Elk on reserve shot by mistake

ST. ANTHONY, Idaho – A hunter participating in a depredation hunt for up to 160 elk that escaped from a hunting reserve in eastern Idaho shot and killed an elk, but then discovered it was inside the reserve.

The hunter, whose name has not been released, notified the Idaho Department of Fish and Game about the Saturday shooting, saying that when he went to retrieve the elk he ran into the fence that surrounds the Chief Joseph hunting reserve near Ashton.

Rex Rammell, who operates the hunting reserve, said the elk was about 50 feet inside the fence. Hunters who come to Rammell’s reserve hunters pay upward of $5,000 for the chance to shoot a trophy elk. Rammell said he is trying to get the man’s name to find out if the hunter plans to pay for killing the elk.

“If he’s not, we’ll take legal action,” Rammell told the Standard Journal.

Paul Faulkner, a landowner and sportsmen’s coordinator with Idaho Fish and Game, said the fence is hard to see from a distance.

“This is being treated as basically a domestic elk,” Faulkner told the Associated Press on Tuesday. “It’s like shooting somebody’s cow.”

The Fremont County Sheriff’s Office is investigating the incident. The office did not return a call to the Associated Press on Tuesday.

The elk escaped from Rammell’s private hunting reserve near the Idaho-Wyoming border in August. Gov. Jim Risch in September ordered an emergency hunt to kill the animals to prevent them from breeding with wild elk or possibly spreading disease among the native herds near Yellowstone National Park.

So far, 29 domestic elk along with seven wild elk have been killed, said Daryl Meints, a regional wildlife manager in eastern Idaho for Fish and Game.

“It’s unfortunate,” said Meints about the wild elk that were killed. “It’s collateral damage.”

Faulkner said Rammell’s domestic elk didn’t have the required large, brightly colored ear tags to distinguish them from wild elk.

“Because the ear tags are so hard to see, they’ve been shooting anything in that immediate area,” Faulkner said.

The depredation hunt is scheduled to end Saturday, and Meints said the department has not decided on whether to extend it.

In that area, Hunting Unit 62, the general rifle hunt for bull elk is scheduled to open Sunday.

Meints said a decision about extending the depredation hunt will likely be made later this week when the department may get a better idea of how many escaped elk remain in the wild.

He said the department is waiting for Rammell to give them records on his elk reserve, and that Fish and Game is also waiting for records from the Idaho Department of Agriculture, which regulates operations like Rammell’s reserve.