Shot, Dropped, and Left to Rot

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WESTERN VANTAGE

Hump day. Rifle season is rolling across most of the West, the freezers are filling, and of course this is the week the news decided to bring us poachers, residency cheaters, and flesh-eating maggots.

Pour the coffee. Or the whiskey. I won’t tell.

Here’s what’s in the truck this week:

There’s poaching, and then there’s whatever this is.

Near Hyattville in the Bighorn Basin, two bull elk carcasses turned up within 200 yards of each other, about three-quarters of a mile south of the Medicine Lodge Archaeological Site. A third was found nearby the next day. All three were likely shot between Oct. 3 and Oct. 10, before the area’s season even opened. No meat, no heads, no antlers taken. Just dead elk.

Over by Dubois, it got worse. A cow moose wearing a tracking collar was found off Union Pass Road. Her collar shows she died around 2 p.m. on Oct. 17, and she may have been wounded two days before that. She was collared in the Gros Ventre in February 2025 as part of a University of Wyoming research project.

That moose matters. The Jackson herd dropped roughly 70% between the late ’80s and early 2000s, from about 1,000 animals to around 300 today. Losing a prime-age cow means losing every calf she would have had too.

Here’s my take: this isn’t a hunter who made a bad shot and panicked. Nobody “accidentally” kills three bulls and walks away from all of them. That’s somebody who wanted to watch something die. Every one of us who packs out quarters on our back in the dark should be pissed about this.

If you know anything, call it in. The Stop Poaching Hotline is 1-877-WGFD-TIP (1-877-943-3847), or submit a tip online. For the elk, you can also call Greybull Game Warden Daniel Tisi at 307-899-1269. For the moose, call Dubois Game Warden Brian Baker at 307-438-0608. You can stay anonymous and may be eligible for a reward.

👉 Read the full story at Cowboy State Daily

Hey, Idaho. This one’s ours. Unfortunately.

An Idaho man who killed a 6×6 bull in Box Elder County, Utah, back in 2023 is now starting an eight-year hunting suspension. His crime? Hunting Utah elk on a resident license when he didn’t meet the state’s residency requirements.

The bill: a $453 fine plus $12,000 in restitution to Utah’s Poaching Mitigation Fund. And it’s not just a Utah problem. Through the Interstate Wildlife Violator Compact, that ban follows him to all 50 states. Officers also seized the antlers.

The best part? A warden didn’t catch this one. A tipster did. Somebody saw the bull, knew the guy didn’t live in Utah, and picked up the phone. Utah says it builds a lot of cases that way, and with roughly 385,000 acres per officer to patrol, it needs the help.

This is part of a bigger trend. Idaho just bumped its lifetime license residency requirement from six months to five years after nonresidents, influencers included, gamed the system. Residency fraud isn’t a paperwork technicality. Every fake resident tag is a real resident who didn’t draw.

👉 Read the full story at Outdoor Life
👉 Why Idaho cracked down on lifetime licenses

If “parasitic maggots in the big game supply” was on your 2026 bingo card, congrats. You win nothing.

Texas Parks and Wildlife confirmed New World screwworm in a cow elk killed by a hunter in Pecos County. It’s the 56th screwworm case in Texas this year according to USDA data, and the first one found in wildlife. Every other case has been livestock.

What is this thing? A fly lays eggs in open wounds or body openings on a live animal, then the maggots burrow in and eat living tissue. Yeah.

Why should a guy in Idaho or Montana care? Because this parasite has been creeping north for a while, and hunters are the ones who find it first. Texas officials credited the hunter and landowner for getting this one identified fast.

What to do in the field:

👉 Read the full story at FOX 7 Austin

🦌 Bluetongue and EHD hit Wyoming deer. Deer have been dying around Casper, Glenrock, and the east side of the Bighorn Basin, many with bloody foam at the nose and mouth. Whitetails get it worst because they hang around muddy river bottoms where the midges breed. In bad outbreaks, whitetail losses can reach 90%. The good news: frost came early enough this year to knock the midges back. North Dakota wasn’t as lucky and shut down hunting in four units. Read more at Cowboy State Daily

🐏 Utah wants to bring back the Pilot Mountain sheep hunt. Utah and Nevada share this herd on the state line north of Wendover and take turns issuing tags. Utah last hunted it in 2020, then Nevada sat out a few years because there weren’t enough mature rams. The herd has grown, Nevada issued a tag in 2026, and Utah is proposing a Sept. 1 to Nov. 30, 2027 season. The same proposal would open more than 2 million acres of private land through the CWMU program. Want a say? Comment on the proposal before the regional meetings in November. Read the DWR announcement

🎯 Utah residents: sportsman permits close Nov. 10. One permit per species, ten species, and you can hunt almost every open unit with long seasons. It costs ten bucks per species to apply, and results come out Nov. 19. Ten bucks to dream about a statewide bull tag is cheap. Get the details or apply at Utah Draws

📊 Montana’s opener was busy. FWP check stations in west-central Montana counted 2,625 hunters on opening weekend, up from 2,549 last year. Bonner logged 930 hunter stops against a typical 820. Darby was the odd one out: 69 elk checked, down from 87 last opener. More hunters, fewer elk. Draw your own conclusions. Read more at NBC Montana

Look at this week’s lead stories side by side. One guy left three bulls to rot. Another guy faked his address to kill a 6×6. Different crimes, same root: somewhere along the line, the animal stopped being the point and the picture became the point.

Jim Zumbo called it nearly 20 years ago. In “The Trophy Trap,” he argued that once hunters get too wrapped up in antler score, we lose the plot. He even took a shot at his own industry: show him a hunting magazine with a forkhorn on the cover. He never saw one.

Swap “magazine” for “Instagram feed” and it’s even more true today.

Zumbo’s biggest buck ever scored 162, and he said it was pure dumb luck. But the deer he was proudest of was a little six-pointer hanging right next to it.

I guided for 18 years. The guys who had the best trips weren’t the ones who caught the biggest fish. They were the ones who showed up for the morning, the water, and the people in the boat. The ones chasing a number were never happy, even when they got it.

Nobody’s saying don’t hunt big animals. Hunt whatever you want, legally. But if you catch yourself scrolling grip-and-grin photos and feeling like your forkhorn isn’t good enough, that’s the trap. Eat the forkhorn. It tastes great.

👉 Read Zumbo’s original at Outdoor Life

A few more reads that earned a click this week:

That’s the week. Go check your game, call in what you see, and don’t let anybody tell you a meat bull isn’t a trophy.

See you out there.

— Matt

Know someone who’d like this? Forward it. That’s how we grow.