Michael J. Easley, a 74-year-old white male, set out with family and friends on a moose hunt in the remote country off the Taylor Highway near Chicken, Alaska, on September 11, 2021. As night closed in around the ridges and willow draws about 8.5 miles from the road, an SOS pinged from a satellite device at 9:19 p.m., reporting that someone in the party had been shot.
A UH-60 Blackhawk aircrew responded, lifted Easley from the backcountry to Fort Wainwright, and he was then transported to a hospital in Fairbanks, where he was pronounced dead. His next of kin were notified that same night.
The early hours after the shooting were marked by confusion and the rough logistics of a wilderness recovery, but the investigation soon focused on what the hunters had seen—and what they hadn't—when a shot rang out in the dark. Ten days later, after interviews and scene work, Alaska State Troopers arrested another member of the hunting party, 42-year-old Robert Geller of Hope. Investigators concluded that Geller fired without a clear view of his target, despite a warning from another person in the group that Easley was not at camp and that he shouldn't shoot. Geller was taken into custody at his home and remanded to Anchorage Correctional Complex on charges of manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide.
Public notices and gun-violence incident trackers fixed the geography and date in stark terms—Taylor Highway near Chicken, September 11, 2021—while obituary pages recorded Easley's age and death, leaving a portrait of a backcountry trip that turned tragic. The case drew brief statewide attention as a hunting-accident death under active investigation.
Years later, the criminal case reached a jury in Tok. According to a contemporaneous defense press release, on August 9, 2025, a 12-person jury returned not-guilty verdicts on all charges against Robert Jack Geller, closing the courtroom chapter of a death that began on a dark September hillside.
