What if?

[T-man]

I know we had a post similar to this a little while ago, (shooting an animal wounded by a hunting partner) but I just read a story on another site and wanted to put forth a few questions.

The basics of the story are: guy shoot elk with bow - hears gunshot a short time later from where he last saw his bull run - tracks too the bull and finds five rifle hunters standing over his bull - trys to show them the arrow hole, but they had obliterated it with a gun shot - he ends up getting muscled/threatened to a point where he has to give up the bull.

Questions:

1. What would you do in a similar situation and what would a course of action be?

2. If the shoe was on the other foot and you came across an obviously wounded (from a hunter, but unknown who) animal what would you do?

In my line of work we always put forth "what if" scenarios just to get us thinking about things. I just wanted to hear what peoples opinions would be on something like this.

[BlueNorther]

It's unfortunate but that elk goes to the rifle hunters in my book.Life is too short to lose it over an elk.

[Top Dawg]

My view is the rifle hunter killed the animal it's his.... Tough call to be sure just hope he is by himself and need help too get it out and split it 50/50... LOL

[hunterkiller]

every dog has his day

[grandmapatty]

Well,
I still need to know it the elk was dying and the bow hunter was tracking him and the elk would have died, and hunter would have found him. Now, why did the hunters keep shooting the elk unless they figured that he was already dying and soon would be found by the archer. I would have used my cell phone if possible and just left and contacted the game warden, and let him take care of it. But the single hunter had no where to go at the time. What comes around goes around and eventually the shoe is turned or reversed, but today is not the day. So to the rifle hunters KMA :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: grandmapatty

[Grunter]

I would like to believe that you're right grandma but I don't think that your case holds any weight without forensice evidence. This is one lousy situation that I've witnessed once before for a deer and like Blue said... this certainly is not worth dying for...

[pockets]

i had a situation a few years ago where I got an arrow into a moose and it walked away. I went over to where i saw it last approx 60 yards and there was large pool of blood, so I decided to wait for an hour before going in after it it. the bush it was in was not large and i figured i would circle it and see if I could see any blood coming out. there wasn't so I was pretty confident it was still in there. When i came around to the other side there was a guy in his truck sitting there and he stated he had just shot a moose with his bow. I stated the same thing, so we waited the hour and then went in and the moose was laying there dead with an arrrow in both sides. We had a quick debate about whose arrow killed it, but in the end a moose was going to be a big job for one person so we spilt the moose in half and helped each other load it into our trucks.

[petew]

If you look at it from the rifle hunters view he saw an animal and shot it.There are lots of wounded animals that never get found .This may have been one , we don't know.If we don't make hits that drop then quickly we take a chance someone else will finish them off and claim them.
Its unfortunate that it hapens this way but it can.
Did you offer to tag it and give him half for finishing it off?