Published at 5:22 p.m. ET: Moose are missing — and the state of Minnesota doesn't want hunters to find them.

Minnesota officials banned moose hunting indefinitely on Wednesday because of a dramatic drop in the animal's numbers.

The number of moose in the Gopher State has fallen by 52 percent since 2010, for reasons no one can figure out, although the Department of Natural Resources said hunting had nothing to do with it.

It cited a variety of possible explanations, including a tick-borne disease and Minnesota's recent unusually hot summers, which moose don't handle well.

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"The state's moose population has been in decline for years, but never at the precipitous rate documented this winter," said Tom Landwehr, Minnesota's natural resources commissioner. 

The 2013 hunting season was canceled, and Landwehr said in a statement that his department wouldn't consider opening any future seasons until the moose population recovers.

"It's now prudent to control every source of mortality we can as we seek to understand causes of population decline," he said.

In an aerial survey in January, state officials calculated that only 2,760 moose were left in Minnesota, down by 35 percent from last year and 52 percent from 2010. 

In response, the state last month launched what it's calling the largest and most high-tech moose research effort ever, fitting 92 moose in northeastern parts of the state with satellite tracking and data-collection collars designed to help root out the causes of rising moose mortality.

The idea is to be able to get to a moose within 24 hours of its death, said Ron Moen, a research associate at the University of Minnesota who is working with the program.

"The thing about determining cause of death is that moose bodies are very well insulated with hair, and they are very large," Moen told NBC station KBJR of Duluth. "If you don't get there quick enough, then you have tissue degradation."

The state is putting $1.2 million toward the program, but everyday Minnesotans are getting in on the rescue effort, as well.

In Edina, a baker named Robin Johnson pledged to donate $1 from every cupcake she sold to the state Wildlife Health Program's Gift Account for Moose.

"This beautiful symbol of Minnesota wilderness is being direly threatened," Johnson told NBC station KRII of Chisholm, Minn.

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Firing bullets at a gun range — as a Marine reservist was doing Saturday when he allegedly killed ex-Navy SEAL and "American Sniper" author Chris Kyle — can ignite combat flashbacks, a leading expert on post-traumatic stress disorder said Monday, adding, however, that hunting and target practice can be therapeutic for veterans if their shooting buddies intimately know war.

“The question being asked is: Wouldn’t the shooting of a weapon out in the open trigger feelings, nightmares, flashbacks? The answer is, yes, it can,” said Dr. Harry Croft, a San Antonio-based psychiatrist who has talked with more than 7,000 veterans diagnosed with PTSD. “But the hope would be that those would be triggered in a situation that’s safe, where other people are there who understand PTSD and could help the person cope with the thoughts that may come back to them.

“In situations like a shooting range, the sounds may set off a hyper-vigilant response, maybe flashbacks and nightmares at night. But it doesn’t make you violent, like you’re going to kill the person around you. And if the person around you is a Chris Kyle, a Navy SEAL who knows and can support you, then that experience can have a more positive effect,” Croft said.

Eddie Ray Routh, 25, a Marine Corps corporal from 2006 to 2010 who deployed to Iraq in 2007 and Haiti in 2010, was arraigned Sunday on two counts of capital murder in the deaths of Kyle, 38, and Chad Littlefield, 35, at a shooting range in North Texas. Both men were killed with a semi-automatic handgun.

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According to Erath County Sheriff Tommy Bryant, Routh "may have been suffering from some type of mental illness from being in the military himself." Bryant added that Routh's mother possibly contacted Kyle to try to help her son. The sheriff also learned, he said, that the three men might have been at the range “for some type of therapy that Mr. Kyle assists people with.”

Organized veteran hunting excursions and shooting clubs — meant to be part bonding experience, part brief return to comfortable turf and tools — have proliferated across the country in recent years, particularly as American troops departed Iraq and as they continue to pull out of Afghanistan. Croft estimated that about 20 percent of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have a form of PTSD, ranging from mild to severe.

“I talk all the time about the importance of good support systems for those suffering from PTSD, and articulate, bright, fellow military members like Kyle might have an ability to help a young troop with PTSD more than most (others) might,” said Croft, who co-authored “I Always Sit with My Back to the Wall: Managing Traumatic Stress and Combat PTSD.”

“That’s why it would be very rare if, all of a sudden, (the suspect) got triggered feelings and then would turn the gun and shoot this guy in the back. Something happened that we don’t know or understand, I believe,” said Croft, who has never worked with Routh. “This behavior is totally atypical for people with just PTSD. There can be rage, anger, aggression, agitation, even violence, yes. But it’s generally directed toward family members or one’s self, in terms of this suicide epidemic. Rarely is it outside of that circle.”

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has occasionally partnered with the Tampa, Fla.-based Black Dagger Military Hunt Club to hold shooting programs for veterans. In July, the club is sponsoring the trap shooting competition for the 2013 National Veterans Wheelchair Games in Tampa, providing ammunition and clays. Black Dagger, made up of ex-military members, also holds four to six shooting events per year. Every participant is briefed beforehand by “range safety officers" and supplied weapons. The veterans then work one-on-one with expert shooters, said founder Dave Winters, a 20-year Air Force member who retired as a senior master sergeant.

“We tell them: If at any time you feel uncomfortable about what’s going on out here, if the noise is too loud, put your weapon down, talk to your range safety buddy and just indicate that you need to walk away,” Winters said.

“We’ve had several who were real uneasy about approaching it at first, but once they saw that it was a comfortable thing, (and of course that) no one is shooting at them, that’s what I think helps them. It kind of normalizes them,” Winters said. (One Afghanistan veteran in the club), who feels like no one can relate to him, said that when he’s back out at the range, shooting and talking, it's just like when he was in his unit. It just makes them feel a lot better.”

In central Florida, the Sportsmen’s Foundation for Military Families escorts combat veterans — and their spouses, children, parents or siblings — onto leased land for weekend hunting trips.

“We never cater to just the veteran. Two veterans — or a group of veterans — who are out in the woods together, that does not improve coping skills, generally speaking. What improves their coping skills is their family,” said Barry Hull, a retired Navy commander and F/A-18 Hornet pilot who flew on the first night strike of Desert Storm. He has helped the Sportsmen's Foundation on the business side and attended several hunts.

The group is based on the concept that hunting trips “give the veteran and family a sense that they can once again be like they were, that those good days can be had again, particularly with those who have physical injuries and limitations,” Hull said.

“What improves a veteran’s coping skills is their family. And I know a lot of people want to say, 'Well, they're my military family.' They’re really not your family. Your family is really what I would call the classical definition of family — that's it for the long haul,” Hull said. “If you can develop those coping skills, communication picks up at home. We know that just simply being able to identify your demons lowers the effect (of PTSD). And that's what we do when we get the family out there on these adventures.

“The worst thing you can do is get a bunch of veterans out there in the woods, whooping and hollering and telling war stories, maybe drinking some beer, and not including the family. What does it do? It drives a bigger wedge between the veteran and the family. It's another distance maker,” Hull added. “What does that do? It adds more stress.”

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In the swamps and river bottoms near his Florida ranch, outfitter Danny SantAngelo has spent 20 years guiding veterans — some without arms, legs or sight — back to soothingly familiar country: in the field, stalking live prey, armed with weapons.

Often, such group hunting excursions were contract jobs that SantAngelo accepted from what he calls "these big, million-dollar-a-year projects for wounded soldiers."

"They take these soldiers and veterans, gather them up from different areas, and take them to a facility like mine where we’d house them, host them and hunt them for a few days," SantAngelo said. "A bunch of soldiers getting together in a camp again, sitting in the woods with guns, and maybe a lot of them even drink too much, so to say. And at the end, they’d high-five each other, hoot and holler and pull out of here.

"We've always donated 100 percent of our services to help these groups. And, of course, I never said no. I always said yes, and did it."

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For SantAngelo, however, that changed three years ago when, during one outing, he spotted a veteran hunter with tears in his eyes.

“He was having a tough time. He confessed to me he couldn’t believe he’d been so selfish and had come. He’d been gone several years on tours, fighting in combat. He’d only been home a couple of months. But now he was off again with a bunch of soldiers, sitting around this campfire,” SantAngelo said. “He’d felt like he’d walked off and left his family all over again. Well, I began to see that for these guys, there’s really no benefit afterward.”

As large, organized hunting trips for veterans proliferate in popularity, SantAngelo is changing the rules, at least in his corner of the swamp. He's launched the Sportsmen’s Foundation for Military Families, escorting combat veterans — and their spouses, children, parents or siblings — onto land he leases for hunting to spend a few days, as he sees it, of badly needed family bonding.

He’s executing his mission, he said, on a sparse, nonprofit budget, guiding one family per week. His two-person operation — it’s just SantAngelo and his wife, Carla — is headquartered on their ranch along the Kissimmee River in central Florida, about 30 miles north of Lake Okeechobee.

“You don’t come here with a couple of war buddies. You come here to be with your family,” SantAngelo said. “We try to support the people who suffered back home while their hero was away.

“So many of these vets go on different hunting trips all over the country. But I see a lot of bad things going on out there through these big nonprofit groups," SantAngelo said. "A lot of these guys are on medications (for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder). They get there with a group of guys they don’t even know. They go to drinking while on medications. Not good. So you have veterans researching all these free hunting trips that are out there for them. But those trips have nothing to do with their families. And what do they really get out of that? They go home and have all the same problems.”

Iraq veteran John Bennett, 41, has been on several of those group-hunting expeditions, despite using a wheelchair since a sniper shot him in 2005 while he was on patrol north of Baghdad, acknowledging: “Those trips are wonderful, don’t get me wrong.”

But two years ago, Bennett personally saw SantAngelo's vision: hunting plus family may equal better days. He headed to Florida to track alligators at night with one of SantAngelo’s hired guides. For that visit, Bennett had hoped to bring his daughter, but she couldn’t attend. Instead, Bennett spent time with another veteran and his family, he said, riding in a pontoon boat, armed with a bow and arrows, searching for his intended catch.

Click here for more military-related coverage from NBC News.

“It’s really neat to be able to include your family, especially your kids, so they can see that dad can get out there and still do the things he used to do,” said Bennett, who bagged a nine-foot gator. SantAngelo later shipped him the meat. (If a veteran-client's spouse or children prefer not to hunt, they can fish or canoe or ride horses while at SantAngelo's ranch.)

“The military was such a big part of my life,” added Bennett, a former infantry soldier who joined the Montana Army National Guard in 1991. He lives in Cascade, Mont. “Even if I had not been a hunter before, just knowing that I could still shoot a firearm and not be completely freaked out by it was good.”

Indeed, SantAngelo contends hunting and fishing can serve as a form of rustic therapy for combat veterans from all wars, a return to some of the tactics and tools they once knew intimately, but now utilized in a safe, quiet environment.

For that reason, SantAngelo’s foundation foots the bill to bring in and then guide ex-military members with an array of devastating wounds.

Blind veterans who come to his ranch use a double-stocked rifle, sharing the weapon with a guide who — when the prey is in the scope — whispers to inch the barrel slightly up or down, left or right, then instructs the best moment to squeeze the trigger. Veterans without arms can blow into a special tube, which actives the trigger of a rifle. Veterans without full use of extremities use laptops and joysticks to aim their weapons and fire at wild boar, alligators, coyotes and turkeys. SantAngelo also takes his clients on the river to fish for trophy bass.

Meshing outdoors sports with the tricky transition from the battlefield to home front is a concept the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs also has adopted. VA officials have seen the same behaviors SantAngelo has witnessed: that many large hunts arranged for veterans morph into drinking parties and families are never invited.

“He’s exactly right,” said Jose Llamas, the community and public affairs officer for the VA's National Veterans Sports Programs. “These other organizations put on weekend trips where it’s hunting, camping, fishing. But it’s drinking, and there’s no follow-up at the end.”

In addition to hosting adaptive sports summits across the country where family members are encouraged to join disabled veterans in surfing, cycling, skiing, fishing and target shooting, VA recreational therapists — via various VA medical centers — routinely take local veterans fishing, Llamas said.

“Hunting is not one of those things you can do in every community,” he added. “But from our Paralympic grant program, we just gave $25,000 to a VA hospital in Grand Junction, Colo., to get the equipment needed to take the (disabled) veterans out hunting.

“What we do is incorporate (hunting, fishing and other sports) into the health-life plan of the veteran,” Llamas said. “The secretary of the VA, Eric Shinseki, is very adamant about this being not just one weekend out of the year, not a vacation, but a step in the right direction of the veteran becoming more productive in the community by living a healthy lifestyle, by being an example to other veterans.”

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A mysterious man spotted earlier this month dressed in a goat suit on a Utah mountain has been identified as a Southern California hunter preparing for an archery hunt of mountain goats.

Phil Douglass of the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources told the Standard-Examiner Monday the elusive man is a 57-year-old hunter from Southern California.

The man, who remains unidentified, was spotted by photographer Coty Creighton on July 15 during a hike on Ben Lomond peak, just north of Ogden in northern Utah.

Creighton told the AP he saw the man through a set of binoculars trailing behind a herd of goats on his hands and knees.

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When the man noticed he had been spotted, "he just stopped in his tracks and froze," Creighton told The Associated Press.

'Goat man' spotted in Utah mountains

Following a friend's advice, the man called Douglass on Monday to let him know he was testing out a goat suit to train for an archery hunt of mountain goats in Canada in 2013, the Standard-Examiner reported.

“He gave me details that convinced me it was him,” Douglass, who did not ask the man’s name, told the newspaper. “I’m satisfied that this was a person preparing for a hunt and did it with knowledge and experience.”

The man told Douglass the goat costume was made out of a hooded painter’s suit outfitted with fleece. According to the report, he also told Douglass he has hunted in several foreign countries, including Mongolia.

“He found out about Utah and that it was fairly easy to get close to the goats to (train) to get a clean harvest shot with archery equipment,” Douglass told the Standard-Examiner.

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EDINBURG, Texas -- School officials in South Texas confined students to campus buildings and pondered erecting a cinder-block wall to block bullets from hunters on adjacent ranchland one day after two middle school boys were shot while trying out for the basketball team on an outdoor court.

It seemed the most immediate solution for a problem specific to rural schools. With no law in Texas prohibiting hunting on private land next to schools and high-powered rifles firing ammunition that could go more than a mile, school officials said a barrier seemed a good idea.

Harwell Middle School opened just this year on rural property northeast of Edinburg, which is about 50 miles northwest of Brownsville. Homes line the road approaching the school, but ranchlands covered with thickets of short trees and undergrowth stretch out to the west and the north.

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"We were not aware that there was hunting on the west side of the school or that there were (hunting) leases on the west side until last night," school district Superintendent Rene Gutierrez said. A wall stretching along the back of Harwell Middle School and a neighboring elementary school and curving around to protect the middle school from the north are being considered, Gutierrez said.

Now, a chain link fence separates the campus from about 200 yards of open field, and there a tree line starts an expanse of thick scrub to the west.

The boys, ages 13 and 14, were in a parking lot that had been converted into a temporary basketball court behind Harwell when they were shot about 4:45 p.m. Monday. There were about 50 children there trying out for the team. One boy going for a layup was shot just under the right arm, and the other was shot in the back while awaiting his turn.

Earlier: Deer hunters held in middle school shooting

Four coaches immediately rushed children inside the building while other staff tended to the wounded students, Gutierrez said. Both boys underwent surgery and were listed in stable condition, he said.

Investigators were able to retrieve a bullet from one of the boys. Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Trevino said they will check for a ballistics match with rifles taken from three men who were questioned.

Two of the men were shooting target practice about 800 yards, or nearly a half-mile, from where the boys were shot, Trevino said.

"Their initial statement leads us to believe that they were in the right line of trajectory," Trevino said.

The men were released around 2 a.m. Tuesday, but are still under investigation, he said.

A third man remained in custody Tuesday. He was trespassing on adjacent land and carrying an AR-15 assault rifle. Trevino said he was in the country illegally and could face trespassing charges in addition to his immigration violation. Investigators were still trying to pinpoint his location at the time of the shooting to determine whether he was in line with the victims.

Mike Cox, a spokesman for Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, said he was not aware of a specific law or regulation that prohibits hunting close to public buildings, such as schools or hospitals. He said it is against the law to discharge firearms within city limits or along any public road.

Trevino also said he didn't believe there was any law preventing hunting near a school.

"You're in the state of Texas and the state of Texas, like any other state in the union, has rural schools all over the country," Trevino said. "And a lot of the schools are surrounded by hunting ... Even during dove season, we get literally hundreds of calls of residents having barbecues having pellets rain upon their roof. I mean that happens every year. You've got to remember you're in rural Hidalgo County, Texas, and it is a hunting state."

However, he added, "you would seem to think also that there's some sort of personal responsibility that one has to take as a hunter or as a responsible adult."

A property owner northeast of the school had told school officials that he leased his property out to two deer hunters and that this would be the last year, Gutierrez said. That property owner advised the hunters of the school's location and told them to only shoot north, away from the campus, he said.

After speaking with school officials Tuesday morning, Esmeralda Gutierrez said she remained concerned about the safety of her son, who is in eighth grade, and other students at Harwell. Classes were held as scheduled Tuesday but with more security and counselors on campus.

Gutierrez said school officials told her that students won't be allowed outside for activities this week. Since the adjacent land is private and the hunters have permission, there's nothing school officials say they can do, she said.

"I didn't know there was hunting there. It surprised me," Gutierrez said in Spanish. "It's dangerous for the kids."

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