Daviess County Conservation (MDC) Agent Alan Bradford said the carcass of an adult male elk was found Sunday, March 26, about a mile west of the Jamesport Community Lake and reported to him on Monday.
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The property where the elk was found belongs to Jason Spillman who lives in Idaho. He said he received a call from a neighbor about the find.
“It’s a pretty surprising thing,” Mr. Spillman said. “You don’t run into one of those every day.”
Jason Spillman, who lives in Idaho, has several friends and neighbors who watch his land and they are pictured with the carcass of the dead elk found on his property, from left to right, Vince Neal, Nathan Meservey, Cree Mullenix and Travis Mullenix, all of the Trenton area.
Mr. Spillman said there were no sightings of the elk alive on his land, but that he had heard of one around Jamesport that had the same characteristics.
According to Agent Bradford, the mature bull had an antler that measured six by six, meaning six points on either side of its rack (12-point if measured as a deer).
The carcass was very decayed.
“It was too far gone to determine if it was shot or how it died,” Agent Bradford said.
Agent Bradford took the elk head to the MDC office at Columbia on Tuesday to have it tested for disease, including Chronic Wasting Diseases, and possibly a DNA test. The DNA test will help tell what part of the country the elk came from.
Agent Bradford said in late October last year, an elk was seen in the Jamesport area. The description of that elk matched the one that was found dead.
He said every once in a while he hears of sightings in the area of an elk that is passing through.
“Usually these are young males trying to find their own territory,” he said. “They start wandering and wind up in Missouri.”
However this elk was a mature bull. He believes it was one that was first sighted around the Harrison/Mercer county lines, before continuing south and being seen again in the Jamesport area.
He did not think it had ventured from the elk reservation located at Peck Ranch Conservation Area in southern Missouri. Elk in the restoration zone are tagged and many have tracking collars and there was no evidence of a tag or collar among the decayed remains.
The testing by biologists at Columbia can only be done on a good sample. If the sample is good enough to test, it will take several weeks for the testing to be complete.