jimm

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Just got back from CO. Heres ths story:

We are on a hill and hear shots start ringing off across the ridge (15 sots to be exact). It is roughly 1000yrs from us. We figure they might push some Elk up the mountian, so we position ourselfs. My friend sees the bull and shoots it at 250yrds with a 7mag and puts it down. We cannot find the Elk because it is in dense Scrub oak. We drive up to the ridge where the other hunters are and ask if they saw anything. They say no and that the elk they shot is 1000yrds left and 500yrd down from where we were.

We left and they think we were gone. They go directly to where my buddy shot the elk. They were on the opposing ridge with spotting scopes and video tapes and saw everything. So we walk down the ridge to where they and the elk are.

It is apparant that there are three shots in the elk. One that broke his leg, one in the hind quaerters, and one through the lungs. Because of both our positions on the hill it is easy to tell whos hit is what. My buddies hit was the lung shot that put him down. As there was a 2 minute stop from the last time they fired till my buddy fired. As they no longer had a shot because the elk was roughly 1200yrs from them at his point and running away from them over a ridge.

They said it was ranged as 724yrd shot for them. We asked they what caliber they were using and his reply was " I forget". They got caught in a couple lies they told us about how they shot the elk. It was clear we killed the elk, as they videotaped the hole incident.

Long story short- it was private land, my buddy is invited there because of his grandfather and has been goigng there for 15 yrs. The other hunters payed roughly $6,000 trespassing fee for Elk in that area. As to not cause a fight between the ranchers/land owners my buddy told them to take everytyhing, all he wanted was a picture.

Who was entitled to the Elk? Is the person who took the kill shot entitled to the Elk?
 

Speckmisser

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Jimm,

This has come up before. Keeping the peace is often worth way more than being "right", so you guys probably did the only constructive thing.

However, court cases have generally gone in favor of the individual who fired the last shot to put the animal down. This is NOT necessarily the killing shot, but the one that dropped the animal. I'm no lawyer, and don't have time to research precedents and all that, so you'll have to take my words at face value...YMMV.

As I said though, in that situation, your decision was probably the right one.. maybe over-generous, but at least you will probably be invited back to hunt again.
 

niels

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Personally I think your buddy who made the killing shot is entitled to the deer, however alot of hunters go by whoever drew first blood on the animal is entitled to it, it's a tough call. I don't agree with the first blood "rule", if the shot was not a fatal wound, in that instance I think whoever kills the animal is entitled to it. In this case where the first two shots were probably not fatal wounds, your buddy should have kept the elk.
 

tmoniz

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It's best to walk away, even though it definately was your friend's animal. Hard to deal with nimrods that shoot at ridiculus ranges. Any one who doesn't know the caliber he is shooting is dumber than dirt.

I had a similar experience while elk hunting in Oregon back in 1990. Several young boys had shot a small bull in the ass several times with a .243. It limped up to this ridge about 150 yards from me. I hit him with a 338/06 I had built especially for elk. When they walked up to me standing next to the bull they complained that eventually they would have gotten him. I helped them gut it and put it in the shade and went on my way. They didn't have any knives or good hunting sense.
 

cincoflatspirate

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The person that walk's away with the elk is the one who deserve's it. If you're not willing to stand and fight for something that you believe is rightfully your's, tuck your tail between your leg's and walk away. If you believe it's your's, go toe to toe if that's what it take's. Why take a picture of someone else's elk? If I shoot it and put it down it's mine, period.
 

shovelerslayer

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Public land I'd agree with Cinco, but in your situation I think you did the right thing. You are someone elses guest and do not need to cause trouble for them.
One hard and fast rule for me is that I won't get in a potentially lethal fight for an animal. I'll stake my claim and argue, but I am not so desperate that I'll go to blows or shots.....
 

jimm

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Cinco,

Believe me we were willing to fight for it. We went down with the intention to take the Elk. Because it was private land was the only reason nothing was done. He is allowed to hunt the area because of an agreement between two graddparent 25yrs ago that would allow the family always a place to hunt. This was done on a handshake and honor and has been passed down since. In efforts nor to cause incidents witrh landowners we walked away, with a very bad tasate in our mouth.

They knew it was our Elk, as much as we did. If it was on public land, we would having been hauling elk out of that night.

I dont think my partner wanted to risk loosing his privelages over one bad incident with irresponsible hunters. I am not sure how someone could lay claim and be proud of something they did not take. As it was evident they could ot take down the animal.
 

jackrabbit

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I do have to say that I totally disagree with the concept that any hunter should be ready to fight, or intimidate with the threat of being ready to fight, for a downed animal. Check the earlier thread here on the WY hunters who killed one of their own over a quarrel over who would get the first shot if they saw an elk. All this talk about standing your ground for an animal that you clearly brought down is ridiculous, it just hypes up people with poor self control, or poor self esteem, who cannot just swallow their pride and leave a potentially lethal situation alone. If any of you think it is manly to stand up against idiot game-jumpers, just weigh that against the trajedy of the loss to your family if you get killed; or even the trajady of you going to court to try to prove that you killed another hunter in self-defense in an argument over a wild animal carcass! And if you think that it is good judgment to bluff/intimidate a game-jumper -- well you are just playing a game of immature hunter "russian-roulette." Hell, we'll just remember you as the real "Deer Hunter" from the movie with Robert DeNiro! Geez, can't we teach better sense than this? Please don't promote violence over a piece of meat.
 

arlow

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In most states the law is whoever has "reduced the animal to possesion". What that means is who fired the first fatal shot. In your case you reduced the elk to possession and had the right to tag it. I think you did the right thing though. You looked at the bigger picture. One elk was not worth loosing right to hunt a prime piece of land for you or your family. Obviously the others were slobs and would probably not have told the truth to the landowner anyways. 6000 dollars is a nice chunk of change to be paid for giving hunting rights. In an arguement between hunters the landowner may decide he needs that money each year and then who is out of a place to hunt. Anyways........ Nice job doing the right thing even though you had every right to keep that elk.
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I have a friend that a couple of years ago shot a deer from a treestand at 15 yards. Hit it right in the boiler room. Lungs splattered on the tree where it was standing. It ran 60 yards, two guys walking shot at it and missed, and it fell over. He got down from his treestand, they saw him, they ran to the down deer and shot it in the head! He went over and one guy guarded the other while he gutted and tagged it! They didn't care that my friend had shot it and were not going to give it up. And yes this was public land.
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cincoflatspirate

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Why is an argument over who shot an elk a "potentially lethal situation"? How many people have been beat to death, or shot over an elk? Standing up and fighting for what you believe is a right in this country. A fight is whatever you make it to be, physically, mentally, socially, or financially. The media is the one who give's a "fight" a bad name, they report the fight's with a negative outcome, very rarely does one see a good fight being reported. I have argued with people over much worse things than this and never thought of these as "potentially lethal situations". Imagine what this country would be if nobody had the guts to stand up and fight for what they believe in. Fighting is not an act of violence, just the ones that involve knuckles, blades, bullets and bombs. Now that I think about it, I would have probably let him have my elk, helped him dress it, took a picture or two for him, help him pack it out, told the landowner thanks for the memories, and followed him home and burned his house down
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, I'll be damned if someone gets the last one on me! In all seriousness jimm you probably did the right thing by not ruining the future hunting priveleges now that I think about that end of it.
 

huntducks

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You will not like what I have to say, there is a total lack of ethics in hunting any more and it's because of several of the above posts.

If i'm reading your post right.

I totaly disagree with you #1 you had no right shooting at a elk someone else had wounded, unless you planned on turning it over to them and saying I hope you did not mind I thought i would finnish it for you, did you ever give them the chance to track it and finish it, you had no clue where that elk was hit till you walked down on it, I don't care how far away these guy where, an elk hit in the front leg or rear can die just as dead as a elk hit throught the lungs or heart, sure it might take 1/4 to a 1/2 mi for it to bleed out, and you did not know that, just take a look at the picture on this site with a arrow stuck in the A$$ of a nice bull that died.

You are trying to justfy your point by saying they shot to far, to many shots and did not know what caliber, what does that have to do with anything the lethal range of a 22 is 1mi or more, there are guys who live to take 2000 to 2500 yard shots do I agree hell no I don't, but it's not up to me to decide what one hunter does and another dosen't.

I was watching OLN last week and they showed a elk hunt where the guy took a nice bull at 530 yards shooting a 270 with 130 gr bullets, first shot missed 2nd broke his front leg 3rd hit him in the lungs he went 100 yards.

I grew up and was taught if another man is shooting at game I don't join in unless invited period no ??? asked.

Starting a fight over a elk or any BG animal is as dumb as I have ever heard, if you think it's right to defend your point there is no hope for the future of hunting in this country.

There is a total lack of ethics in hunting anymore guys only see it as a game me against the other hunters, i must be a better hunter then you I scored.

I will give you one cases that happened to me I was in Idaho hunting elk and I heard shooting on a hill 2 shots maybe 1/4 mi away can't be sure, about 20 min later I have a wounded 5x5 bull walking in front of me 25 yards away, tongue out and I could see blood coming out of it's side gut shot, I shot it threw the neck with my 338, the hunter tracking it heard the shot and figured it was his elk that he shot, should I have given it to him he showed like 30-40 min later it was steep and he was out of shape, he thought he was in for a fight, wrong I said to him I hope your not mad at me for killing you bull for you, as I knew it would be a long hard track from where you where coming, the man wanted to give me $100 for doing so and I helped him gut it I would have waited a good 2 hours to see if he was going to show before I tagged, that was not my idea of hunting nor my idea to taking a elk, but I was not going to let it go to waste, heck he was even willing to share it with me, I took the liver and heart because he did not want it, he and his buddys found out were we where camped and came by and said were cooking dinner you three are invited we won't take no, BBQ elk backstrap taste great.

So if you can defend you point give me a try and all you fighters out there convince it it's worth killing or being killed over.

I will give you another story on why I quit hunting with a bow later.
 

jimm

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Huntducks,

What you said is pretty much bollocks. First off, I never said we saw a wounded animal and took a shot at it. We saw a Elk walking up the mountain about to walk over a saddle. We heard 15 shots from across the mountian roughly 1000yrds away. Two minutes had passed since their last shot and we see an Elk walking towards us, no limping or staggaring. There happened to be two other elk on that mountain walking with him as well. There was also 4 shootable bucks 250yrs below us. We both had buck tags. Ethically, should we have stoppped hunting because we heard shots from 1000yrds away, when we see no visible hurt animal?

I am sure if we saw an elk with blood pouring out its side, staggaring to live, we would have taken the same shot and said to the guys, your elk is right here, we took a final shot to put it out of misery. As ethically you would think you want it to die asap. We would have no claim to that elk as it would be obvious it would be dead soon.

Also no fight was ever started. When we walked down to the elk we expected it to have one shot in its lung. But it had three, so it was obvious both of the hunters had shot it. When we both met up over the elk, a conversation insued. Before the elk was touched the two shooters shook hands and came to an agreement. They offered to give us part of the animal for meat. We declined as they expresses they needed it more. We also had three more days to hunt for an elk, as they were leaving the next day. When they shook hands they both agreed that they would both take pictures together. We went so far as to help them gut the animal on the hill and quarter it. The hunter who shot it didnt know how to gut an elk. We showed him step by step how to do, and he was more than happy to learn. It was probably our lack of Ethics that made us to help out, wasnt it?

I only posted this incident to see of others thinking on the situation. Hence the question "Who was entitled to the Elk? Is the person who took the kill shot entitled to the Elk?"

You not having the whole story and trying to attack ethics is absurd.
That night we drove over to the ranch that they were staying at and swowped some beer for some whiskey and talked for about an hour. We were both in good spirits and walked away with new friends.
 

Speckmisser

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Hate to get too close to the middle of this one, but Jimm, your first story gave no indication of the whole picture. If you'd included the "rest of the story", my guess is no one could've found any fault with you. But from the tone and implications of your initial post (and the next one), I think most of us inferred a different scenario.

Huntducks, at first I was inclined to disagree with your position, but the more I thought about it, the more I agree. I am the first to admit that I've been caught up in the whole competition aspect before, especially when hunting the crowded public lands here in CA. Reading your words kinda helped me remember why I'm really out there. It's not always easy to post the contrary perspective (I know), but sometimes it's necessary to say what folks don't want to hear.
 

FTTPOW

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Now that I've read the whole story and heard all the comments, I can say that I think the right thing was done here. Jimm, you took the high road and you'll not regret it. If you were shooting at what you thought was a flushed elk and not a wounded one, you didn't do anything wrong. Your ethics of not starting an argument over possession was a good move. Nothing good would have come of it, even if you wound up with the elk. At least you kept the peace and probably still have a place to hunt and no enemies were made, in fact friends were made instead.
Huntducks you are right on. If we don't have and display our ethics, we have nothing left to give.
 

huntducks

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jimm

My second sentence say's (if i'm reading it right).

First off I was only going by what you said the first time, I was not there and I also think it was right what you did after you explaned it in some detail, I understand it was all fresh in your mind but I as a reader can't read bewteen the lines or look at you face to face as you tell the story.

I did not say you wanted to fight I think one or two of the other posts said that, Cincoflatspirates comes to mind and may be another said something about going toe to toe, he can explane his thinking if he would like.

Speckmisser I know some would not agree with me but I think after reading maybe what I posted and they posted they might at least think about it twice, I know you did, it's truely easy to lose our way as hunters.

I was faced with a dog fight over a deer once, while stick hunting deer I shot a nice buck it crossed a dirt road up in X-12, there were 2 guys driving by, they saw it and decided they would throw it in there truck as I got there they were dragging it to the truck they had shot it with a pistol to finish it, I said thinks for dragging my deer but I could finish it and did not need there help, well they did not want to hear that so the guy said NO I KILLED it my deer, I said wrong my arrow was right thru the lungs and the vanes were still showing, out of the clear blue he pulled a 357 out and fired a shot right next to me, my truck was about a mile away, and in my truck I had a HK-91 with a 4x12 scope on it, I hauled ass as quick as I could, but before we broke off our debate they took my bow, all the time while getting to my truck I was intent on killing both of them, the closer I got the more I comed down, when I got to my truck I had about a 700 yard shot at them and with a 20 rd mag I could have got some excitment out of them, instead I watched were they went campgrounds off 108 Sonora pass by the MWTC I went to the base and they called CHP, the CHP asked the Marine MP's to detaine them until he got there about 45 min which they did using a humvee with a MG mounted on roof, CHP arrested them, later the charges where dropped as far as the shooting and teft of my bow which they threw away later found and returned, the charge that did stick was shooting a BG animal out of season, not having the right tag and carrying a loaded firearm, plea bargin they each got fined, lost there hunting equiptment, along with there truck, and could not get a hunting lic. in Ca for 5 years, they don't know how close they came to losing there life but not over the deer.
 

COHunter

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In Colorado the one who finishes the animal is the winner. Doesn't always seem right, but thats the way its written. I always worry that I'll hit an animal good and its running off (which they sometime's do) and Joe Blow will come along and put in a shot that stops it and he'll get the animal.

The "First Blood" rule isn't much better because you can or someone else can make a crappy shot and have the animal live and go a long ways, so that wouldn't be fair for them to claim a poorly hit animal.

My advise is to hunt as far away from other hunters as you can, so you dont have to worry about it and hold your shots to animals under 300 yards
 

cincoflatspirate

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The way I look at it is if you don't take a good enough shot to disable an animal(running, obstructions, distance, etc.) and I do, It's mine. If it's obvious that someome shot it cleanly and it was about do die I wouldn't fight over it. A cleanly shot animal won't run very far. I was watching an elk once contemplating a shot at 400 yards and heard a bullet whizzing by and then a BOOM, it absolutely flattenned the animal, at that moment I was extremely pissed, then 8 shot's came from down in the canyon, whizz BOOM, whizz BOOM apparently the were pissed at someone for shooting their elk. I walked down to the elk and waited for the guy who shot it so he could explain why he shot it over me, believe me I was ready to fight I was so pissed I was shaking. After pointing out where he was it was a pretty safe shot it just sounded like it was close. We never seen the guy's at the bottom of the canyon shootin up. As far as physically fighting, you guy's need to quit being sissy's, you don't have to kill someone every time you have a disagreement, haven't you ever fought someone and shook his hand when it 's over? I have good friend's that I've had fight's with, maybe it's my" country boy" mentallity. Huntduck's, you're crazy for wanting to shoot someone over an animal, period.
 

huntducks

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Co hunter

the law may say that but some common sense would tell me it's not my animal and if someone was tracking it and showed in 1-2 hours it's there's, when I was hunting elk 5-6 years ago on public property 338 with 210 gr Nosler P through both shoulder did not allow for much running on the elks part, if I could not take a two shoulder or far shoulder lung shot, neck or head, the elk walked until I got into position to take it.

Cincoflatpirate

Try rereading the post

Not for a deer elk or any animal would I shoot someone or get into a fight, un like you.

The man crossed the line when he fired a shot 1 foot from my leg stole my bow and pointed a gun at my face and told me your lucky we don't shoot you and now get the F out of here, maybe I should have shared my water with him.
 

burgerman

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My two cents... Jimm, You did the right thing by walking away. It’s not worth a fight with everyone standing around holding guns. Also, think of it this way. When you harvest an animal, don’t you want it to be by your own hand? Do you really want to lay claim to a shot up wounded animal that may have died, and been found by the original hunter (lets just say shooter, in this case). Think back, how did you both feel when you walked up to the elk and found a bunch of holes in it? Was your buddy proud? You should always be proud of the animal you harvest, nothing less. When hunting with my buddies, it’s up to the one that shoots at an animal to get it killed for this very reason. Help is NEVER given unless specifically asked for.

When I was a youngster learning to duck hunt, occasionally a crippled bird would make it’s way over our blind. If my dad shot it, he would tell me to “bring those guys their bird”. It’s something I do to this day, except my son is the one that carries the bird these days. Same principal applies for this elk….. Sportsmanship always…
 

jimm

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Well, sorry for not going into greater detail, I was only trying to find out the legality of the situation. I know it is hard not to get sucked in. I could probably write a short novel on the other info I didnt include, as it seemed endless.

Thanks for all your input. I appreciate everyone take on the situation.
 
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