$25,000 reward for information on Kamloops cattle poacher

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KAMLOOPS – A Westsyde ranch is offering a $25,000 reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction after finding an important cow slaughtered and poached.

Ranch manager Jason Bishop and company were doing a routine cattle round-up at the Fish Trap corrals in Westsyde, yesterday Oct. 15, when they came upon the grisly discovery: A bred heifer shot in the head and butchered, with its back straps and hind legs taken. The animal was a bred heifer, meaning she was a young female that was pregnant for the first time.

Bishop says the animal was worth much more to the ranch than the value of the meat the poachers stole.

"They killed a two-year-old bred heifer with a lot of years left in her. She was the base of rebuilding the herd. As cows get older they get sick and die or stop having calves, because of this, a young bred heifer is very important to a herd. Basically, the ranch is built off these animals," Bishop says.

In his time working with livestock, Bishop says he has never seen anything like this.

The ranch owner is offering a $25,000 reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction.

"He's very angry about it. All the local ranchers are really angry about it. This has to stop," Bishop says.

What happened on the Dorman ranch isn't an isolated incident. Bishop says he spoke to another local rancher who, later the same day, found a cow that was shot in the head, but survived. Bishop says this was likely done by the same suspect.

"I'm no CSI Westsyde or anything, but it seems to me that when they didn't kill the first one, it ran away injured. Then, they just happened to shoot the next cow they saw."

Anyone with information about this crime is asked to contact the Kamloops RCMP at 250-828-3000 or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-TIPS (8477).

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