http://www.adn.com/alaska-news/crim...nse-permanently-over-illegal-2011-hunts/Crime & Courts
Big-game guide loses license permanently over illegal 2011 hunts
Author: Chris Klint Updated: 2 days ago Published 3 days ago
A big-game hunting guide will never guide in Alaska again after an agreement with the state stemming from a series of 2011 offenses during hunts in the Yakutat area.
Alaska State Troopers said in a Tuesday dispatch that Anchorage resident Garrett Wayne Cox, 49, had "permanently surrendered his registered guide license and future right to practice any class of guide or transporter service."
Cox ran a business called Alaska Trophy Hunting with a former master guide, 76-year-old Vern Humble. The two were accused of allowing "packers" — employees not licensed as guides, accompanying them on a hunt at Icy Bay west of Yakutat — "to guide clients while unaccompanied by licensed professionals in pursuit of big game animals," troopers said.
Troopers said Cox also participated in illegal brown bear hunts at Icy Bay by three Outside packers. Two of them, 29-year-olds Jonathan Monier and Phillip Zimmermann, were convicted of taking bears without a required $500 non-resident locking tag; the third, 27-year-old Brandon Kolstad, was convicted of hunting without proper tags and possessing illegally taken game.
"They agreed to cooperate with the state in the proceedings involving Mr. Cox and were sentenced to pay fines and restitution for the bears taken without non-resident tags," troopers wrote.
In another 2011 brush with the law, Cox and Humble were charged with trying to cover up a client's illegal shooting of a moose in the vicinity of Icy Cape, south of Cordova. Court records show that Cox, accused of helping Humble make a false claim in records that the moose kill happened in an area where it was legal, pleaded guilty to unlawful transportation of game and failing to report a guiding violation in that case.
Humble lost his master's license in connection with offenses committed in 2012, which also netted Cox a $3,100 fine and a one-year suspension of his guiding privileges, troopers said.
The state Office of Special Prosecutions and Big Game Commercial Services Board negotiated the agreement with Cox.