Local ranchers raising awareness for livestock killings after teen kills five animals on private property

RIRIE – After a local rancher discovered five of his animals shot to death, his neighbor came to the rescue to help catch the killer.

Now, the two are raising awareness about the crime, something they say is all too common.

On Father’s Day 2023, Matt Thompson of Thompson’s Cattle says he traveled to his ranch near Ririe to check on his livestock. When he got there, he was met with a gruesome scene.

“It was on Father’s Day. I just went up there real quick to check on things, and I ran into the problem out there. It wasn’t a very good present,” says Thompson, whose family has been in the cattle business in eastern Idaho for over 120 years.

Suspecting the cattle may have been poisoned, Thompson examined the cattle himself, eventually noticing bullet holes in four three-year-old cows and one two-year-old bull.

Thompson says the total value of the lost animals ranges between $25,000 to $30,000.

“They were young cows with a lot of production in their lives,” says Thompson. “They were 3-year-olds. They were young, they had a lot of life.”

Thompson says he called the Bonneville County dispatch, who sent a deputy to the ranch to investigate. The deputy determined the direction the shots came from and found tire tracks in the ground leading to a gate.

Eventually, Thompson says he talked to a neighboring rancher, Jason Ferguson, who said he noticed a suspicious person near his ranch shortly before he heard about the killings.

Ferguson, who owns Ferguson Farms, says he had driven up to his property to check on things when he noticed a suspicious pickup lingering near Thompson’s ranch.

“I stopped and looked at his pickup. It was suspicious for me because there was a lot of ammunition there, a new chainsaw, all kinds of tools, and the pickup wasn’t locked,” says Ferguson. “His phone was on the dashboard with nobody around. What kid leaves his phone in the pickup?”

Ferguson says he continued down the road to look for the driver, and when he returned, a teen boy was getting into the truck and about to leave.

“When I came back, he was getting in his pickup,” says Ferguson. “That’s when I stopped and said, ‘Hey, how are you doing? What’s your name? What are you doing up here?”

Luckily, Ferguson remembered the pickup’s color, make, and model and noticed a parking pass for a local high school in the window.

He relayed this information to deputies, who contacted the high school resource officer. The officer looked up the pickup in the school database and gave them a name, leading them to the teen.

“Just through the process of talking with the kid and seeing what he was doing, I didn’t know at the time that he was the one that had done it, but I could tell something was off,” says Ferguson. “About a day later, I heard that Matt’s cattle had been shot, and I put two and two together. We reported it to the Bonneville County Sheriff’s backcountry deputies. They investigated it and figured out that kid had done it.”

According to Ferguson and Thompson, the 17-year-old admitted to killing the cows and bull when deputies showed up at his parent’s home.

Bonneville County Prosecutor Randy Neal says the teen is going through the juvenile court system on five counts of grand theft, one for each animal.

Neal says the teen has admitted guilt in court, and they are waiting for sentencing, or what is known as the disposition in juvenile court.

As a thank you, Thompson, a board member for Idaho Cattle Association, says he contacted the association who agreed to award Ferguson a $2,000 reward for information leading to the teen.

“I appreciate Jason, and he’s been a good neighbor. I appreciate him giving the information, and I would do the same for him,” says Thompson. “That’s what neighbors do, is watch out for each other. The ranching community needs to stick together and work together.”

At the event, Ferguson accepted the money to show people it was a real reward but donated it back to the association, saying he felt wrong taking the money when he wasn’t harmed.

“If somebody was going to be given that money, I’d rather it be Matt or somebody, but Matt’s just like me, he won’t take it,” says Ferguson. “But that money, it’s going to go to good use, they are gonna use it for scholarships or something else that they see that needs immediate attention.”

Both Ferguson and Thompson stress that finding their livestock killed is far from a rare occurrence and needs to be prosecuted more often.

“Every (rancher) you talk to has a story about finding cattle that have been shot, or horses or something. We’ve had horses and cattle shot, it’s terrible,” says Thompson. “It is very rare for the livestock industry to have a conviction on something like this. Maybe somebody else will see that somebody got caught and will think twice before pulling the trigger on the cow. The poor cow wouldn’t hurt anyone, they just stand there.”

For Ferguson, he hopes the teen will come to understand the harm he caused and that others will think twice from now on before deciding to kill an animal, and also potentially someone’s livelihood.

“If I could sit next to that kid, I’d explain to him that as a rancher, we care about these cattle. I don’t think people understand that,” says Ferguson. “Yeah, they’re animals, but we care about these animals. It’s our livelihood. We fight mother nature, we fight the elements, we fight unknown diseases, we fight all of these other things, and I would tell that kid, you know, look, we don’t need to fight you too.”