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Mellow�s basking in goat-hunting success By Mark Freeman Ken Mellow�s 15 minutes of Oregon hunting fame are stretching a little longer now that his four shots heard around Oregon have landed him officially at the top of the state�s short list of goat-hunting success stories. Mellow, a 45-year-old grocery buyer from Central Point, now holds Oregon�s Rocky Mountain goat hunting record and is the owner of the only Oregon goat to make the Boone & Crockett Club�s list of all-time goat trophies. The two horns on Mellow�s goat, a tough old billie he tagged after shooting it four times Sept. 9 high in Eastern Oregon�s Elkhorn Mountains, scored 51-2/8 inches in the Boone & Crockett�s official measuring system, easily shattering the old state record of 46-1/2 inches. It also is the first Oregon Rocky Mountain goat to meet the minimum score of 50 inches needed for listing in Boone & Crockett�s all-time hunting trophy lists for the species. Eagle Point guide Elvin Hawkins, who is also an official Boone & Crockett scorer, made Mellow�s record official on Jan. 11. "It�s all definitely sunk in now," Mellow says. Ironically, Mellow�s new goat record also came on the same day that Oregon�s new state-record Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep was taken in Wallowa County. Dave Prock of Milton-Freewater shot the sheep known as Ram No. 44, named for its ear-tag number given during an Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife tag-and-release procedure in 1994. Prock�s ram had a green score of 202-5/8, almost two whole points above the previous record. Mountain goats are a wildlife success story in Eastern Oregon, where they were reintroduced in the mid-1980s and have blossomed in the region�s most rugged 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 one of three available goat tags for 2000, the odds of drawing a tag are 1 in 1,433.66 � the toughest of any lottery tags in Oregon. Mellow drew one of two tags for the Elkhorns, and he shot his goat on opening day. Reach reporter Mark Freeman at 776-4470, or e-mail [email protected] Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2000 Mail Tribune, Inc.