Glendale Elk Poaching Case (Long)

[CWOregon]

I know this has been posted a few times already on this forum but I was just reminded of it and wanted to remind everybody else as well. My buddy was checked for tags and what not by an OSP game officer while hunting in the Cascade Bull Season and this topic came up while they were talking. They currently have no suspects and there IS a reward for any tip that leads to solving the case. It seems like there is often an anonymous tip that leads to the arrest of the poacher or poachers in situations like this. I guess a couple of these bulls were 300 class bulls. Just sick. So everybody keep their ears open. People talk and things get around after a while. There are many other articles about this too if you want to search around....


Elk poaching has Oregon hunters riled
By Gazette News Services

GLENDALE, Ore. - For the past two years, trips down Interstate 5 through the Glendale area have brought with them a little pleasurable rubbernecking for Fred Craig and others of his elk-hunters' ilk.

A herd of bachelor bull elk, as many as seven at a time, often caroused in a field just west of the freeway in full view of elk-gawkers like Craig, a Grants Pass man who is president of the Oregon Hunters Association.

"A lot of us have seen them," Craig says. "One six-point really stood out."

But the bulls are gone now, likely at the hands of a poacher or poachers who have Oregon's hunting community riled to the point where members have created one of the state's largest rewards ever offered in a wildlife case.

The Medford-based OHA and others have raised more than $10,000 as a reward for helping bring down the Glendale-area poachers who have shot and left to waste seven branch-antlered bulls since October.

The killings are one of the most egregious serial elk-poaching cases in Oregon history, and the $10,500 reward pledged so far from the Glendale community and statewide sporting groups is one of the highest Oregon State Police brass can remember.

The killings have quickly caused a statewide furor, and the ire cannot be higher for Craig and others whose relationship to these animals make solving the case that much more meaningful.

"I don't know if it's the exact same seven bulls, but it's the same batch of animals," Craig says.

"We take all of this personally, but you take it more personally when you've seen the animals," he says.

The latest killings came early on July 10 when three large bull elk - one 5-point and two 6-point bulls - were shot and left to waste in a field off McCullough Creek Road in rural Josephine County, according to OSP.

All three were at an old Douglas County landfill site about 200 yards apart, OSP said.

Local residents reported hearing three shots fired in the area just before 4 a.m., police said.

Troopers believe the shooter or shooters are the same people who have shot and left for waste four other branch-antlered bulls dating back to October.

All seven cases have occurred in the same general area and followed the same pattern - shots at elk near roadways at night, with no attempt to salvage meat or antlers, OSP Sgt. Dean Perske said.

The statewide office of OHA, Oregon's largest hunting organization, chipped in $4,000, while various chapters have pledged more money to join $6,000 already raise in the Glendale community.

The reward is about twice that of a 1995 elk-poaching case at the Dean Creek elk-viewing area near Reedsport and eclipses the $10,000 reward offered for the poaching of a bighorn sheep near Paisley in January of 2006.

This is a case all sportsmen want solved, Craig says.

"This isn't some poor guy who left his tag in his pickup," Craig says. "This guy or guys just shot them and left them.

"It's killing just to be killing, and we take offense to that," he says.