Curtis Hagen hunts with terriers — small dogs that go into holes after varmints while the hunter carries a shovel. "When you hunt with these little terriers, all you take is a shovel," he told KFOR-TV's News 4. "They go get bats and possums and stuff out of holes and they kill them."

On a Saturday in October 2020, Hagen was out with his dogs on land in Beckham County, in far western Oklahoma near the town of Erick. He told News 4 he was on a family friend's property and had permission to be there. One of the dogs with him was named Grim.

The hunt had paused and the group was walking back toward the pickup, Hagen said, when the shooting started. "We don't see or hear anything and all of a sudden, 30 yards in front of me, somebody just empties a gun, just gunfire," he told the station. "I'm scared to death. I think somebody's about to kill us." He said he then found Grim on the ground, no longer breathing.

Hagen told News 4 he ran out and saw two game wardens about 30 yards from the dogs, that they drew their guns on him and told him to get on the ground, and that he tried to cover his dog while the rest of the pack gathered around. One of the wardens, he said, was "threatening to kill my puppies and the other dogs."

The Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation gave the station a different account. Officials said the landowner had called the agency because he was unsure who was on his property, and that wardens responded. "As he approached the hunters, some dogs come out of the trees, 6 or 7 dogs in an aggressive manner," said Lt. Col. Wade Farrar, the department's assistant chief of law enforcement. "Tried to shoo them away as best he could and ended up having to shoot one of the dogs."

Hagen disputed that, telling News 4 his dogs were not behaving aggressively and that a member of the family who owns the land had invited him. Farrar said whether Hagen had permission was itself unsettled: "It's unclear right now whether or not he actually had permission to be there or not."

Hagen also volunteered to the station that he was arrested that day for having a firearm after a 2001 felony drug conviction. He said the gun was his wife's and that he did not know it was in his backpack.

One news organisation, KFOR-TV in Oklahoma City, is the only outlet known to have reported this shooting; no independent account was located. For that reason the wardens are not named here, and every contested detail above belongs to the person or agency who said it.

What Hagen said he wanted was accountability: "I want them reprimanded and I want the Oklahoma department of wildlife to take steps to make sure this doesn't happen again." In the only reporting that exists, the department's response to Grim's death was an explanation of it. No discipline was reported. No internal review, no policy change, and no lawsuit were reported either — and with a single newsroom on the story, that reporting is the entire public record of what happened to a dog named Grim.