Perhaps you could provide a link to the comments section as I can't find it.
Here is the story.![[Linked Image]](http://image.oregonlive.com/home/olive-media/width380/img/bill_monroe_impact/photo/21361108-large.jpg)
Carol Jansen of Banks wasn't about to sit still after shooting a Rocky Mountain goat last Saturday.
After all, she'll never get to do it again -- pregnant or not.
More than 5,000 vertical feet below her perch on the rim of Hell's Canyon, near Hat Point, the quiet Snake River wound its way north. With the gunfire still echoing, others started making their way several hundred of those feet down to where the billy tumbled onto a small bench and became wedged between a tree and a rock.
"I absolutely wanted to go down there," said Jansen, in her seventh month of carrying identical twin boys.
"My mom wasn't very happy," Jansen added, "but my brother and my dad know how stubborn I am; 'she's going!' they told her."
Flashback – In 2015, Jansen, 28-year-old office manager for a veterinarian, marries 33-year-old Scott Jansen, an agronomist for Wilco's agricultural centers...over the winter, she applies for 2016 bighorn sheep, Rocky Mountain goat, elk and antelope tags...in May Jansen learns she's pregnant...In June she's successful for her goat, antelope and elk tags...and then is told she's carrying identical twins.
"I couldn't figure whether I was blessed or cursed," she said with a chuckle, then: "All blessed, though. It just got pretty busy."
Jansen's obstetricians at first didn't know much about hunting, but became completely supportive.
Did she explain about where goats live and what the walls of Hell's Canyon look like?
"I may not have told them that," she said.
Oregon-tough Jansen was born into a hunting tradition – her family and friends gathered to carry out her dream. First, they helped her take a 14 1/2-inch antelope buck in August on the southeast Oregon desert.
Attention then turned to her goat hunt; careful scouting over the 4th of July and Labor Day; selecting a nearby campground, one with relatively easy access to the goats speckling the steep rimrocks.
They also attended a pre-hunt sheep/goat workshop sponsored by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and the Foundation for North American Sheep. Jansen credits the event with the most valuable information she learned.
Fortunately, the goats were high, near the canyon's rim, where the hunting party made camp on the last day of nice weather last week. Friday evening, they found a large billy feeding just 300-400 yards beyond a bench she could easily access.
At first light Saturday, during the weekend's only break in the weather (one night, winds nearly blew the camp apart), she and her husband, Scott, and father, Tom VanGrunsven of Forest Grove, crept out to the bench as the others collected to watch from atop another ridge.
"It was still bedded, so we had to wait for it to stand up," she said.
When it did, she patiently let it move into a better profile, but missed the first time from 230 yards with a .300 Weatherby. The goat dropped at the second shot.
Her brother and team were the first to reach the scene, but Jansen said her husband
Rocky Mountain goatAfter shooting a Rocky Mountain goat high above Hells Canyon, Carol Jansen of Banks makes her way down the slope with help from her husband, Scott Jansen. Ken VanGrunsven
helped her down, "I took my time," she said "I had to see it."
Fortunately, her father rigged ropes down the slope to where the billy fell and, after photos, Jansen used them to make her way slowly back up because "at the slow rate I could climb, they would have it caped, quartered and packed out before I could even get there."
Dinner that night, including Rocky Mountain goat tenderloins, was a celebration of an all-Oregon hunting family's good fortune. Jansen's mother, Sheila VanGrunsven, drew a bighorn sheep tag in 2010 and filled it in the Owyhee unit, while Jansen's brother, Steve VanGrunsven of Forest Grove, filled another bighorn tag in 2013 in the Sheepshead Mountains east of Steens Mountain.
Jansen's goat tag was one of just 22 issued in 2016. There were 641 first-choice applicants for two tags in the Hat Point hunt.
Jansen must pass on her upcoming elk hunt, but has asked the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife to return her elk points since she didn't know at the time of application she would be this far along in a pregnancy.
Is she also confident enough now to buy a lottery ticket?
"I'm contemplating it," Jansen said Thursday as she prepared to paint the couple's newly remodeled nursery. "I'm glad it's over though. We've got a lot of work ahead of us."
