Chase White spent nearly an hour thinking a gunshot wound to his neck and lungs was an injury from a frustrated cow’s kick.
The Snooks Ranch hand had been separating calves from their mothers alongside two other cowboys on the morning of Oct. 4, to “precondition” or vaccinate the calves in the corrals outside Sundance, he told Cowboy State Daily in a phone interview.
The hilly countryside stretching beyond the corrals is a frequent hunting ground, and the cowboys heard distant gunshots throughout the morning. The clouds lowered, then drizzled.
When the cowboys separated the calves from their mothers, the cattle bawled, drowning out the shots and the building rain.
Something hit White in the neck. Faint and confused, he walked about 10 steps up the alleyway and called to the other two cowboys for help.
Then he sat down. The world drifted away as he passed out.
One cowboy called 911 for an ambulance; the other called Chase White’s wife Anna, who was in their home near the corrals.
The couple are newlyweds, having been married for just five months.
Anna arrived and fought to keep her husband awake.
“She (later) said I looked terrible – like I was dead or close to it,” White recalled.
They waited for the ambulance from Sundance. It arrived after 18 minutes, said White.
‘Cause That’s What I Told Them’
At the hospital in Sundance, nurses and doctors fretted over White’s head and neck, wondering if his brain was bleeding, he said.
Medical staff assumed he had been injured working cattle.
“They also thought I got kicked — ‘cause that’s what I told them,” he said. “Then they took an X-ray and asked if I’d ever been shot before.”
A bullet was nestled in White’s chest cavity, under his ribs.
“What are you talking about?” asked White, shocked at the news.
The X-ray photo, which White provided to Cowboy State Daily, shows one sloped bullet reflecting brighter than every bone, angling downward behind the curve of a lower rib.
It had entered White’s neck and shot through both lungs, coming to rest within his chest, he said.
“That’s just absolutely crazy to me,” said White.
Medical professionals in Sundance put a chest tube in White’s lung, which had filled with blood.
An air ambulance flew White to a hospital in Rapid City, South Dakota, for access to a more advanced trauma team to drain the other lung.
The bullet might have to stay in his chest, said White
“They definitely want my lungs to be totally healed before they would (take it out),” he said, adding that even then, taking it out could complicate his health more than leaving it in —possibly for his whole life.
The bullet has strange dimensions — 8 mm in diameter, 24 mm long — possibly from an 8 mm Mauser, White said.
The area is sore, and it’s weird knowing a bullet is in there, said White. But if it has to stay in him, then so be it.
White has only theories about the origin of the shot.
Someone could have fired a rifle skyward or shot from a hill from a distance. Either way, “it seems very dumb, very reckless,” said White.
The bullet was intact, so the notion of a ricochet is out, he added.
White said he hopes the sheriff’s office is investigating the shooting, but he hadn’t seen signs Sunday that the office was gleaning evidence beyond what White had obtained from medical professionals, such as the bullet’s dimensions.
“I’d like to at least know who did it, you know what I mean?” he asked.
White was released from the hospital in Rapid City on Oct. 10, he said. His wife stayed with him throughout that week, and drove him home.
He’s supposed to “take it easy” for the next two weeks, after which he can ride a horse - if it’s a broke horse - he recalled from talks with his doctor.
The Sheriff Says
A statement Crook County Sheriff Jeff Hodge sent Monday to Cowboy State Daily called the investigation “complex.”
Because the projectile cannot be safely removed at this time, it “limits investigators’ ability to conduct ballistic analysis” which could help identify not just time, but potential origin, the statement says.
Rifling marks could link the projectile to a specific gun.
The “angle of entry” suggests the shot came from a considerable distance, potentially more than a mile away, says the entry.
“In open terrain, high-powered rifle rounds are capable of traveling such distances, which significantly broadens the scope of possible sources,” says the statement.
The statement entertains the possibility that the bullet ricocheted or went stray from a hunting area or one of the shooting ranges in the region.
No gunfire was reported at that specific time, which compounds the challenge, wrote the sheriff.
“With limited witness awareness, investigators are working with minimal firsthand accounts,” Hodge wrote. “At this time, the Sheriff's Office cannot conclusively determine the origin of the shot or the circumstances surrounding it. All possibilities remain under review as the investigation continues.”
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
