Hunters who helicoptered into isolated public land in the southern Bighorn Mountains to hunt elk claim that after they shot and quartered three bull elk, an adjacent landowner tried to steal one of the bull’s heads.
Andrew McKean, an outdoor writer who lives in Glascow, Montana, told Cowboy State Daily he was among a group of five friends who hired a chopper pilot earlier this month to fly them into some public land that is surrounded by private property.
The group included three hunters with bull elk tags, including McKean, a friend who came along to help pack elk meat and a videographer.
Strange Confrontation
The area where they camped and hunted includes thousands of acres of mixed State of Wyoming and Bureau of Land Management land, and is essentially inaccessible, except by air, McKean said.
After the hunters filled their bull tags, they left the carcass quarters and heads to cool.
Upon returning to one of the kill sites to pack the meat and head out, some members of the party spotted a man trying to carry off one of the elk heads, McKean said.
The man was apparently one of the adjacent ranchers, McKean said, although he declined to disclose the man’s name.
When confronted and pressed with questions, the man agreed to return the elk’s head to the hunters, he said
McKean recounted the hunt, and the confrontation with the rancher, in a recent article published in Outdoor Life. He is the publication’s hunting and conservation editor.
Aside from that incident, the hunt was essentially a perfect outdoor adventure, McKean said.
“That (the confrontation) was so, just, bizarre,” he said.
He said the alleged attempted theft of the elk head was reported to the Wyoming Game and Fish Department and Sheridan County Sheriff’s office.
The alleged incident is under investigation, so Game and Fish can’t comment on it, Sheridan region spokeswoman Christina Schmidt stated in an email response to an inquiry from Cowboy State Daily.
An inquiry to the sheriff’s office wasn’t answered by publication time.
‘The Helicopter Seemed Extravagantly Aggressive’
Bull tags for that elk hunt area are difficult to draw, so McKean wanted to get the most of his and his friends’ hunts.
They were particularly interested in the isolated public land. The problem was outfitted hunts facilitated by the surrounding landowners' costs about $8,000 to $10,000 per hunter, according to his Outdoor Life article.
After doing the math, the party decided it would be cheaper to hire a chopper pilot to fly them in, McKean said, although he declined to say how much the bill was.
“The helicopter seemed extravagantly aggressive” as a way to get in, but it was the only practical way, if they were going to hunt the public land on their own, he said.
The plan was to fly in and set up camp on one of the BLM parcels, where camping is allowed.
Hunting or scouting for game with aircraft, including drones, is strictly forbidden in Wyoming and other states.
In Alaska and Montana, there is a mandatory waiting period of 24 hours before hunters who have been flown into an area may legally start hunting there, McKean said.
Although he couldn’t find any such requirement on the Wyoming books, his party decided it would still be best to wait a full day after being dropped off to begin hunting.
Coming in by chopper was a noisy way to make an entrance. But once they were settled in, they kept a quiet camp and hunted on foot, he said.
‘Corner-Crossing’ Wasn’t An Option
McKean is an avid public lands hunter, and said he has a keen interest in the often-fraught topic of hunting access.
Corner-crossing, or “corner-hopping” as it is sometimes called, has recently been a hot topic as it relates to hunter access. It involves crossing the pinpoint at adjoining corners of public and private land parcels.
A years-long battle between a wealthy Carbon County ranch owner and four out-of-state hunters came to an end in October, when the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the rancher’s last-ditch case against the hunters.
The rancher’s case rested on the argument that the hunters had committed trespass when they used a ladder-like device to corner-cross between two parcels of public land adjacent to his property in 2021.
A Carbon County jury found the hunters not guilty of criminal trespass.
And lower courts, likewise, ruled in favor of the hunters in subsequent civil actions.
The Supreme Court’s rejection of the case is widely regarded as essentially establishing that corner-crossing is legal and not trespassing.
However, McKean said the public land where he and his friends camped and hunted is surrounded by private property in such a manner, corner-crossing on foot to get there wasn’t a viable option.
Hence, they decided to fly in.
They weren’t the first hunters to make such a move in Wyoming.
Pilot Kyle Scott of Weldona, Colorado, previously told Cowboy State Daily that in 2020, he and his wife used a helicopter to fly in for an elk hunt on the same public land parcel in Carbon County that later became the flashpoint of the corner-crossing court dispute.
‘An Otherwise Perfect Elk Hunt’
McKean said he can’t speculate as to why the man was apparently trying to make off with the elk head.
At one point during the encounter, the man told the hunters, “I don’t want you hunting on this outfit,” he said.
However, the hunters proved that they had camped, hunted and killed the elk only on public land, McKean said.
The rest of their stay went without incident. At the agreed-upon time, the chopper pilot returned and ferried them and their elk back out, he said.
McKean said that although the hunt “exceeded his expectations,” he doubts that he’ll try returning to that area.
He doesn’t want to push matters or stir up more possible confrontations.
The incident “turned an otherwise perfect elk hunt on its head,” he said.
Mark Heinz can be reached at mark@cowboystatedaily.com.
