Ethical conumdrum

BILLINGS, Mont. -- In real life, hunting doesn't always present a perfect world. Bad things can happen and sometimes do. You have to look at a situation, quickly weigh the morals and ethics, be aware of the legalities and then live with the consequences of the decisions you make.

This column is about a bowhunt for elk on the opening weekend of the archery season in the Missouri Breaks. Be aware that it includes some rather graphic gore and hunting realities that may offend some readers. But they're included here because they played a part in the decisions that were made and the ramifications of those decisions.

You should also be aware that it only tells the hunter's side of the story. Because of pending court action, game wardens were not legally free to share the evidence gathered on their side of the story.

So look at this through the hunter's eyes. The big question here is: What would you do?

Hunting the Breaks

The Missouri River bottoms of Hunting District 410 in the Breaks are often a barely penetrable jungle. Hunters cut their trails in with limb-cutters through the willows and underbrush, then sit in tree stands in the cottonwoods or in ground blinds and wait for the elk who seek out these tangles for their homes.

Sixty-one-year-old Harold Buerkley, of Fort Smith, and his 35-year-old son Travis have hunted the area for decades -- Harold dating back to the 1960s -- working the hills and using a boat on the river to reach the bottoms where they have erected tree stands. Harold has shot about a dozen bulls and cows with his bow over the years and Travis has taken a number of elk with a bow, too.

On opening weekend, the strategy paid off with a big six-point bull that wandered past Travis's tree stand early in the morning. With the elk at 15 yards, he nocked an arrow, aimed and sent the arrow toward the bull. And he hit it, but it was not a good hit. Rather than a hit in the chest, the arrow drifted back and went through the entrails.

Travis sadly noted the bad hit and watched the bull go a distance and then lie down. He sat tight in his stand and waited, which is what a bowhunter is supposed to do. When Harold came over at about
7:30 a.m., his entry made enough noise that the bull got up and they heard it move another distance and lie down again.

They quietly went to the first bedding spot and found Travis' arrow. It had passed through or was plucked out by the elk and was covered with blood and internal juices from end to end. They also found a blood pool.

So they made a decision, following conventional bowhunting wisdom once more, to quietly leave the area and go back to camp. Don't push the animal. Wait and give the arrow time to do its work.

Wounded bull

Harold and Travis returned to the river bottoms at about 1:30 p.m. and began again to look for the elk. They found the first blood pool. They found the spot where the elk went down a second time with a blood pool there. But they didn't find the elk.

Following a blood trail in the river bottoms is difficult and sometimes impossible. It makes you wonder how an elk can move through these areas so easily where a man can barely go. Still, no elk was found. Harold and Travis eventually split up to cover more ground.

As Harold battled his way through the tangles, he eventually heard the crash of moving elk going through the underbrush and heading toward the river. He headed to the river, too, in time to see two spike bulls emerge down the river bank. Neither fit the description of Travis' bull, so he watched them for a moment and went back into the brush to look some more.

Continuing his search, he once again heard the crash of another elk going through the brush toward the river.

This time, the bull that came out was a big one. It was standing about 250 yards downriver and was out in the water. It tried to walk toward the north shore, went down and underwater for a moment, then got back up and walked back to where it could stand in several feet of water. It stood there, about 60-70 yards out from the south shore and about 250 yards downriver.

The bull had been hit. Back behind the ribcage, there was blood on its flanks. And there was about a foot of entrails, too, sticking out the side of the animal. From all indications, this bull was still on its feet now, but would not likely survive the wound.

Harold whistled for his son, then hollered, then hollered again. But Travis was somewhere out of earshot. So Harold had to make another decision.

The boat

In Harold's mind, the primary, ethical thing to do was to somehow put this wounded elk out of its misery and to do it as quickly and cleanly as possible. He told me that it wasn't that this was a big bull. It could have been any elk. He said that he simply did not want to let it suffer and be wasted, dying somewhere later out in the brush. Being about 60 to 70 yards out in the river, it was out of range for a good, solid bowshot from the bank.

Harold felt his best chance to put the wounded elk down was to get into his boat, go across the river, go upriver past the elk, cross back and then turn off his motor and drift past the bull within range. And that's what he did. He waited until he drifted to the downriver side where he had a good angle on the elk for his arrow. Harold then delivered about a 25-yard shot that went through the animal's chest with the broadhead sticking out just in front of the shoulder.

As the elk was foundering and went down in the current, Travis came out of the underbrush and joined his dad in the boat. The bull was now sinking and tumbling underwater as it was carried downstream.

The two hunters went after the elk with the boat and when an antler broke the surface, Travis grabbed it and hung on. They floated the elk down to the boat landing. There, they made another decision. Whose elk was it and whose tag should go on it?

It's an old bowhunting tradition that the archer who puts the first arrow into an animal claims it, no matter where the arrow hit or if it was a killing shot or not. So Travis tagged it and they field-dressed the bull amid a group of other bowhunters at the boat ramp who applauded their success, helped them and marveled at their tale.

The big bull was eventually loaded into their truck and they headed for a game processor in Billings.

The wardens

Harold saw three bowhunters on the north bank of the Missouri watching the scene with the wounded elk, the boat and the shot from the boat. In fact, he told Travis that he wouldn't be surprised if a game warden would be there to greet them at the boat landing to talk to them.

So it didn't really surprise him when he got a phone call from Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks when he got home. It was a Billings area warden who wanted to talk to him. Harold told him his tale. Then Harold told the tale to the warden captain in Billings.

He was then visited by game wardens in Billings from Malta and Chinook and he told them the same story, too. They, in turn, told him that the hunters on the north side of the river claimed they had hit the elk first. It didn't seem to matter that Harold and Travis still had the bloody arrows and they matched the two hits in the elk. And no, the game wardens didn't want to take up Harold on his offer to return to the kill site back in the Breaks so he could show them firsthand what, where and how it all happened.

What the Hi-line wardens did was to confiscate the elk and write out these citations:

* Violation of Statute 87-3-126 against Harold: Unlawful use of boat -- shooting a game animal from a powerboat. You can shoot waterfowl from a powerboat if the boat is not under power. You can shoot big game from a drift boat, row boat or canoe. But if you have a motor on a boat, turned off or turned on, you can't shoot upland birds or a game animal from it.

* Violation of Statute 87-3-111 against Harold: Unlawful possession, shipping or transporting of a game animal. If you illegally take an animal, then possess it and transport it somewhere, even to the processor, that's another violation. Travis got a courtesy citation on the same charge.

* Violation of 87-2-110 against Travis: Unlawful loan or transfer of a big game license, meaning basically that Travis put his tag on an animal that Harold should have claimed. Under Montana law, whoever makes the killing shot puts his or her license on the animal. It's left to the game warden's discretion as to whose shot is fatal.

Where it stands

Harold told me that based on the charges and the possible penalties, he had little choice but to contest the citations. It will be up to a judge in Phillips County to decide the case sometime in the future.

Each of the three misdemeanor citations carries a possible fine of up to $1,000, up to a year in jail and possible loss of hunting and fishing privileges for some number of years. The big bull also appears to exceed the trophy standards set up by FWP, so he may also have to pay $8,000 in restitution for taking the big bull elk illegally.

As for all the meat from the big bull, it's generally held for a while then, under Montana law, goes to food banks. If a hunter wins a case and FWP has game meat to substitute, it will provide it. Antlers are kept for evidence and, if the hunter wins, they are returned.

As I wrote early on, this is just Harold and Travis' side of the story. Game wardens won't divulge any information they have on the incident under the constraints of law. But it's worth noting that several high-ranking wardens I talked to did say that you can't do what you feel is ethical while violating the law. And, writing citations on incidents is typically up to the warden's discretion.

The reason to tell this tale, however, isn't to decide guilt or innocence. The courts will do that. It's to point out that hunts don't always go according to plan. Hunting often offers an imperfect world where decisions have to made regarding ethics, traditions, laws and the entanglements that real life situations present.

Put yourself in the hunters' boots. What would you have done?

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