READER STORY
Jason Inman with is Rocky Mountain goat, which scored 51 4/8 and is tied for the 9th largest goat in
the state of Oregon.
Lightning Strikes Twice
T
Oregon’s Jason Inman draws two “once in a lifetime” tags
in same season and fills both.
o call it a stroke of good luck
would be a gross understatement.
Maybe a double or triple dose of
good luck is more appropriate, but
even then, that doesn’t do justice when you
hear that Jason Inman was drawn for not
one, but two “once in a lifetime hunts” for
the 2015 hunting season in Oregon.
The Mulino, Oregon resident drew a
Rocky Mountain goat tag, and a bighorn
sheep tag two seasons ago and filled both
with two impressive animals.
Inman, who sent in photos for the Bone
Yard Photo Contest, graces the cover of this
issue with his Rocky Mountain goat. When
we reached out to him to ask permission to
use his photo on the cover, that’s when we
learned he struck lightning in a bottle twice
that year.
Inman, 38, drew the Elkhorn No. 3 Rocky
Mountain goat tag, and the Aldrich No. 1
bighorn sheep tag, defying odds that are
too astronomical to comprehend. It has
happened only one time before. In Oregon
both bighorn sheep and mountain goat
hunts are random draws. Preference points
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WESTERN HUNTING JOURNAL
do not apply and once a hunter is drawn for
these highly coveted tags they are no longer
eligible to apply.
“Honestly, with both tags it didn’t real-
ly set in until I went to the sheep orienta-
tion meeting,” Inman recalls, referring to
the ODFW’s one-day seminar for goat and
sheep tag recipients. “That’s when it started
to sink in. But I suspect it’s like winning the
lottery. It doesn’t really set in until the cash
is in your hand.”
Speaking of the lottery, when asked if he
bought tickets that day he laughed.
“That was the number one question
people asked when I told them. I didn’t, but
probably should’ve.”
Following the orientation meeting held
in July, Inman set up a game plan that in-
volved weeks of scouting for both hunts.
His first order of business was scouting for
his sheep hunt, which took place in August.
The Aldrich hunt falls within the Mur-
derer’s Creek Unit, and is concentrated
in the Aldrich Mountains, located on the
breaks of the John Day River. There are very
few roads and the terrain is steep and rug-
ged. It is anything but a walk in the park.
“Aldrich has produced some good rams
over the years, but it’s not a Booner unit. I
looked at the rams that were killed in that
unit and there were a lot of 140s and 150s,”
he says. “That is what made me nervous. If
I could help it, I didn’t want to shoot a 140
ram.”
Over seven days of scouting, Inman
and his hunt party saw several good rams,
and one in particular that caught their at-
tention. They figured it to be in the 160- to
170-class. Throwing a wrinkle in their plans,
several wild fires in the area threatened to
postpone his hunt. “That was a little un-
nerving,” he recalls.
Inman and his hunt party arrived the
Wednesday before the season began and
they had to coordinate their scouting trips
with fire crews, each time leaving their keys
with the fire fighters should their vehicles
need to be evacuated quickly.
Fortunately, the state opened the area
on Friday allowing Inman and his crew to
find the one ram they spotted earlier in the
summer. That evening they watched him