mark Freeman covers the outdoors for the Mail Tribune. 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