A 67-year-old guide has been sentenced in Fairbanks for selling two illegally harvested Dall sheep, according to a press release from the U.S Attorney's Office. The Canadian led two hunting trips during which he harvested two undersized sheep. On one of the trips, he was accompanied by his employer, Joe Hendricks, a legendary hunting guide who was slapped with 34 felonies in 2011 for illegal hunting charges.
Patrick J. Downey of Turner Valley, Alberta, Canada, pleaded guilty a year ago and was sentenced earlier in May at a district court in the Interior Alaska city of Fairbanks. After Downey admitted to taking two undersized Dall sheep, a judge ordered him to pay a $20,000 fine. He also was placed on probation for five years, during which he'll be unable to hunt or guide in the U.S.
Downey was a licensed assistant guide in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, commonly referred to as ANWR, in 2008 and 2009, according to the press release. And for 20 years, the defendant guided hunters in the Brooks Range while employed by Joe Hendricks, co-owner of Fair Chase Hunts.
Hendricks' business guided big-game hunters to trophy Brooks Range sheep and huge Kodiak Island grizzlies for more than four decades before being slapped with the nearly three dozen illegal hunting charges.
According to prosecutors, Downey guided a client from Colorado, Thomas McGann, who in 2008 mistakenly believed a Dall sheep was large enough to harvest. One of the sheep's horns was less than the legal minimum full curl, and Hendricks and Downey attempted to cheat nature by altering the horn, hammering it with a rock. The exception to the full-curl rule is that hunters can kill sheep with horns that are "broomed." That's when horns are broken off.
Initially, the scheme worked, but later the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service investigated further. Service agents ended up seizing the horn from the Colorado resident.
Then in August of 2009, another client from Missouri, Delbert Oney, mistakenly shot a ram with under-sized horns. Downey must've recalled the successful altering of the Dall sheep's horn with a rock, because he and Oney took a rock to the tips of the ram's horns in an attempt to conceal their size. This time, the horns failed the initial state inspection and were seized, according to the press release.
Hendricks was sentenced last August for his part in those horn hammerings as well as other guiding offenses. The master guide was ordered to pay $125,000 and barred from hunting or guiding for five years. The other felonies were thrown out, as he lessened his punishment by entering into a plea deal. Most of Hendricks' guilty counts were the result of subletting his assigned guide area in ANWR to another guide for compensation.
Alaska has a complicated guiding system that parcels out hunting opportunities to a select handful of master and registered guides -- with some similarities to limited entry in the commercial fisheries off Alaska's coast. Guides are then free to hire state-licensed assistant guides. The idea behind such systems is to ensure viable incomes for the people who work in them and, theoretically, enlist the help of these businessmen to protect Alaska resources as wise stewards.
Both clients from Outside were sentenced earlier this year for transporting unlawfully-taken game. Each paid a fine of $10,000, were ordered to give back their hunting spoils and barred from hunting for one year.
The investigation surrounding the hammered horns has led to the convictions of nearly a dozen Fair Chase Hunts guides, including co-owner Chris Cassidy, who pleaded guilty in June 2011 to two felonies and 11 misdemeanors. The charges includes failing to salvage all edible meat from a Dall sheep, possessing an untagged brown bear and guiding outside of an authorized area in ANWR.
Jerzy Shedlock can be reached at jerzy(at)alaskadispatch.com