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Girl shoots elk thinking it was a deer

I feel bad for her. I don’t know anything about hunting in the midwest but would be surprised if they cover the differences between elk and white tails in hunters safety there, being that there’s not really any wild elk. If I had a kid elk hunting and ended up shooting a caribou in Montana, you can’t really blame them. I’m glad that they seemed to have turned it into a learning lesson for all involved.
 
Why didn't they get to keep the meat? If there's no season and the animal wasn't supposed to be there, the hunter should be able to keep the meat.
 
The only problem I have is that it said she thought she had killed a big buck. For God's sake, I would think that even a non-hunter of that age in MO, as well as her Dad, would know it wasn't a deer when they walked up to it.
 
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I heard the story of a local guy that shot big palmatted buck. Only catch was it had spots like a fawn. Haha. You guessed it, escaped from a high fence.
 
Topgun 30-06 said:
The only problem I have is that it said she thought she had killed a big buck. For God's sake, I would think that even a non-hunter of that age in MO, as well as her Dad, would know it wasn't a deer when they walked up to it.
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I agree, IF you don't know what your target looks like, why are you even in the woods.
 
Adult hunters shoot moose every year during elk season because of mistaken identity. One year in the Snowy Range in Wyoming, SIX moose were shot by elk hunters. I guess they had bad mentors also.
 
The good side is that they reported it instead of simply covering up. Also, although all of US would know the difference, this was a small elk and was in an area over 200 miles away from where any elk were supposed to be. I would simply take a more tempered approach. Mistake that was owned up to and taken responsibility for.....as mentioned by JLS, moose are mistaken for elk regularly and to ME that is a MUCH bigger difference in appearance than elk to deer.
 
Southern Elk said:
Why didn't they get to keep the meat? If there's no season and the animal wasn't supposed to be there, the hunter should be able to keep the meat.
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Elk are protected in the state, so even though they said it was an accident they are still guilty of a Game violation. The state decided (so far) that the only punishment is that they don’t get to keep any part of the animal. I understand kids make mistakes, but that can’t be an excuse when guns are invloved. The state has been very vocal about the fact that elk are in the state now and in the hunters defense they are over 200 miles from the herd. Luckily they did the right thing and immediately called a game warden.

I think this is a perfect example of a hunter who probably wasn’t ready to be alone. I think that very topic was raised recently on this forum.
 
WOW... what a judgmental board for a 14 year old from the Midwest that has "probably" never seen an elk in the wild. "Those who live in glass houses......."

good luck to all
the dog
 
As a fellow Missourian I agree with Cody, the state for several years now has been very vocal about shooting elk. When I was a kid there seemed to be about one elk a year shot, which usually escaped from a game farm, which prompted the state to specify whitetail ore mule deer only for our deer season, even though mulies don’t occur naturally here. On a side note my dad taught hunter ed for about 20 years here and I know in his classes and the class I took when I was 11 we had game identification sessions. I’d say she may have not been ready to go on her own yet but I am not germane to the situation.
 
pointingdogsrule said:
WOW... what a judgmental board for a 14 year old from the Midwest that has "probably" never seen an elk in the wild. "Those who live in glass houses......."

good luck to all
the dog
Click to expand...

She may not know what an elk looks like but she sure should know what a whitetail looks like. And that isn't one.
 
As an aside, in Arkansas you can shoot an elk that wanders out of the core elk zone, no special tag needed, just a regular license. Doesn't matter if it's 200 yards or 200 miles. They probably do this because the public blamed the elk for CWD being here and they are trying to restrict the elk to that region only.
 
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