A late August snow. Odds of 372 to 1. A close encounter with a black bear sow and her two cubs.

None of these could prevent Dan Jacobson of La Grande from reaching a hunting pinnacle Sept. 12.

Jacobson converted a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity into wildlife gold, taking a Rocky Mountain bighorn ram 30 minutes after his Hurricane Divide hunt opened.

The achievement capped two of the more hectic months of Jacobson’s life. During that time, the hunter hiked 224 miles scouting bighorn sheep in the Eagle Caps. The miles and hours of preparation flashed before Jacobson’s eyes the moment he nailed his ram.

“I was shaking. I was overwhelmed. A hunt of a lifetime was spent in a fraction of a second. All the preparation. All the miles hiked. All the research and careful mapping,” Jacobson said.

The moment of joy came less than two weeks after the La Grande hunter found himself at a physical and emotional low. Jacobson, a man who is almost never sick, found himself struggling to breathe. He had contracted a lung ailment on Aug. 26 while on a scouting trip in the Eagle Caps. Jacobson blames it on the mix of fog, dust and snow he encountered.

“I could hardly breathe,” Jacobson said. “My doctor did not diagnose me with pneumonia, but he was treating me like I did have it.”

Fortunately, Jacobson’s mysterious ailment did not cause him to cough.

“If I had coughed I would have died. It was so painful to breathe,” Jacobson said.

Jacobson’s doctor put him on the road to recovery with medication, which he had to take until Sept. 7, the day before he was set to leave on his hunting trip.

“I would have had to be dead not to go,” he said.

His fervor was fueled by the once-in-a-lifetime specter of his hunt. Hunters can draw a bighorn tag just once a lifetime in Oregon and must overcome long odds to do so. Some 745 people applied for the two 2009 Hurricane Divide tags. Jacobson’s odds of winning a tag were 372.5 to 1. This was the first year Jacobson had put his name in for a drawing.

“One of my friends has entered the drawing 25 years in a row. He couldn’t believe it when I won,” Jacobson said.

That friend, Joey Vanleuven of Imbler, accompanied him on many of his scouting trips and on his hunt. Vanleuven even made trips alone into the Eagle Caps in search of bighorns to help Jacobson.

“He was 100 percent involved,” Jacobson said. “He wanted badly to be a part of this.”

He credits Vanleuven with playing a major role in the success of his hunt.

Jacobson and Vanleuven entered the Hurricane Divide hunt area five days before the hunt started. They were looking for a ram they had spotted about a month earlier but had since lost track of. Jacobson had taken a photograph of the ram. Using the photo he scored the ram’s horns at about 169, close to their green actual score.

Jacobson and Vanleuven spotted the bighorn they wanted again just days before the hunt started.

A harrowing experience had just occurred about a day earlier. Jacobson was recording video images from a ridge when he saw a black bear sow with two cubs strolling about 12 feet away. Jacobson was in a bind. He was standing on a ridge and could not turn and get distance between himself and the bears.

“They were too close for my comfort,” said Jacobson, who did not have a gun with him.

His anxiety was heightened by food he had on the ground next to him, food he feared the bears would come after and make him a casualty in the process.

Fortunately, the bears seemed uninterested in Jacobson and strolled past with barely a glance. As soon as they left, Jacobson, with adrenaline pumping through his veins, made a quick get away.

“I buzzed out of there,” said Jacobson, who had the presence of mind to record the bears with his camera.

A day before the first day of the hunt Jacobson and Vanleuven found the ram they thought they had lost.

Jacobson and Vanleuven did not want to risk losing sight of their chosen ram the first day of their hunt. They spent the night before the hunt near its herd with no camping gear except their sleeping bags. Vanleuven’s brother, Ricky, of Lewiston, Idaho, had joined the two the day before to assist and video the hunt.

The three got up at about 4:30 a.m. so at daylight they could be in position to see the herd of rams they were tracking.

“We found the rams still bedded down,” Jacobson said.

Jacobson and Joey Vanleuven then moved within 200 yards of the herd while Joey Vanleuven remained farther back to photograph.

Jacobson had a bow in his hand, not a rifle. He wanted to take the ram with a bow because it would be more challenging and would land him in the Pope and Young Club’s bow hunting record book.

The rams Jacobson and Vanleuven were following got up at sunrise and began feeding. Jacobson became concerned when he looked over the ridge and noticed a smaller ram that appeared to be looking at him.

“I was afraid he would bolt (after seeing the hunters) and take the others with him.”

Jacobson next decided not to use a bow, fearing that if the ram had seen him the rest of the herd might soon bolt. Jacobson feared he did not have time to get close enough to take the ram he wanted with a bow. Jacobson had Joey Vanleuven hand him his rifle. He took aim from 200 yards fired and the “ram went down right in his tracks.”

Following a wild celebration, Jacobson learned that the small ram he thought had seen him had not. Ricky Vanleuven informed him that two mule deer bucks instead had been in the ram’s field of vision.

“The younger ram was watching them (the deer), not us,” Jacobson said.

The ram he shot has a green score of 2696/8 and will be officially measured by Boone and Crockett. Boone and Crockett rules require that all horns be given 60 days to dry out before they are officially scored. One feature of Jacobson’s ram are bases of about 17 inches in diameter, exceptional for any bighorn.

Still, he knows that his ram will not make the Boone and Crockett Club record book for big game.

“Who cares? He is number one in my book.”

Two weeks after taking the ram, Jacobson remains exhilarated.

“I’m still on a cloud.”