Listen: The Loophole

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When Mike Belderrain hunted down the biggest elk of his life, he didn’t know he’d stumbled into a “zone of death,” the remote home of a legal glitch that could short-circuit the Constitution—a place where, technically, you could get away with murder.

At a time when we’re surrounded by preventable deaths, we document one journey to avert disaster.

• Mike Belderrain is a hunter and former outfitter in Montana.

• C. J. Box is the author of more than 20 novels, including Free Fire, a thriller set in Yellowstone National Park.

• Brian Kalt teaches law at Michigan State University. He wrote a 2005 research paper titled “The Perfect Crime.”

• Ed Yong is a staff writer for The Atlantic.

Be part of The Experiment. Use the hashtag #TheExperimentPodcast or write to us at theexperiment@theatlantic.com.

This episode was produced by Julia Longoria and Alvin Melathe, with editing by Katherine Wells and sound design by David Herman.

Music by water feature (“in a semicircle or a half-moon”), r mccarthy (“Big Game,” “She’s a Gift Giver, She’s a Giver of Gifts,” and “Melodi 2”), Ob (“Ell” and “Ere”), Parish Council (“Mopping”), h hunt (“11e”), Column (“Quiet Song”), and Bwengo (“Première Mosrel”); catalog by Tasty Morsels. Additional audio from Montana State University Library’s Acoustic Atlas, the National Park Service’s Sound Library, C. J. Box, CNBC, C-SPAN, Vox, NPR’s All Things Considered, Idaho News 6, @ItsKeyes, and C-SPAN’s Book TV.

A transcript of this episode is presented below:

(A distorted montage of sounds plays: birdcalls, radio signals, and then a ringing phone.)

Mike Belderrain: Drill Tech. This is Mike.

Longoria: Hi, Mike. This is Julia Longoria from The Atlantic and WNYC. How are you doing?

Belderrain: I’m doing good. How are you doing?

Longoria: Good. Um. We are gonna just kind of jump in. Are you—are you ready to go back in time? (Chuckles.)

Belderrain: Sure.

Longoria: Okay, cool.

Belderrain: Let’s see what we can do.

(Electronic music plays, growing in intensity as it runs under the speech.)

Longoria: Who were you in December of 2005?

Belderrain: I was a real rowdy guy, I guess you could say.

Longoria: Why do you think you were rowdy at that time?

Belderrain: Because I’d beat people up. (Laughs.)  

Longoria: Fifteen years ago, Mike Belderrain was a little rough around the edges.

Belderrain: So, you know, if someone was an asshole in a bar, I’d go have a beer by you until you’d say something to me, and then it’d be all bad for you.  

Longoria: He was a bit of an asshole. There were a lot of things that pissed him off, but there was one thing that he loved completely.

Belderrain: (Laughs.) I mean, I lived to hunt elk, literally. I lived to hunt elk.

Longoria: He lived in Montana, not far from Yellowstone National Park, where elk are everywhere. And Mike had the hunt down to an art form.             

Belderrain: Elk hunting’s hard, but if you could call good … You know, I’d guarantee my hunters a shot at 30 yards or closer.

Longoria: What does that—what does that mean? Sorry. I’m, like, from