Owners, herd distraught after prized Texas longhorn fatally shot

Bud was the epitome of a regal Texas longhorn, with big horns tracing the width of a bald eagle’s wingspan.

But early last week, WFAA-TV (Channel 8) reported, someone shot and killed the 13-year-old steer on his 100-acre Montague County ranch, leaving his owners and fellow longhorns grief-stricken.

The reward is now $3,000 and growing for information leading to the killer’s arrest and conviction, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, as fellow ranchers have offered to beef up the fund to aid the effort.

“Doesn’t make sense,” owner Paul Stanley told WFAA. “Why would somebody do that?”

He thinks the incident took place in the early hours of Jan. 14, when Bud was shot twice from the roadway, about 75 yards away. The ranch is just south of Highway 82 between Nocona and Saint Jo, in Montague County, about 100 miles northwest of Dallas.

When Stanley found him in the pasture later that day, he said, the rest of the herd was “all gathered around him, distraught. … Every time we drive down the road we look over to where he passed away, and it tugs at the heartstrings.”

Anyone with information may call the Montague County Sheriff’s Office at 940-894-2871.

“Our family is devastated,” Daniel Stanley, Paul’s son, wrote in a Facebook post.