Overview
- National Park Service officials say a male elk was illegally killed Sept. 9 or 10 in the Hudson drainage of Great Sand Dunes National Preserve near Mosca.
- Authorities are seeking an approximately 6-foot white male with brown hair and a close-trimmed beard who wore camouflage with a ball cap and backpack, may have carried a compound bow with bright fletching and two antlers without the skull, and was linked to a dark-colored Ram pickup.
- Colorado Parks and Wildlife is separately investigating four bull elk illegally killed on different ranches near Stonewall and Picketwire in Las Animas County.
- CPW detailed the Las Animas cases as an abandoned carcass, a wounded elk later euthanized, one with backstraps removed, and another with the head taken with no meat.
- Tips can be submitted anonymously to NPS at 719-589-5807 or [email protected] and to CPW’s Operation Game Thief at 877-265-6648, and officials note big-game poaching can be a felony under state law and a federal offense on federal land.