Reward offered for the killer of ‘Bud,’ a Texas family’s longhorn steer
A beloved longhorn was shot and killed in a Montague County pasture last week, and the Stanley family wants to find the killer.
The Stanley family have put up a $3,000 reward for information that will lead to the arrest and conviction of whoever shot 13-year-old Bud in the early morning hours of Jan. 13 at the Jagged Edge Ranch.
And that reward is growing.
“I’ve been contacted by other ranchers who said they would put in money to catch them,” said Paul Stanley, Bud’s owner, in a telephone interview with the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. “It was just stupid what they did.”
In the more than 15 years that Paul Stanley has been at the Jagged Edge Ranch in Montague County, he had never had livestock shot. The 100-acre ranch also is owned by Troy McGinnis and Tom Bauer.
“He was shot twice,” said Daniel Stanley of Fort Worth, Paul Stanley’s son, in a telephone interview with the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
The shooting occurred between 12:30 a.m. and 1 a.m. on Jan. 13 on Starkey Road just south of U.S. 82 between Nocona and Saint Jo. Nocona is about 85 miles northwest of Fort Worth.
A neighbor of Paul Stanley heard the gunshots, but he didn’t immediately go out and investigate.
Paul Stanley found Bud on the afternoon of Jan. 13.
Bud had been in the pasture at the Jagged Edge Ranch, where he had lived with a herd of about seven other longhorns and a donkey. At one time, there were at least 15 longhorns on the ranch.
The gunman fired from the road into the pasture, striking and killing Bud.
Daniel Stanley said the family has had trouble with poachers in the past.
Bud was the only one hit by bullets.
“Our family is devastated,” Daniel Stanley wrote on Facebook, where he asked for help to find the killer.
Bud, who had a set of horns that measured 6 feet, had been with the family for 13 years. Generally, Stanley said, longhorns can live longer than 30 years.
The 6-foot horns were long, but short of the record. Poncho Via, a Texas longhorn, set the record in 2019 with horns that measured to be 10 feet, 7.4 inches long, according to the USA Today. Poncho Via lives in Goodwater, Alabama.
Anyone with information should call the Montague County Sheriff’s Office at 940-894-2871.
This story was originally published January 21, 2020 at 1:05 PM.
