Warden...got a few questions

theplatoon · Jul 30, 2007

Warden,

This past weekend my family and I were setting up a trail camera for my hunt the first of september. Well my sons come up on a skull of an elk and the horns we cut off..you could see about 3/4" or 1" left on the skull and saws marks on the stubs.

Know my questions...

1) The skull was probably last years (pure white and no meat or read left on the bones)...does this need to be reported...is it worth reporting. We were about 2.5 miles from the nearest road. You cannot drive to the area...it's a good hour and half walk due to the terrain.

2) If I reported it what is the probablity of someone actually going out there to investigate it.

3) It could have been a elk that died from wounds/wolfs/old age and someone came up on the skull and just cut the horns or it could have been poached.

Me and my family were discussing it and I always wonder what to do and if it was worth doing it.

Thanks for your time and answers,
The Platoon

GreasyMullet · Jul 30, 2007

Platoon,
What makes you think foul play was involved? Could it have been last years kill?

hunt1 · Jul 30, 2007

I've found skulls like that many times. The hunter is smart enough to carry a saw, so they only have to carry out the horns w/ skull plate. Kinda like deboning the meat...why would you want to carry all that extra weight?

theplatoon · Jul 30, 2007

the skull was completely intact...i've seen skulls where the top part of the skull is misssing..i've done it before myself especially if your not going to mount the animal...why carry the whole head.

the skull had "stubs" and saw marks...so someone shot this elk and just cut the antlers off below the base and therefore left stubs or someone found this dead elk and cut the antlers off so they didn't have to carry the skull...i'm just wondering if it is worth reporting....when you kill an elk with any weapon you have to leave the antlers attached to the skull...obviously these people didn't.

GreasyMullet · Jul 30, 2007

True... I missed the part about the antlers being cut off an inch above the skull.
Probably "should" report it. Dont know if I would or not, being that is has been a year or so....

tmbrlinewarden · Jul 30, 2007

LAST EDITED ON Jul-31-07 AT 00:52AM (MST)[p]
Hey guys. I appreciate the question and the interest. My best guess- from however many hundreds of miles away- is that someone found the head while shed hunting and, knowing the laws against picking up heads, sawed the horns off and, in their minds, turned them into sheds. Obviously that's not the case we can all tell the difference between sheds and sawn off horns. It's possible it was simply taken as part of a legal harvest. Seems less likely the elk was flat-out poached- horn hunters (poachers) would rarely defile a "rack" like that.

This is all speculation, but an informed guess. I can usually tell you by looking if they were sawn off before or after the hair and flesh was gone, what time of year the animal died, how long ago the skull was sawn, if the skull had been skinned with a knife, how old the elk was, (sometimes) if the elk was killed by a lion, etc.

I'd say on something like that no harm could ever come from telling your game warden about it. Is he going to make a federal case out of it? probably not. He'll probably do like I did and figure that someone has a couple of antlers out there somewhere that look like sheds from a distance but aren't- In which event the skull isn't the crux of our case anyway and it's not exactly a felony. It doesn't make him lazy to not want to walk in there and look at it, just prudent, that'd make at least half a day or more the warden would be out of touch with the rest of his district (Just like I'm guessing most folks wouldn't want to take a day off of work to guide them in there). But he may be smack in the middle of an investigation that makes that skull a pretty interesting piece of information (I've got a deal going right now that's similar). His ear's may just perk up- "where did you find this thing exactly??" OR, you may end up getting a call from him six months later, say after he finds some new info, "remember that skull you found, think you could show me on a map"

I'm not trying to say it's incumbant upon all hunters to call the warden every time they find a bone pile- but what you found is a little out of the ordinary, is indicative of some kind of hinkiness, and I certainly wouldn't mind the 10 minute conversation to learn about it.

FYI-When I can I always take these types of skulls home, label them, and throw them in my bone pile. Talk about a fingerprint, imagine the joy when you match up a rack from John Q Dirtbag's garage with the spot-lighted skull it came from- It's a GOTCHA moment.

Thanks for caring enough to ask, hope my explanation helped clear up the warden's perspective. Good Luck in September!

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