In a wild and crazy turn of fate for one Wyoming man, he’s had one hell of a run in the month of September, stacking up a trifecta of unbelievable wins after a drawn-out dry streak. According to 48-year-old Jerry Ragsdale, he always believed that no matter what happens in life, as long as you take care of yourself and others around you, something good will come your way. And after bagging a bull elk on Casper mountain, hitting a $10K jackpot on a gaming machine and having a $2 million Powerball ticket in his hand, it certainly sounds as though the tide has changed for this single father of two.
A seasoned outdoorsman, Ragsdale noted that he had been chasing an elk on Casper Mountain for the last four years without any sort of success. Rather than becoming frustrated, he kept hitting the mountain in hopes of downing a beautiful bugler. Earlier this month, he set out around 6 a.m., enduring pouring rain for three hours and navigating past mule deer, a doe, and a flock of sage grouse to line up his shot on a small bull he spotted earlier in the morning. By 10 p.m. that day, he’d managed to bag a small bull elk and safely pack it off the mountain. His first bull in four years, the elk was not a trophy by any stretch of the imagination, but was a welcome addition to his freezer.
The craziest part of this story is that his long-awaited elk kill was merely the cherry on top of an incredible streak of luck that kicked off on September 5th. It was on that day that the oilfield worker was checking on some rigs out in Rock Springs when a GPS glitch led him on a detour from his usual stop at Cruel Jack’s Travel Plaza.
Instead, he grabbed cash and bought seven $2 quick-pick tickets with the $1 PowerPlay option at a nearby Loaf ‘N Jug. One ticket, with numbers 3-16-29-61-69 (Powerball: 5), matched the PowerPlay that day for a $2 million prize. He ended up being one of four $2M winners in a drawing where the jackpot had swelled to $1.8 billion, the second-highest ever.
As if that wasn’t enough, just three days after he checked his winning numbers for the $2 million Powerball prize, Jerry hit a local gaming machine in Casper for a cool $10,000. It was only a few days following that win that he headed out on the mountain and managed to bag his elk.
Before this streak, Jerry had admittedly been down on his luck, but he sees these wins as things finally “evening out.” Opting for the lump-sum payout, he’s set to net about $1.15 million after taxes from the $1.4 million pre-tax prize. His plans? Pay off his house and debts, set up college funds for his two teenage daughters, and invest in oil and gas.
Outside of that, Jerry is aiming to retire a bit earlier than expected over the next five years and plans to launch a hunting guide business, possibly near Dubois, turning his passion for the outdoors into something of an encore career for the 27-year oilman.
