First hunt may be the last for 12-year-old

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BAKER CITY — Matea Huggins isn't even a teenager yet, but already she's the star of a hunting tale that would enchant listeners at any Oregon campfire.

It's even true, this story.

On Oct. 25 Matea, who's 12, pulled off a feat that fewer than 100 hunters in the state, almost all of them at least twice her age, can boast about.

Matea bagged a mountain goat. It was no average billy, either. And Matea didn't even have her own rifle.

"My first shot missed," she said.

Her second shot did not.

"I wasn't about to let him go," she said.

Just to be in a position to center her scope on the billy Matea had to defy odds which, though not of Powerball dimension, make most of the games in Vegas seem like solid bets.

This was the first year Matea, who's a seventh-grader at Baker Middle School, was old enough to apply for big-game hunting tags.

And she put in for most of them, including deer and elk.

"Our whole family are avid hunters," said Matea's mom, Laura Huggins.

Laura and her husband, Ed, have a younger daughter, Gracie, 10, and a son, Lukas, 14.

(Gracie shot a cow elk when she was 8 — although you have to be at least 12 to apply for your own tag, Oregon's mentor program allows younger children who have passed a hunter safety education class to hunt with an adult.)

Laura said she wouldn't have been surprised had Matea drawn an elk or deer tag.

The state sells thousands of those every year.

But just a dozen goat tags are doled out for three areas: the Elkhorn and Wallowa mountains, and Hells Canyon.

Matea didn't get a tag for deer or elk.

The tag she did get was for the most coveted of the goat hunts, in the Elkhorns. It's a tag that thousands of hunters apply for every year — 3,348 last year, to be precise. Just four hunters received one.

"I was really surprised," Matea said. "But I think everyone else in my family, all the big-time hunters, were a little more surprised."

That would include her dad.

Ed Huggins was competing in a shooting competition in Bend with his son, Lukas, the day the results of the hunting tag lottery became available on the Internet.

The chances of getting a goat tag this year were slightly better than in the past because for 2009 the Fish and Wildlife Commission added two tags for a new, later hunt in the Elkhorns scheduled from Oct. 17-25 (the two other Elkhorns goat tags were valid from Sept. 12-27).

Matea drew one of the two tags for the new October hunt.

"We were all absolutely shocked," Laura Huggins said. "The only tag she drew, and it was for a once-in-a-lifetime hunt."

Literally.

Oregon allows hunters to receive only one mountain goat or bighorn sheep tag.

Surprisingly, given the scarce supply of goat tags and the great demand for them, Matea isn't the first 12-year-old to win one in the hunting lottery.

In 2000, Tim Reed of Banks drew a goat tag for the Elkhorns hunt.

He killed a young billy.

But though Matea can't brag about being the first preteen to get a goat in the Elkhorns, she did best Reed in one respect.

Her billy was bigger.

Much bigger, in fact.

Although the goat's pair of sharp black horns can't be officially scored until 60 days after the hunt (to allow the horns to dry), an unofficial "green" score of 52 ranks Matea's billy third in Oregon's record book, Laura Huggins said.

The longer of the horns measured 113/16 inches long, and the shorter, which was chipped, about 11 inches.

Laura Huggins' description of her daughter's billy is succinct: "He was a monster."

ODFW biologists estimated the billy's age at 9 to 10.

Besides good luck, Matea had an advantage over most hunters: the Elkhorns are almost in her backyard.

The Huggins family lives along Pocahontas Road.

And they don't merely look at the mountains.

"We are in the mountains all the time," Laura said. "We go camping at Pine Creek, fishing at Rock Creek, Bucket Lake — it's what we do for fun as a family."

When Matea found out in June that she had drawn the goat tag, her family adopted a common goal for the summer: Tracking goats.

"We spent all summer camping, hiking, scouting," Laura said. "I don't know how many nights we stayed at Twin Lakes. We saw a lot of goats."

The group that accompanied Matea on her hunt included her brother and sister, her parents, and a videographer who taped Matea's hunt for a program tentatively scheduled to air on The Outdoor Channel in March.

Matea, in spite of her success, sais she isn't sure whether she will continue hunting. But even if Matea's first hunt truly is her last, her dad figures she has a story that will endure for decades.

"She's very happy, which she should be," Ed Huggins said. "I wouldn't be surprised if she never goes big-game hunting again, but like I told her, you did better on your first try than a lot of sportsmen."

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