Oregon State Police fish and wildlife troopers are asking for the public's help figuring out who unlawfully killed a six-point bull elk in the Grant County mountains, and Northwest Sportsman has the details on what they know so far.

A six-point bull isn't a random yearling that wandered into somebody's scope, at least not in my book. In my experience that's a mature animal, the kind hunters spend whole seasons trying to find. I'd argue you don't stumble into one by accident, and you don't leave one lying in the mountains because you couldn't find it either. A shot elk doesn't teleport. You walk to it, and that's all there is to it.

I've said this before and I'll keep saying it: killing an animal and letting it rot is a choice. It dishonors the elk, it steals from everyone who hunts legally, and it hands ammunition to people who already think hunters don't care about wildlife. Poaching isn't hunting gone slightly wrong. It's a different thing entirely, and legal hunters are usually the angriest people in the room when a case like this lands.

That anger is useful, by the way. Troopers work these cases on tips more than anything else. Somebody heard a shot where there shouldn't have been one. Somebody saw a truck parked odd at a gate at first light. Somebody's cousin said something dumb at a bar. Oregon's Turn-In-Poachers line pays rewards for information that leads to a citation or conviction, and you can report anonymously. Don't take a number from me, look up the OSP TIP line directly through the Oregon State Police website so you've got the right one in your pocket before you need it.

The timing stings too. We're deep in October, prime elk season, when the woods are full of people doing it right. Getting up at 3 a.m. Hauling camp in on their backs. Passing young bulls because they're holding out for an animal they've earned. Then somebody takes a bull out of season or without a tag or however this one went down, and dumps it like garbage.

I still remember the first time I came across a carcass dumped off a forest road, a deer, shot and left whole. It was years ago and it still makes my jaw tighten. You grow up the way I did, with parents who taught you that you eat what you shoot and you thank the animal besides, and that image doesn't leave.

If you were in the Grant County mountains recently and something felt off, say something. Whoever did this is counting on the quiet. Don't give it to them.