Three wildlife guides are facing possible prison time and fines up to a quarter of a million dollars, after they allegedly ran an illegal hunting enterprise that resulted in the deaths of at least a dozen mountain lions, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.
In a 13-count indictment returned at the end of August, a federal grand jury charged Chad Michael Kulow, 44; Andrea May Major, 44; and LaVoy Linton Eborn, 47, with conspiracy to violate a federal act banning illegal trafficking of wildlife and multiple violations of the act itself, according to the U.S. attorney's office in Idaho. The guides are all from Idaho.
The charges stemmed from the trio's alleged exploits between December 2021 and February 2022. They are accused in the indictment of working illegally as big game outfitters and guides in the Caribou-Targhee National Forest and the Bridger-Teton National Forest. The national forests are located in southeastern Idaho and western Wyoming, respectively.
Kulow, Major and Eborn were employed in Idaho by a licensed outfitter — a company that provides various services to hunters, including guiding — that had a permit from the Caribou-Targhee National Forest to operate commercially on some federal land in the region, according to the indictment. Idaho only allows guides to offer their services to hunters when a licensed outfitter that employs them has expressly authorized it, but the charges allege the trio began to book and accept payments from hunting clients independently at the end of 2021. Costs ranged from $6,000 to $6,500 per hunter.
Prosecutors accused Kulow and Major of advertising on social media under the business name "Lethal Guides and Outfitters," while Eborn issued hunting contracts to clients through a separate entity called "E-N Hunting Services," both of which were unlicensed and unknown to their employer. The three of them allegedly guided clients through illegal hunts for mountain lions, leading to the killings of at least 11 of the animals in Idaho, and one more Wyoming. The mountain lion killed in Wyoming was a cougar recorded by the Boone and Crockett Club.
The trio is also accused of falsifying portions of their big game mortality reports, which Idaho requires them to submit to the state's fish and game department, after those illegal hunts. At least three of the poached mountain lions were shipped to Texas without proper documentation, the indictment said, and all of the harvested animals were transported from protected land to or from Idaho, Utah, Wyoming, Montana, Alaska, Texas and North Carolina. Each of those transports would violate Idaho state laws as well as federal laws under the Lacey Act.
The Lacey Act prohibits illegal trafficking of wildlife and plants, and regulates how both are traded or moved between states or into the country. Under the terms of the act, it is against federal law "to import, export, transport, sell, receive, acquire, or purchase in interstate or foreign commerce any plant, with some limited exceptions, taken or traded in violation of the laws of the United States, U.S. State or a foreign country," according to Customs and Border Protection.
Amendments to the law in recent decades extended its provisions to bar trafficking of plants or animal products that were illegally harvested, as well as products without a certain kind of declaration, the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service says.
Kulo and Major were arrested Sept. 24 and booked with the U.S. Marshals Service in Boise, according to Hurtwit's office. Eborn was taken into custody the following day and booked with the Marshals Service in Pocatello. Each pleaded not guilty during initial appearances before U.S. Magistrate Judge Debora K. Grasham in Idaho district court.
Their jury trial is scheduled to begin Nov. 18 in federal court in Pocatello.
The charges were announced the same week that an 81-year-old Montana man was sentenced to six months in federal prison for violating the Lacey Act. Arthur "Jack" Schubarth was accused of illegally using tissue and testicles from large sheep hunted in Central Asia and the U.S. to create hybrid sheep for captive trophy hunting in Texas and Minnesota.
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