A young Utah man was arrested and is now facing charges from a recent post he foolishly made to the popular Snapchat social network. The seemingly harmless image to his unassuming followers, depicted the back of his small pickup truck loaded down with deer and elk antlers.
The caption reading: “Time to pay for school this fall.”
If only he was that hard-working and dedicated to shed hunting…
The unfortunate reality of this “Snap” was that it ended up being connected to a robbery occurring a couple days prior in Sanpete County, Utah.
Dave Jorgensen has been immersed in the business of buying and selling deer and elk antlers for the past 10 years. After shed hunters return from the mountains, Jorgensen is one of many antler dealers that will pay a decent price for bone shed during the winter and spring months and then export it, hopefully at a profit.
“It pays bills,” Jorgensen told KSL. “It keeps my wife home, so she can be a stay-at-home mom, and it is a job for her and myself, so we depend on the income from this.”
Tuesday morning, however, Jorgensen was shocked to find more than 1,500 pounds of his antlers missing from his backyard shop. He immediately suspected theft, attaching an approximate value of $20,000 on his missing bone.
“He took mainly the high-grade antler,” Dave Jorgensen said. “He knew what he was stealing.”
He quickly turned to Facebook in an attempt to alert other local buyers and sellers about the recent theft along with the description of the vehicle he suspected was used in the heist.
“As soon as it hit social media, it was overwhelming the support we had, and the texts and phone calls from random people trying to help us,” Dave Jorgensen said.
The accused, Brennon Golding quickly learned a similar social media lesson.
After “snapping” the image of his truck filled with antlers, police quickly caught up with the young man as he was driving north of Mt. Pleasant. Authorities inspected the antlers and identified a number of markings that connected them to Jorgensen’s shop.
Golding was promptly placed under arrest.
