Almost a century ago, fifty Rocky Mountain elk (Cervus canadensis nelsoni) were transplanted from Yellowstone National Park to northeastern Shasta County. California Department of Fish and Game biologists estimate that today between four hundred and five hundred elk are scattered across the mountains and foothills of Shasta, Siskiyou, Modoc and Lassen Counties. Whether or not they all originated from the Yellowstone contingent is very much in question. Slightly larger Roosevelt elk (Cervus canadensis roosevelti) are suspected to have migrated south from Oregon into northern California, and the two subspecies may well have interbred.
People living in the intermountain areas of Burney and Fall River Valley enjoy seeing small herds of these majestic animals from time to time, particularly during the winter months. That is the time of year when elk migrate to lower elevations and congregate where most of the forage is available. Other than a few elk that were killed legally by hunters who had won public drawings and been issued individual hunting permits, these giant grazers have enjoyed protection for over ninety years. Harm one and you not only break the law, you incur the wrath of an entire community.
II
No one knows exactly what happened on December 8, 1991, except the defendants themselves. The following account is based on statements made by the defendants, physical evidence, knowledge of the area and information gathered by the investigating officers.
Early on the morning of December 8, 1991, Jesse Lee Brewer drove his Ford Bronco through the quiet streets of McArthur. He was twenty-three years old at the time, just under six feet tall and about thirty pounds overweight. Lying on the front seat next to Brewer was his 7mm Remington Magnum, high-powered rifle. Jesse’s first stop that morning was the home of Beau Hammond. Hammond and Brewer had attended school in the valley and like many of the local boys, hung around after graduation and never managed to leave. Beau was twenty-five years old, a few inches shorter than his hunting buddy and noticeably thinner.
Hammond started the day with a half-full box of 30-06 ammunition sticking out of the pocket of his hunting jacket. Reaching the Bronco, he laid his rifle across the backseat and climbed in. It was cold, dreary, and slightly overcast as the two would-be bear hunters pulled onto the highway and headed west toward Fall River Mills.
Every house in Fall River Mills had a wood stove going. Some still contained the smoldering log from last night’s fire while others were re-stoked and ready for the new day. With no recent wind or rain, chimney smoke hung over the town like a dark gray blanket. Fall River Mills was like so many other small mountain towns: its citizens had depended on the lumber industry for their livelihoods and were now either permanently or temporarily unemployed. Some were associated with agriculture, some were retired and a few relied on government assistance to make it through the long, cold winter months. Half of the homes in Fall River seemed to be well-cared-for and the other half, not so much. It was not unusual to see derelict cars and old pickups sitting in driveways and alongside houses, jacked up with the tires missing.
Brewer’s Bronco pulled up in front of an older, two-story house with a Toyota pickup parked in front. As Brewer and Hammond climbed out of the Bronco, they were met by Robert “Bob” Stokes and his twenty-five-year-old son, Robbie (Robert Stokes, Jr.). Bob was forty-four at the time, stood five feet eight inches tall and weighed about one hundred and eighty pounds. Robbie was a slimmer version of his old man, about the same height. They loaded two more rifles, a backpack full of hunting equipment, some groceries and an ice chest full of Keystone beer into the Bronco. Off they went, across the valley, on what Beau Hammond later described as a day of bear hunting.
The Bronco headed north, past Glenburn, past Eastman Lake, past Ahjumawi Lava Springs State Park and into the Shasta National Forest. From there they continued north about ten miles, all the way to Wiley Ranch. Sometime late that afternoon the hunting party drove through Adobe Flat, a meadow scattered with buckbrush and Ponderosa pines. There they came across a small contingent of the elk herd that spent the winter months in that area. According to wildlife biologists, this little herd consisted of eighteen animals, but they occasionally dispersed into smaller groups.
It is not clear how many elk were present. We do know there were at least five—two cows, a six month old calf, a spike bull and a mature six-point bull. Brewer hit the brakes a short distance from the grazing animals. The elk paid little or no attention and continued to munch on the limited grass that was available. A mature bull raised his head, exposing a good-sized set of antlers, but that was about the extent of the herd’s reaction.
Beau Hammond would later tell Shasta County Sheriff’s Sergeant Ron Bushey that Robbie Stokes, Bob Stokes and Jesse Brewer jumped out of the Bronco and started shooting. Twenty or more shots were fired in succession, all with high powered rifles. Based on Hammond’s questionable account of the incident, he did not participate in the initial onslaught. “It wasn’t even hunting,” said Hammond. “It was like shooting cows in a pasture.” Four of the elk dropped dead on the spot. One crippled cow tried to get away but was chased down and finished off by Jesse Brewer.
The small elk herd had become so habituated to humans that they displayed no fear of man. Instead of cameras, they were facing high-powered rifles. Sadly, these beautiful giants of the deer family just stood there and allowed themselves to be slaughtered.
Over the next several hours, the men worked frantically to recover as much meat as possible from four full-grown elk and one calf. The cows weighed over five hundred pounds, the spike probably weighed seven hundred pounds and the mature bull may have weighed as much as a thousand pounds. Hams, back straps, ribs, and as much other meat as could be cut away from the carcasses was removed from the five dead animals. The haul was substantial: one mature bull elk can easily fill the bed of a full-sized pickup.
Sometime after dark, the elk poachers slipped into town with truckloads of elk meat, antlers and assorted body parts. Beside an isolated road in Adobe Flat they had left gut piles, forelegs, heads, carcasses and empty beer cans. Hammond would later tell Sergeant Bushey that he and his partners worked in his garage until daylight deboning elk meat. Robbie Stokes would later state that it took them five days to complete the task, continuing to process elk meat behind his grandfather’s house.
III
On any list of the most beautiful birds in North America, the golden eagle would have to be right there near the top. Bald eagles are magnificent, but nothing can match a mature golden eagle for elegant grace and beauty. Anyone lucky enough to get a close-up look at the brilliant gold reflection from the back of a golden eagle’s neck while it is perched in full sunlight will never forget it.
By coincidence, as I wrote about this incident from twenty years back, I received a related email from my old friend and working partner, Dave Szody. Dave had just returned home from a trip to Colorado with his wife and had this to say:
I saw a lot of really impressive wildlife, including a golden eagle feeding on a dead elk along I-70 in Utah. You would have gone nuts. I passed it at rather high speed but he had the classic adult head with the huge eyes and was absolutely majestic.
So what does this have to do with the elk poaching case? If not for a golden eagle, the case never would have been made. In 1991 a bird watcher by the name of Herb Watters lived in McArthur. On Thursday, December 12, 1991, Watters happened to be bird-watching out around Adobe Flat. From a distance, he noticed a group of ravens feeding on something. Amongst the ravens was another bird, several times their size. Watters focused his binoculars on the large bird and immediately identified it as a golden eagle. Wanting to get a closer look, he made his way toward the feeding birds. Rather than a dead cow or possibly a deer, the object of the avian feeding frenzy turned out to be the fresh head and gut pile of a cow elk.
As a longtime resident of Fall River Valley, Watters knew all about the small herd of elk that lived in the area. He had seen them many times and was furious about what he had just discovered. Watters immedi
ately drove back to McArthur and contacted the local Fish and Game warden, Lloyd Friesen. Watters and Friesen made plans to drive out to the site of the dead elk the following day.
On Friday, December 13, Herb Watters and Warden Friesen arrived at Adobe Flat in Friesen’s patrol vehicle. In searching the area, they discovered far more than one poached elk. What they found amounted to a small-scale massacre. Five elk had been killed and butchered: two cows, a calf, and two bulls. Both of the bulls’ heads had been cut off and were missing. Scattered amongst the carnage were exactly twenty sawed-off elk legs and several beer cans displaying the Keystone label.
Warden Friesen was overwhelmed by the immensity of the crime and immediately contacted his Lieutenant, Al Mathews, who lived an hour north of Fall River. Upon receiving Warden Friesen’s request for assistance, Mathews telephoned his captain in Yreka. Within twenty-four hours, the story hit the newspapers and was broadcast on the TV news. The tiny town of Fall River was suddenly on the map.
Word spread throughout the inter-mountain area. People were outraged that someone had wiped out a quarter of Fall River Valley’s prized elk herd. Herb Watters was interviewed by the area newspaper and quoted as saying, “These are sacred cows up here.” Friesen’s captain offered a reward of up to one thousand dollars for any information about the elk killings.
Speculation was running rampant. “I’d estimate that between fifteen hundred and two thousand pounds of meat could have been harvested from these five elk,” commented Warden Friesen, speaking to newspaper reporters. “Considering the massive scale of this crime, it could have been committed by professionals.” By mentioning professionals, Friesen was referring to a possible commercial poaching ring. Lieutenant Mathews was asked to chime in. On the record, Mathews went along with Warden Friesen’s assumptions. Off the record, he was mulling over a completely different theory: the sloppy mess had been left by amateurs from right there in the valley. Professionals wouldn’t have left carcasses out in the open for somebody to find. There were beer cans and shell casings all over the ground and what about that fresh set of tire tracks?
Lieutenant Mathews didn’t know how right he was. While the wardens were gathering evidence, four of those amateurs were scampering around Fall River Mills and McArthur, filling freezers with packaged elk meat.
Don Jacobs was Lloyd Friesen’s neighboring warden. Lean and six feet tall, this forty-five-year-old, prematurely gray warden had cracked more important cases during his twelve years in the Burney Patrol District than most wardens did in a career. Burney’s law-abiding citizens loved him, while the serious violators cringed at the mere mention of his name. Many a night, Warden Jacobs received threatening phone calls from local outlaws, too cowardly to identify themselves.
The Burney Patrol District encompassed the higher elevations immediately west of Fall River Valley. It also included the lower reaches of the Pit River and two classic trout streams—Hat Creek and the Rising River. During the week of the elk killings, Warden Jacobs had been on a trip with his family and missed the initial excitement. Like Friesen, Jacobs was supervised by Lieutenant Al Mathews and the Yreka patrol captain. The captain knew that bringing the perpetrators of this heinous wildlife crime to justice was going to take a lot of work and some superior investigative skills. With that in mind, Jacobs was assigned to assist Warden Friesen with the case.
By the time Warden Jacobs became involved with the Fall River elk case, the incident had received almost daily media coverage. With significant rewards offered for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible, Jacobs was confident that the phone lines would soon be ringing at CalTip, the California Department of Fish and Game hotline, or Secret Witness, Shasta County’s hotline. Two thousand pounds of elk meat couldn’t just vanish and secrets were difficult to keep in a small community like Fall River Valley.
Warden Friesen had already collected a certain amount of physical evidence and taken several rolls of photographs at Adobe Flat. Samples of blood, hair and tissue were taken from the elk remains for possible future comparisons. During the time of this investigation, the California Department of Fish and Game employed James Banks, possibly the best wildlife forensic pathologist in the western United States. Banks and his extensive laboratory were three hours away in Sacramento. Also nearby was the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Laboratory in Ashland, Oregon. Although no useable fingerprints were lifted from the Keystone beer cans found at the crime scene, the fact that the culprits drank that particular brand was surely a clue. One suspicious vehicle track was pronounced enough to make a plaster cast.
Everyone in the intermountain area was talking about the elk killings. Right from the start, Warden Jacobs had a feeling that the culprits were nearby. Eventually one of them would brag about his diabolical accomplishment in front of the wrong person.
Jacobs’s assumptions soon proved to be correct. A little over a week after the five dead elk were found, an informant by the name of Matt Parsons came forward with information the investigators had been waiting for.
Parsons had recently eaten dinner over at Beau Hammond’s house. The main course was fresh elk steaks. Sneaking a peak in Hammond’s freezer, Parsons saw that it was stuffed with packaged meat. After Beau Hammond saw Parsons looking in the freezer, he began bragging about all the “illegal elk meat” he had. Parsons also noticed hair and blood stains all over Hammond’s cement garage floor.
Warden Jacobs recorded the information provided by Parsons and asked if he had anything else to add. Parsons, a longtime acquaintance of the four eventual suspects, proved to be a wealth of information. He went on to say that he had been at Jesse Brewer’s house a few days earlier when Bob and Robbie Stokes had shown up. “Bob and Robbie started bragging about shooting ducks,” said Parsons, “but I don’t think they were talking about ‘ducks’ at all. Robbie said he jumped out and knocked three down. Bob chimed in and said he killed two.” Bob Stokes had described how Jesse Brewer tracked down one of Robbie’s wounded ones and finished it off.
The story Bob and Robbie Stokes recounted to Matt Parsons obviously had nothing to do with ducks. Jacobs recalled that one of the poached elk had actually been wounded and was found a short distance from the other four. That was undoubtedly the animal Jesse Brewer had tracked down and finished off.
Parsons even knew what kind of beer the suspected elk poachers liked to drink—Keystone. Having hunted with the four suspects on previous occasions, Matt Parsons was able to describe the caliber of rifles that Bob Stokes and Jesse Brewer generally carried: Bob Stokes used a .270 or a .243 and Jesse Brewer shot a 7mm.
As for where all that meat might have ended up, Parsons said word on the street was that Bob Stokes’s father, Jasper Stokes—a former butcher and general store operator—kept a big freezer out behind his house. “Chances are the boys also used Jasper’s butchering tools to process the elk meat,” he said. “Jesse Brewer’s sister and husband keep a giant freezer out behind their mobile home. Jesse made a heck of a lot of trips back and forth to his sister’s.”
Wardens Jacobs and Friesen were able to corroborate the information that Parsons had given them with physical evidence found at the crime scene: shell casings were of the same caliber, the beer can labels had read Keystone, and the tire tracks matched up with Jesse Brewer’s Ford Bronco.
Parsons had an excellent motive for coming forward. He had known the four suspects for years and even considered them friends, but this time they had gone too far. His conscience would simply not let him stand by and do nothing.
Believing they had accumulated enough probable cause to obtain search warrants, Wardens Jacobs and Friesen contacted Deputy District Attorney Larry Allen at the Shasta County District Attorney’s Office. Larry Allen was not only a highly skilled prosecutor, he was also genuinely concerned for California’s wildlife and eager to help Fish and Game with important cases. Due to the daily media attention and incredible public interest, the case was given top level priority by the Shasta County Di
strict Attorney’s Office.
Public sentiment was running high for bringing the poachers to justice. Search warrants were prepared for five Fall River Valley residences. The first would be the home of Robert Stokes, his wife Cynthia and their son Robbie. Along with the house, they’d be searching a Toyota pickup belonging to Robert “Bob” Stokes. The residence of Jasper Stokes, Bob’s father and former town butcher, was number two on the list—Jasper’s garage was reportedly the site of much of the processing. Number three was the mobile home of Fred and Esther Hutchins—Esther was Jesse Brewer’s sister. She and her husband owned a large freezer that Brewer might be using to store elk meat. Jesse Brewer’s residence and his Ford Bronco were number four and the home of Beau Hammond was named in the fifth search warrant.
On Saturday morning, December 21, 1991, five separate teams—each made up of Fish and Game officers and Shasta County deputy sheriffs—knocked on the doors of the five houses simultaneously. Deputy District Attorney Larry Allen participated in the search of Fred and Esther Hutchins’s mobile home. “Is that elk meat I smell?” commented Allen, as he entered the Hutchins residence. Much to the searching officers’ disappointment, it turned out to be venison steaks in the frying pan and not elk. The Hutchins’s freezer, located in a rear outbuilding, was plugged in and running, but it appeared to have been recently emptied. A frost line near the top indicated how high the meat packages had been stacked, but the freezer contained nothing at all.
No packaged elk meat was found at Hammond’s or Brewer’s residences. In spite of what Parsons had seen a few days earlier, their freezers were also empty. Jasper Stokes’s freezer was empty, just like the others. Bob Stokes’s large standup freezer was plugged in and operating, but also seemed to have been cleaned out recently. There were imprints on the walls of the freezer, indicating that packages had been stacked inside. Stokes and his accomplices had also divested themselves of the rifles used to kill the elk. None was found by the searching parties.
Badges, Bears, and Eagles Page 18