Four abandoned Porcupine caribou cows shot just east of the Dempster Highway have prompted investigators to call for public assistance.

Shawn Hughes, a Dawson City-based conservation officer, said the caribou were first noticed last Saturday by a patrolling officer who initially thought they belonged to hunters who he could still see hunting on the mountain.

But the scene located 500 metres east of the highway at kilometre 130 was investigated last Sunday when the animals were still lying there, Hughes told the Star.

He added he can't say for sure, but he expects the caribou were shot sometime in the last week.

There was about 20 ravens scavenging the carcasses when the officers went to the site to investigate. However, the lack of snow around makes it difficult to say for sure whether wolves had been there, he said.

Hughes said the investigating officers would like to hear from anybody who might have any information to assist the investigation.

He said he spent all of Thursday on the telephone contacting hunters who patrolling officers spoke with in the last week to see where they were hunting, and if they might have any information to offer.

Last weekend, there were about four or five hunting parties on the Dempster, most from the MacKenzie Delta communities in the Northwest Territories, he said.

"The last few weekends there has been a fair bit of hunting pressure.”

Hughes said it's impossible to say if the caribou were abandoned after the hunter or hunters determined they were cows.

The Yukon government implemented a new regulation this year requiring all hunters – aboriginal and non-aboriginal – to harvest bulls only.

It's believed the Porcupine caribou herd is in serious decline, and the government implemented the measure as a means of protecting the reproductive benefit of cows.

The government said this was to be a year of mostly education where hunters would be informed of the new regulation and warned if cows were shot, unless there was outright disregard for the conservation measure.

Hughes said three of the four cows had their stomachs scavenged and there was no necropsy performed on the fourth. Therefore, it's not possible to say if the caribou were pregnant, though there is a good chance they were, he said.

"They appear to have been shot at the same time, and they definitely were shot,” he said. "They all had bullet wounds.”