FORKS — State Fish and Wildlife agents hope to offer a reward for the identity of whoever shot four elk cows and two calves that were wounded, escaped into timber, then crept back to a clearcut to die.
One of the calves was badly wounded but clinging to life when the elk were discovered.
It was killed humanely by wildlife officer Brian Fairbanks.
“I’m trying to set up a reward fund on this one,” Fairbanks said Tuesday.
“This is just an outright blatant thrill kill and a terrible waste.”
No meat was taken from the carcasses, he said.
Fairbanks was called to the scene Sunday and spent much of Monday in wind and rain at the clearcut off Sitkum-Sol Duc Road — known locally as the A Road — north of Forks.
“Somebody must have driven up on a herd of elk,” he said.
“It looked like they just opened up on the herd.”
The shooter used a semiautomatic rifle, Fairbanks said.
Because many of the elks’ wounds were in their hindquarters, Fairbanks said they probably were running away.
More elk could be found
More wounded animals could be in the area, he said.
“There’s a good possibility some of them could be running around in the woods out there.”
The wounds to the elks’ rumps and abdomens were mortal but not immediately fatal.
Other wounded animals could die from peritonitis or blood loss.
By contrast, killing shots from high-powered rifles strike an animal’s chest, killing it as much by hydrostatic shock as by tissue damage or bleeding.
“These elk did not die quickly,” said wildlife Sgt. Phil Henry.
“They came back and then died in the clearing.”
Fairbanks said the shooting probably wasn’t related to three bulls found shot along a logging road south of Forks in late October, although their carcasses were not butchered for meat.
