The shooter picked the cows off while they grazed like he was shooting fish in a barrel. When the brand inspector arrived, seven head lay dead and another was injured and needed to be destroyed. Baby calves bawled for their dead mamas, their carcasses already beginning to bloat.

It sounds more like something out of “Yellowstone” than a call to the Larimer County Sheriff’s Office, but that’s what it was. According to law enforcement reports, Michael Hester was taken into custody on April 1 after they responded to a call in a rural neighborhood west of Fort Collins.

Jordan Yarber runs his cowherd on his family ranch alongside the herd belonging to his grandmother who still owns the family ranch. He works off the ranch, but spends a great deal of time checking the cattle and ensuring their care is up to par. He said he manages his grandmother’s cattle like they’re his own. He is the fifth generation of his family to run cattle in the area and said, as one might imagine, the shooting of so many cattle is unusual, and nothing he’s dealt with previously.

There are other neighbors in the area who own cattle and Yarber said Hester began shooting at them, chasing them, still firing, back across the public road. He then drove around in a UTV shooting cattle. Some of the cattle, Yarber admits, were on and around Hester’s property. However, Colorado is an open-range state, which means landowners are required to fence out unwanted livestock.

Stay up to speed: Sign up for daily opinion in your inbox Monday-Friday

They say good fences make good neighbors, but cattle do periodically wander out of the area they’re supposed to stay within. This typically happens when they don’t have adequate feed or water, when fences are in poor repair, when bulls are looking for cows to breed, or when the cattle just have gypsy souls. In the past, Yarber said, his neighbors welcomed the occasional ruminant visit and the free fire mitigation they provide. He said Hester hadn’t previously been in contact with him to complain about the cattle’s presence.

Local brand inspectors can be contacted if stray cattle need to be identified and removed. The other option is to contact the owner directly. Colorado’s open-range laws put the responsibility for building and maintaining fence on the landowner.

Deputies and the local brand inspector confirmed ownership and investigators traversed the rough country to gather evidence. The cattle shot belonged to Yarber and the other neighbor who initially witnessed the shooting. The cattle, based on last week’s sale report at Sterling Livestock Commission Company, are worth $2,500 to $2,800 for a bred cow and $3,000 to $3,500 for a cow calf pair. The bulls are currently fetching about $150 per carcass-weight equivalent (cwe). An average bull weighing in at 2,000 pounds would bring $3,000 just for salvage value. To replace that bull and his genetic value to produce quality calves will cost significantly more.

Hester was arrested during the initial contact and was issued a $5,000 personal recognizance bond by the Larimer County Court. He faces felony charges of Aggravated Animal Cruelty, Second Degree Criminal Trespass, eight counts of Theft of Certain Animals and Shooting Across Public Highway 

He bonded out of custody and will be appearing in court soon.

I spoke to Yarber last week and the loss is significant. He’s a young guy with a young family and he’s running cattle on the same ground as four generations before him. It’s significant financially and emotionally. The burden of worrying you or your cattle are in danger is a heavy one. The shooting, in my eyes, is senseless and wasteful. Even if all eight head were slaughtered for ground beef and never produced another calf, the loss represents well more than 8,000 pounds of beef that will never fill the belly of a hungry consumer. It’s a stark reminder of the worst of development bumping up against production agriculture. Though it’s an example unlikely to occur again, it does represent the clash between production and so-called progress.

They say trust your neighbor, but brand your cattle — but some people can’t be trusted.

Rachel Gabel writes about agriculture and rural issues. She is assistant editor of The Fence Post Magazine, the region’s preeminent agriculture publication. Gabel is a daughter of the state’s oil and gas industry and a member of one of the state’s 12,000 cattle-raising families, and she has authored children’s books used in hundreds of classrooms to teach students about agriculture.