DENVER — A hunter was fatally shot by another hunter late Monday morning in a remote area of Grand County west of Kremmling – the first hunter fatality in two years in Colorado.
Colorado Parks and Wildlife spokesperson Randy Hampton confirmed the hunter’s death to Denver7 Wednesday.
The Colorado Bureau of Investigation on Wednesday afternoon released more details about the shooting and identified the hunter who died as 26-year-old Simon Jacob Howell, of Ridgeley, West Virginia.
Grand County Coroner Brenda Bock found that Howell’s manner of death was a gunshot wound. The CBI said the circumstances surrounding the shooting remain under investigation.
The CBI said the hunting group contacted law enforcement about the shooting just before 10 a.m. Monday. CPW, the Grand County Sheriff’s Office, CBI, Grand County District Attorney’s Office and coroner’s office all responded to the call out.
It took “several hours” to get to the area where the hunter’s death occurred, west of Kremmling and north of the Colorado River in Game Management Unit 27, according to Hampton.
Hampton said that one of the hunting party members called in the incident, and the hunter who was killed was pronounced dead at the scene.
The investigation into the “tragic incident” is ongoing, Hampton said.
“At this point in time, it is a hunting-related incident,” he said. “We don’t want to speculate or get ahead of the investigation.”
The CBI said Wednesday afternoon that the alleged shooter is cooperating with investigators and that no arrests had thus far been made. When the investigation is complete, the 14th Judicial District Attorney’s Office will determine whether charges are warranted.
The hunter’s death is the first in Colorado since a hunter died in November 2018, also in Grand County. Every hunter in Colorado born on or after Jan. 1, 1949 has to go through a hunter education course, and hunting deaths have dropped dramatically since the 1960s, Hampton said, when the state would see several hunting deaths each year.
