Last season, 8,328 Oregon hunters applied for 11 Rocky Mountain goat tags. Redmond’s Lucas Schmidt, 26, beat the odds.

At daybreak Sept. 7, Schmidt and his father, Keith Schmidt, as well as Kevin Samuel, Jeff Dunn and David O’Connor started up the trail to Goat Mountain.

Goat tags are awarded without respect to experience, fitness or age. A hunter has less than three months to get in goat shape and some give up before they start. Few hunters opt to make it harder.

Lucas Schmidt carried a Hoyt AlphaMax 35 compound bow. Yes, he had a rifle for a backup, but he planned for a shot with his bow at 50 yards or less.

Only a few hunters have attempted to take a goat with a bow. Schmidt knew of only one other modern archer that had succeeded. To add to the difficulty, he enlisted Dunn and O’Connor, of Faith in the Field, to film his hunt.

From the trailhead to camp, the elevation change was 3,000 feet in 6.5 miles. Schmidt’s party based camp a half-mile short of the hunt area. That evening they spotted goats from the ridge.

One of the hardest parts of hunting mountain goats is field-judging; nannies and billies grow horns, both are legal game. Sometimes the nanny’s horns are longer than a billy’s, although the horns on a male have more mass.

The biggest difference is that the horns of a male curl over their entire length while a nanny’s horns rise straight up and then curl back. And trophy goats are loners, which makes them hard to gauge against each other.

For length, the hunter can compare the horn to the ears. For a trophy, the length should be two-and-one-half times the visible length of the ear. Next, look at the bases. Viewed straight on, the horns of a trophy billy appear to almost touch, while an animal with lesser horns will have more white between the bases.

Oregon’s best billy was a 12-year-old taken in 2005, with one horn that measured 11 inches and another that measured 10 6/8 inches and, with 5 6/8 inch bases, scored at 53 inches. Qualification for the “Record Book for Oregon’s Big Game Animals,” requires a minimum score of 42 for a rifle hunter, 41 for a muzzleloader and 40 for a bowhunter.

Opening day dawned clear with a breeze that bent the tops of the few trees that grew high in this alpine basin.

From various vantage points, the hunters glassed openings for the big mature goats they knew must be there. A mile and more away, other goats were visible.

Schmidt began to doubt he could get close enough. He thought about the rifle back in camp, a Browning A-Bolt 7mm Short Magnum and a box of Nosler AccuBonds.

As the light went down in the evening, the hunters watched goats across the basin. Around the campfire, they plotted the next day’s hunt and the other guys kept Schmidt’s spirits up.

They started the morning with a slow two-mile stalk. From overlook to overlook, they moved until they spotted a big goat below a rocky crag. The billy fed uphill toward a grassy meadow.

Schmidt and Dunn donned “goat suits,” white painter’s coveralls and made their way across a timbered ridge to stop behind a fir tree. There, just topping out on the ridge, was their goat.

With a minimum of movement, Schmidt pulled out his range finder and hit the button: 58 yards. Back behind the tree, he caught his breath. When he looked again, the goat had closed the gap to 38 yards. At the next glimpse, the goat stood at 20 yards.

Concealed, Schmidt drew his bow and eased around the left side of the tree.

Startled, the goat bolted. Schmidt shifted around the tree to the right at full draw. The goat was in the open — 10 yards. Schmidt tickled the release; the arrow vanished behind the goat’s shoulder.

At the shot, the goat headed for the rocks, tumbled, rolled and crashed down a near vertical cliff to come to rest 300 yards below. They were almost four miles from camp with an hour before dark and a big goat to recover.

Cautious, they zigged and zagged down shale slides, over bluffs and goat trails. In the dark they risked losing their way or reaching an impasse where they could go no farther. Finally, they reached the goat where it had lodged on a narrow ledge.

Shocked, Schmidt bent to touch the horns. This was not the animal they had stalked, but an old nanny that just happened to be in the spot where he expected to see the billy; a nanny with trophy horns.

At a bit more than 40 inches, Schmidt’s archery goat is expected to qualify for the Oregon record book. There is still a big billy on Goat Mountain.

Many hunters, when they draw a mountain goat tag, surrender before they even start. It takes a measure of luck to draw the tag, but it takes toughness, skill, discipline and determination to bring home the trophy.

This year we present the High Desert Backcountry Outdoorsman award to Schmidt.