For years, hunters at the Newhalen Lodge in Nondalton have had good chances of bagging a grizzly. Big game guide Fred E. Sims' tactics ensured it, authorities say.
Prosecutors say a seven-year investigation into Sims' activities -- replete with kill-site stakeouts, covertly installed tracking devices and electronic surveillance -- revealed that the guide systematically killed moose by air and left their carcasses to rot, creating impromptu bait stations so his clients would have easy shots at brown bears.
Alaska Wildlife Troopers investigated a total of 18 moose carcasses associated with Sims' hunts since 2003, according to court documents. Fish and Game records showed that he successfully guided 26 brown bear hunters from 1998 to 2009.
Sims, 45, was charged in Dillingham court Thursday with 30 counts of wildlife violations ranging from wanton waste and taking moose in a closed season to using game as bait and unlawful methods of taking game.
According to charging documents filed in court by Assistant Attorney General Andrew Peterson, Sims runs his guide business out of the Newhalen Lodge, which is owned by his father, William Sims.
Troopers began looking into the operation in May 2003 after getting two separate complaints about taking moose and brown bear the same day airborne, Peterson wrote. One witness reported seeing a red Piper Super Cub circling with its door open and hearing a shot, then seeing the same airplane circling days later over the site, at which he later found a dead cow moose still intact, Peterson wrote.
About two weeks later, another witness reported seeing an airplane circling in the same area and finding a large, skinned brown bear carcass. Troopers investigating the scene determined it had been killed at the same site as the moose and the bear had been feasting on the moose carcass -- evidenced by 00 buckshot found in the bear scat, Peterson wrote. Fish and Game records revealed William Sims took a brown bear from that area the same month.
The next year, kill sites cropped up at Old Man Creek, the North Fork of the Koktuli River and Belinda Creek, according to the affidavit. Troopers found the Simses at one of the sites that year, though they didn't want to talk.
In May 2005, troopers found a skinned brown bear carcass about 20 yards away from a moose kill site. One of Fred Sims' clients that spring, Scott Sachs, wrote an article that appeared in Safari magazine in spring 2006 describing the hunt, the affidavit says.
"Sachs shows photographs that are of the same location as the moose kill site on the Stuyahok River," Peterson wrote. "Sachs also describes in great detail the smell of rotten meat in the air and the mound of dirt and brush with which the bear covered his kill."
As the kill sites mounted, troopers approached U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials for assistance in installing an electronic tracking device and video equipment on Fred Sims' airplane. Investigators got a warrant allowing them to covertly install the equipment on the airplane and to retrieve global positioning data from it, Peterson wrote.
As the data came in, troopers followed it to intact moose carcasses at Keefer Creek and Old Man Creek, where officers began stakeouts, Peterson wrote. An officer observed Fred Sims and a client take aim and shoot at something in a valley that the men later confirmed to troopers was a bear, he wrote.
Prosecutors say Sims, if convicted, faces a minimum of seven days in jail and a $2,500 fine on each count of wanton waste. He could also be ordered to pay restitution, lose his hunting and guiding licenses, and forfeit the airplane.
Sims did not return a message left at his home in Anchorage seeking comment Friday.
His lawyer, Bill Ingaldson, said Sims plans to contest the charges. He noted that witnesses reported seeing a red and white Super Cub in the area of the kill sites but they weren't able to specifically identify it as Sims' airplane by the tail number.
"I have some very serious questions about a lot of the allegations that were made and very serious questions about a lot of the assumptions that the investigating troopers made," Ingaldson said. "Oftentimes people read charges and immediately assume that person did something wrong, and that's not always the case."
Find James Halpin online at adn.com/contact/jhalpin or call him at 257-4589.
By JAMES HALPIN
jhalpin@adn.com