A further felony poaching cost has been filed towards the distinguished Utah looking information who was prosecuted earlier this month for illegally utilizing bait to assist Donald Trump Jr. kill a black bear in Carbon County in 2018.
Wade Lemon, a information based mostly in Holden, has been below investigation in the course of the previous a number of years by state wildlife officers who suspect Lemon of main high-paying purchasers on trophy hunts utilizing techniques which can be banned below Utah looking rules.
Within the newest case, a sting operation orchestrated final yr by the Utah Lawyer Basic’s Workplace, Lemon is accused of serving to a shopper shoot a cougar in a “canned” hunt staged in Millard County.
The costs in each instances, often known as “wanton destruction of wildlife,” are third-degree felonies that carry potential jail sentences of as much as 5 years every. Different attainable penalties of a conviction for Lemon are a lack of looking in privileges in Utah and different states and revocation of his outfitting license.
In neither case is the shopper being charged as a result of the info point out they’re the victims of a fraud who had no method of figuring out against the law was occurring after they illegally shot the animal, in keeping with prosecutor Ben Willoughby.
“That mountain lion was treed whereas this hunter was nonetheless packing up his automotive in Sandy, Utah,” mentioned Willoughby, a Davis County assistant district legal professional, in reference to the Millard case. “It’s a fraud on him designed to make it seem like he’s getting a bona fide looking expertise when in actual fact there isn’t any looking, there isn’t any threat, there isn’t any sport concerned in any respect.”
Willoughby and his boss Troy Rawlings have been assigned to prosecute Lemon as Utah’s particular assistant attorneys basic.
Lemon’s preliminary court docket look is about for June 22 in Fillmore’s 4th District Courtroom, the place the cost was filed Monday. On Thursday, The Salt Lake Tribune reached Lemon’s lawyer, Greg Regulation, who declined remark.
The Lemon instances expose an unsavory facet to trophy looking, which is subjected to quite a few guidelines to make sure the animals are pursued and killed ethically and humanely. The ethic of “truthful chase” seems to have little to no place within the two guided hunts that led to costs towards Wade.
Utah does permit the usage of canines to pursue cougars and bears, a observe denounced by many wildlife advocates as animal abuse. To attenuate the potential for abuse, bear and cougar hunts are topic to cautious, but hard-to-enforce guidelines. Below Utah looking rules, for instance, the hunter should be current when the canines are let unfastened and should take part within the chase till the hunt’s conclusion.
In Lemon’s Millard County case, the shopper’s participation was allegedly restricted to being transported by ATV to the spot the place a cougar had been cornered in a tree and squeezing two rounds into the animal’s physique.
Lemon, 61, has been guiding hunters in Utah for the reason that late Nineteen Seventies and has grown his service into considered one of Utah’s largest with worldwide operations in Mexico and Africa. Lemon and his guides have helped greater than 2,000 purchasers “fulfill their dream of harvesting a Trophy Mountain Lion,” in keeping with the web site for Wade Lemon Looking.
“We aren’t lion hunters, we’re lion catchers,” the location states. “Till you will have watched a pack of hounds working a observe you’ll by no means absolutely perceive the eagerness of a houndsman watching an excellent canine work.”
The Millard County case is considered one of a number of into Lemon’s operations, however solely the second to result in prison costs. The sting operation occurred on Jan. 24, 2021, after a houndsman discovered cougar tracks close to Meadow Canyon in Millard County. This individual, recognized solely as a “confidential witness,” labored with state investigators, in keeping with the charging doc.
The unnamed cooperating witness referred to as Lemon to tell him that he was monitoring a cougar and requested if he had a shopper who wished to bag one, and Lemon responded that he may very well be there in a couple of hours with a hunter.
Lemon requested the witness to launch a few of his canines, however to carry some again for when his shopper arrived. At 11:47 a.m., the witness referred to as Lemon to say that his canines cornered a cougar that was “chilling up in a tree,” in keeping with the paperwork. The witness advised the information that each one his canines had been loosed on the cougar pursuit so he had none left to launch for the shopper’s profit. Lemon responded by asking what sort of automobile he would wish to entry the location and whether or not the canines may very well be heard from the highway.
“He mentioned that’s good should you can’t hear it from the highway. That’s the fraud,” Willoughby, the prosecutor, mentioned. “Lemon says, ‘We’ll get different canines loaded in canine bins only for impact.’ That’s proof of the fraud perpetrated on this hunter. They’re concealing the truth that canines have already been launched.”
The rip-off requires fooling the shopper into believing no canines had been let unfastened till he joined the chase, he mentioned.
“Whereas they’re suiting the hunter up, you launch a bunch of different canines which can look to the hunter as if he’s current when the canines are launched,” Willoughby continued. “The trick is when the hunter will get to the scene the place you shoot the cougar, it’s up in a tree and there at the moment are a number of canines across the base of the tree.”
Until the hunter is counting canines, he might not suspect something is amiss.
The shopper, a person from Sandy, advised investigators that he had no concept the hunt was staged and that the cougar had already been positioned earlier than his arrival.