Utah Officials Investigate Stolen Elk Claims After Three Hunters Put Arrows into Same Bull

I can’t decide if this whole debacle was the result of bad communication, bad shooting or simply a combination of both.

Following some pretty hefty claims that a Millard County Sheriff's deputy stole a bull elk from under another hunter, Utah officials stepped in with an investigation to get to the bottom of it. The accusing hunter, Mayson Smith, stated “I shot this bull today with [an] over the counter archery tag. I bedded it down after I shot and was giving it time to pass,” he wrote in a Facebook post on Aug. 17, according to Gephardt Daily.

Smith went on to say that he ran into another hunter while waiting around for the bull to die and that by the time he went to find it, it had already been claimed by Millard County Sheriff’s Deputy Mike Blad. The story quickly went viral on social media with many calling foul play on the part of Blad, despite him being the one who put the finishing shots into the bull.

This all changed, rather quickly, once another party stepped forward with their own video evidence from the day’s hunt in a video entitled  “What really happened on 8/17.”

The video goes on to show Smith shooting the elk in the leg and watches as the bull runs away with the arrow protruding from its front leg before it stops to bed down. It’s at this point that the video’s creator decides to put a stalk on the not-so-fatally-injured elk and eventually puts another arrow into the animal nearly five hours after Smith’s original shot in the leg. Admitting that he decided to “just shoot him and we’ll figure it out,” the video creator explains that the elk retreated further down the draw where he finally met sheriff’s deputy Mike Blad. 

It was there that Blad put two more arrows into the elk, ending the chase. He proceeded to affix his tag to the animal and began to dress it out.

“Me and Mike sat there and talked about it for 10 minutes and I decided that Mike should take the bull … he would’ve given it to me if I would have wanted it, [but] that’s what we decided,” the video narrator says. “We looked at where Mayson [Smith] had hit this bull and immediately determined [it] wasn’t a fatal shot. We decided that there’s no reason the only person who didn’t put a fatal shot on the bull should be the one that tags him.”

According to reports, a dispute took place once Smith arrived on scene and found “his” elk tagged and in Blad’s possession. The trio of hunters discussed the rules surrounding the final kill and ultimately it was Blad who came out with the bull as he was the one who killed it.

This week Utah officials completed their investigation into the claims and determined that Mike Blad had not committed any crimes and that the bull was harvested legally. DWR public information officer Faith Heaton Jolley went on to state that conservation officers looked at the video evidence of the hunt and made their decision based on what was recorded.

“The officer concluded that the third hunter had not committed any crimes in shooting and harvesting the elk,” Jolley says.

So with the legal aspect of the hunt and what went down out of the way, the next question ultimately comes down to ethics. While many have pointed out that the video creator was acting somewhat of a ‘scavenger’ after having watched Smith place the initial arrow into the leg of the animal. From where I sit, it comes down to whether or not that animal was going to succumb to its injuries from that initial shot.

Given the fact that it was a leg injury from an arrow, I wouldn’t be all that confident in the animal expiring without additional help. So was this a case of everyone else being in the right place at the right time?

It certainly looks that way. 

At the end of the day, the job got done and the animal wasn’t wasted. From my perspective, that’s what’s truly important here. When it comes to how the boys determined who got to keep what, well, that comes down to personal ethics in this unique situation. I’d have offered the other hunters a few chunks of meat, but ultimately I’d have left my tag on it as well.