14 year old girl bullied over killing an elk in Missouri

[JB White]

It's easy to bully someone when hiding behind a keyboard. Especially if they're over thirty and living at home with mom.

[RED]

It's easy to bully someone when hiding behind a keyboard. Especially if they're over thirty and living at home with mom.

I wonder if any of the people saying they wouldn't have taken the shot are really hunters. I took my second whitetail for this season late yesterday afternoon. I meat hunt and wouldn't shoot a buck (unless it was a record book whitetail). I saw two and thought it was a doe and a yearling. I had a any deer tag so I shot the bigger of the two. It was a 150 yard, off hand, shot and the deer jumped over a fence and disappeared. It managed to travel about 50 yards and dropped. When I found it I was surprised it was a 2 year old buck. It had 4 points on one side and 3 on the other.

Now all those naysayers are going to claim I am a bad sport, and a bad hunter. I don't care. I'm going to be feasting on lean and healthy venison all through next year while they are eating grocery store grease burgers.

[Critch]

The only wild elk I know of in Missouri are at the Peck Ranch Conservation Area in the county to the west of here...I'm curious how an elk wandered from Carter County across the Missouri River without being noticed......BTW, it's a good 3 hour drive from Carter County to Boone County...couild the elk have escaped from captivity, or even turned loose?

I think her shooting that elk is a mistake that even an experienced hunter might make...

[pcox]

I was selected for a managed bow hunt for deer at Peck Ranch two consecutive years. All the Elk at Peck Ranch have GPS collars. I doubt that it escaped from there. The Elk are inside an eight foot fence which encloses sixteen hundred acres.

[RED]

I was selected for a managed bow hunt for deer at Peck Ranch two consecutive years. All the Elk at Peck Ranch have GPS collars. I doubt that it escaped from there. The Elk are inside an eight foot fence which encloses sixteen hundred acres.

Local scuttlebutt is contradicting the story. I met some guys at the processing site that swear the event happened in Miller Co. not Boone. In any event I believe all the the Peck Ranch elk have ear tags as well, and IIRC the elk on private ranches must have ear tags. The Dep't. of Cons are doing DNA research to see where the elk originated.

I have personally seen two wild creatures that are not supposed to be in MO... A wolf and a full grown Mountain lion. My wife and I saw the wolf twice. It was as big as a German Shepard dog but you could tell from his gait that it was a wild creature. My neighbor lost a calf to a predator he thought was a mountain lion. I got up one morning and sure enough there it was walking across the dam on my pond. I would have killed it if I could but by the time I could get my rifle it was gone. Two weeks later a mountain lion was killed by a car a few miles from here.

[Critch]

If MDC runs DNA on the dead elk they may figure it out....We've all known about the mountain lions here in the Southern Ozarks for years which MDC says didn't exist...I know of creditable sightings of wolves..

[ClintBarret]

Ah the modern social media. She made a mistake. They called the Conservation people immediately to let them know what had happened. Then they SHOULD have kept their mouths shut and the cameras off and not publicize it. No one would have been the wiser. There are idiots out there just looking for thing to gripe about. If you don't want everybody out there knowing what you are doing and then complaining about it, DON'T PUT IT OUT IN PUBLIC!!
And apparently it was a good shot.

The truth has been spoken.

[AZshooter]

I was once mistaken for a whitetail & was fired on several times. At the time I was driving along a ridgeline in a dirty blue International Scout. The fire trail was bad enough that I couldn't hotfoot it outta there & heard 2 clinks as bullets went thru an open passenger side window and out the roof just behind the drivers side.

I got out & shined a stainless signal mirror at them, but they fired more at me, hitting dirt a few feet from where I was standing. I ran around to the back & pulled out a Ruger Mini-14 & bag of magazines & fired back, dozens of rounds into 2 ATV's & coolers attached to the ATV racks.

Around sundown I stopped at a check station and told what happened & showed the bullet holes. The Ranger took pictures of the bullet holes & noted the location where the people in the canyon were located. He asked to see the mirror, to ensure I had one & told me that there will be jail time for these guys when they're located, but only if I file a complaint. It took a couple of hours to write it up. This was before GPS and Internet were available, but the people would have been easy to find - only 1 way out of the canyon & they would be on foot.

It was about a year later & I was already living in Munich, when mail from Game & Fish & State Police was forwarded to me telling of court dates & that I was welcome to attend as a spectator -they had my statement and that was enough to convict the 2. I later found out that one was a former felon & not eligible to hunt with modern firearms & the other was on the hook for letting a prohibited person fire his gun(s). Never did find out their sentencing, but from the letters it indicated compulsory lock up time for all the charges.

[Allen]

I was once mistaken for a whitetail & was fired on several times. At the time I was driving along a ridgeline in a dirty blue International Scout. The fire trail was bad enough that I couldn't hotfoot it outta there & heard 2 clinks as bullets went thru an open passenger side window and out the roof just behind the drivers side.

I hate it when that happens !

Sounds like you had quite a memorable day.

[togor]

AZshooter I give you credit for exercising comparative restraint in that situation. Anti-social types simply did not want you around.

[jon_norstog]

Unlucky, that being said there is reasonable expectation that a hunter identifies the animal which he or she is shooting at. Unfortunately given the circumstances I can understand why the mistake was made. Really just bad luck in this case. Personally I hope that she is applauded for coming forward, she did the right thing. Also I hope she gets to keep the meat, mighty tasty.

KTK

The girl did right.

You gotta do it. I shot a moose once thinking it was an elk. It had the antlers and the brow tines, it was facing me head-on and didn't look black, it looked silver-gray, like a Roosevelt Elk. It had an elk face. I looked at it through the cheap scope on my brother's 8mm Turk ... trying to decide if it was an elk. It started to make like an animal that was going to run so I shot it. It jumped 4 feet straight up and turned, so I saw it was a f***ing moose. Damn! No blood trail, I thought it had made a getaway7 so I searched the whole damn water meadow downhill with no success. I returned to where I fired, looked around and found the moose. So with what was left of the day I gutted and skinned the kill. next morning I drove out to Kamiah and reported it to IF&G. The ranger who met me at Canyon Junction asked why I didn't just keep quiet. I told him "these animals are a gift of the Creator and you shouldn't waste them."

I thought I was in the soup, but I was not going to leave that animal to rot. The ranger wrote me a warning - he said I would be toast if one of those S. Idaho Mormon judges heard my case.



jn