A Cruel End for a Great Elk

On a warm autumn morning in the Tehachapi Mountains, fish and game warden Bill Dailey found that the disturbing tip was true. Resting under an oak tree was a pile of elk legs.

Dailey also found a garbage bag containing a tan carpet fiber, a small piece of yellow plastic, brain tissue and a big eyeball.

As Dailey cataloged the evidence, two roofers stopped their pickup to survey the scene. Dailey told the workers that they were looking at the remains of a trophy bull elk.

“That game warden was not happy,” said Rand Gurley, one of the roofers. “He looked like he was really ticked off and said he was going to find who did this. He was wondering what had happened to the rest of the elk.”

Dailey saw tire tracks that led toward a nearby gated subdivision called Bear Valley Springs. Thus began the search for the killer of a stately animal known to many folks in town as Big Daddy.

*

The next morning, Oct. 6, 2004, Anthony Gomes, 51, walked out of his Bear Valley Springs home to water his neighbor’s plants when he spotted a downed animal in a grassy area at the end of the street.

He walked closer. The smell hit him first. And then Gomes realized he knew the victim.

It was Big Daddy, a frequent visitor to Gomes’ street. And he was missing three legs and his antlers.

Gomes vomited.

“The minute I saw how big it was, I knew which elk it was,” Gomes said.

Lots of people knew Big Daddy. He was a descendant of a herd of Rocky Mountain elk purchased in the 1960s from Yellowstone National Park -- where they were considered surplus -- and brought to the Tehachapis by a rancher intending to start a game farm.

The animals hopped a fence and a few hundred today thrive in the oak- and pine-covered mountains east of Bakersfield. The elk are off-limits to hunters except on nearby Tejon Ranch, where five sportsmen a year each pay $20,000 to bag a bull with a trophy rack.

In Bear Valley Springs, the elk aren’t shy. To hear residents tell it, Big Daddy was a gentle giant, or in Gomes’ words, “the big man on campus.” The origin of his nickname is unclear, but the inspiration is obvious.

Big Daddy was probably a 1,000-pound animal. He commanded attention, particularly when in someone’s yard devouring an entire apple tree.

Perhaps 8 to 10 years old, he showed little fear of humans and was often seen leading a few smaller males and a harem of 30 cows. His name was, perhaps intentionally, a reference to the fact that Big Daddy -- like all bull elk -- was decidedly not monogamous.

He probably has progeny throughout the Tehachapis. His bugling during the fall mating season resembled a fog horn and was a familiar sound in the Bear Valley Springs area.

The community, with more than 7,500 residents, was developed in the 1970s as a retirement retreat. One real estate agent bills it as “your own private national park,” a description that is only part hype: The subdivision covers almost 25,000 acres and is partly perched on the flanks of Bear Mountain.

Gomes lives at the end of a mile-long street shared by only four residents. At its end, the street loops around a grassy cul-de-sac, where Big Daddy often grazed and snoozed with his herd; it would become his final resting place.

After discovering the carcass, Gomes called police, who summoned Dailey.

As with the crime scene Dailey saw a day earlier, there was no shortage of evidence.

Rope burns marked Big Daddy’s neck, indicating he had been dragged a few feet before the killer gave up. Dailey found a .22-caliber brass casing, two empty bags of Frito-Lay salted peanuts, two kitchen knives and four cans of Natural Lite beer.

And, again, tire tracks led from the grassy area.

*

The state Department of Fish and Game says poaching is a serious problem, but the agency has no way of knowing how many animals are illegally killed each year.

A recent federal report estimated that only 2% of all poaching is detected.

In Dailey’s view, what happened to Big Daddy was not only illegal, it was downright cruel.

“This is an animal that every hunter dreams about taking under legal circumstances,” he said. “But in this case, it wasn’t legal, and that animal was protected and it had no fear of humans.”

A short-haired man with ramrod-straight posture, Dailey, 30, grew up in Colorado and is a lifelong hunter. He says that he enjoys the gamesmanship of tracking down poachers.

Dailey caught a break when a tipster called and said that Big Daddy’s killer lived near Tehachapi. The caller did not supply a name, but he knew a .22-caliber gun was used -- a small weapon for such a big job. The antlers, the caller said, were being stored near Bakersfield.

Finally, the caller told Dailey to contact another man who knew someone else with more information.

Working his way up the hearsay chain, Dailey eventually nailed down a name and an address. Big Daddy’s antlers, he was certain, would be found there.

*

Following Dailey’s directions, fish and game agents arrived at a home in Bakersfield. They began questioning Gregg Waters, whose grandmother lived in the house.

In the backyard, game warden Terry Mullen pushed aside a section of chain-link fence covering some tumbleweeds and found a rack of antlers.

Waters told agents he didn’t kill the elk -- a friend had given him the antlers.

If they wanted to talk to Big Daddy’s killer, Waters said, they needed to head back to Bear Valley Springs and talk to a man named John Russell Reed.

That was news. Agents were simultaneously searching the home of another man they wrongly believed was the shooter. The treads on his truck’s tires resembled those at the crime scene, but agents later learned that was a coincidence.

Three hours later, Dailey and fellow game warden Brian Naslund were standing in Reed’s driveway, listening to his denial.

Reed, 33, said he was self-employed, didn’t have a car, didn’t own a gun and didn’t shoot Big Daddy, according to the agents’ investigative report. Reed insisted that he had found the antlers by the road.

The agents were unswayed.

Then, according to the fish and game report, Reed said the following:

One afternoon in early October, Reed was driving around Bear Valley Springs with his two stepsons when he saw Big Daddy and 30 to 40 other elk. Reed took the boys home, retrieved a .22-caliber rifle that Waters had lent him and returned to the herd alone.

Big Daddy was still there. Reed said that he walked to within 30 yards of the elk and fired three or four times. “Shot him between the eyes. That’s what I was aiming at,” Reed said.

Dailey asked him if Big Daddy had tried to run. “No, he just stood there,” Dailey said Reed told him. “Thought I had missed all three shots.”

Reed said that he couldn’t move the elk. He later used a hack saw and several kitchen knives -- not hunting knives designed to clean animals -- to try to butcher Big Daddy.

But he panicked and ended up leaving most of the meat. He later tossed the legs out of his truck after becoming too nervous to drop them at the local garbage dump. He also decided to hide the antlers at Waters’ home in Bakersfield.

Dailey looked around Reed’s house. He noticed the carpet was tan, like the fiber found under the oak tree. He also observed that one of the knives from the crime scene appeared to match a set of Miracle Blade III knives in Reed’s kitchen.

In another interview, Waters corroborated much of Reed’s story. He said that he was reluctant to lend his friend the gun, but Reed had said he wanted to do some shooting, according to investigative records.

“He didn’t tell me he was going to shoot that damn elk,” Waters said.

Before leaving, Dailey offhandedly asked Waters what type of beer Reed liked to drink.

Waters answered that Reed drank Bud Light when he had some money and Natural Lite when he was broke.

*

The killing of Big Daddy has been big news in the southern San Joaquin Valley. Traci Havens, a Bear Valley Springs resident, gathered hundreds of signatures on a petition asking the court to throw the book at Reed when he went to trial.

She also began an effort to build a memorial to Big Daddy at the entrance to Bear Valley Springs.

“What bothers me is the fact that he was so tame and unafraid of humans,” Havens said. “He never knew what was coming.”

Reed initially pleaded not guilty, but on Jan. 28 he returned to court and pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor charge of possessing wildlife out of season, no contest to three other charges of unlawfully killing wildlife and no contest to two gun violations.

Kern County Superior Court Judge Colette Humphrey sentenced him to 60 days in jail, fined him $1,000 and put him on probation for three years. In addition, she told Reed that he was forbidden to go anywhere near lands where hunting is allowed.

That he got jail time for poaching was rare. Humans inflict plenty of misery on one another, leaving little space behind bars for those who harm animals.

Kern County Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael Yraceburn said that he was pleased with the outcome.

“It’s a misdemeanor crime, Reed has virtually no record that we could confirm and given the 30,000 misdemeanors that go through our court here, I’m actually surprised how tough the sentence was,” he said.

The same day Reed admitted to shooting the elk, Waters pleaded not guilty to possessing part of an illegally killed creature. He is due back in court next month.

Waters’ attorney, Dean Miller, said: “Even assuming for a moment that he knew the antlers came from the elk, he wasn’t responsible for killing the elk, or disposing of it, the only thing he had was possession. That’s a violation, but I don’t think that justifies a jail sentence.”

Agents Dailey and Naslund have already moved on to another strange case. In mid-December, the bodies of two elk were found neatly side-by-side along a rural road outside Bakersfield. They had been shot.

“Did someone put them there deliberately?” Naslund asked, implying that someone could be trying to send them a message. “We don’t know if it’s related or if there’s some other connection.”

On the cul-de-sac where Big Daddy now lies buried, it’s been a quiet winter.

The elk seldom came around much after Big Daddy died and are now gone for their usual winter hiatus. Gomes, who found the dead beast, wonders if they’ll ever come back.