Poaching In Paradise (Long !!)
Patrick J. Sullivan
Thursday November 11, 1993. It was written by Michael Milstein and
is posted with his permission.
It is a bit long but an interesting read. It deals with nine years of poaching
by profesional bowhunter Dow Lewis. The second part of the article gives
a history of the eventual discovery of his actions.
POACHING IN PARADISE
A professional hunter who pleaded guilty in July to killing
three elk in Yellowstone National Park in 1991 had actually been
poaching in the premier national park for nine years straight, federal
records and officials say.
Government attorneys told Donald E. Lewis they would
withhold his admissions that he and friends had made annual hunting
trips to Yellowstone from 1983 to 1991 and had broken game laws in
several states, including Montana and Utah.
Yellowstone Chief Ranger Dan Sholly said the repeated
forays- never detected by park authorities - may be the worst instance
of poaching in Yellowstone in modern times. It proves the difficulty of
policing Yellowstone and its 3 million annual visitors.
"I'm not sure I could come up with a more outrageous action
against wildlife in Yellowstone or any national park," Sholly said. "I'm
baffled by the failure of the system to really make an example out of
these individuals."
Prosecutors said the $15,000 fine Lewis paid under a plea
bargain was the best penalty possible.
"It's difficult for me to imagine anything more severe than
that" for a wildlife crime, said U.S. Attorney Richard Stacy, the chief
federal prosecutor in Wyoming.
Game agents spent more than 500 hours investigating Lewis
and urged the U.S. Attorney's office in Wyoming to send his case to a
grand jury. The head agent asked lawyers to prosecute Lewis "to the
fullest extent," according to documents obtained by the Gazette.
"This hunt in the park is the most blatant example of trophy
poaching that I have encountered in my 30 years of investigating
wildlife crime," lead agent Joel Scrafford wrote in April to Assistant
U.S. Attorney Christopher Crofts, the prosecutor handling the case.
Lewis, 39, of Arab, Ala., told agents he was building an
image as "the world's greatest archery hunter," federal reports say.
Agents are not sure how many elk Lewis and his companions killed in
Yellowstone Park since he began poaching there 10 years ago.
In 1991, Lewis and his partner videotaped themselves
shooting at 13 elk in the park, where wildlife is protected, records say.
Some years Lewis drove into Yellowstone and set up hunting camps
there.
Park officials learned of the poaching only after Utah game
wardens arrested Lewis for poaching in late 1991 and viewed his
videotapes. Scrafford wrote Crofts he was "convinced that we can
prove beyond any doubt" that the elk on the tapes were hunted in
Yellowstone.
$15,000 FINES
A July plea bargain let Lewis and his hunting partner Arthur Sims, 40,
of Huntsville, Ala. each plead guilty by mail to three misdemeanor
charges of poaching elk in Yellowstone in 1991. Each charge carried a
maximum $5,000 fine and up to six months in jail.
U.S. Magistrate John Brooks of Casper, Wyo. Fined each the
maximum $15,000 for the three charges and banned them from
hunting and from national parks for five years. Neither received any
jail time, except for 60 days Lewis was already serving in Utah for
poaching eight mule deer there.
The Gazette obtained details of the case through numerous
requests under the federal Freedom of Information Act and interviews
with state and federal officials and associates of Lewis.
Scrafford said the fine was stiff, given federal sentencing
rules. The pair would have faced higher fines and imprisonment only
if they had been charged with additional crimes.
Stacy said Lewis and Sims received "a hell of a big fine for a
game violation" - 100 times what they might have paid under state
law. Other violators have gotten lighter sentences even after going to
trial.
Crofts said, "The penalty has to be tempered with some
degree of reality." Lewis and Sims "were not rich tourist hunters from
somewhere; these were just low-income working guys," he said.
"our job is to assess the probable outcome of legal reality, not
to create some kind of a show."
Lewis and Sims never "thought that it would come to the
dynamics that they have been called upon to deal with," said J.
Stephen Salter, a Birmingham , Ala., attorney and former federal
prosecutor who represented them in the park poaching case.
SECRECY PROMISED
In exchange for an agreement by Lewis and Sims to answer
questions for federal agents, prosecutors promised not to file more
charges. They also said the government would not reveal their other
crimes, even to state agencies investigating the pair.
Under these terms, records show, Lewis told federal agents in
May that he had hunted elk in Yellowstone every fall from 1983 to
1991, "killing on or more elk on each trip."
Lewis and Sims declined numerous requests for interviews;
Alabama lawyer David Belser, who represents Lewis on new poaching
charges in Utah, said he has told him not to speak to the media.
With Lewis' admissions, investigators identified pictures in a
photo album Utah wardens seized with the videotapes. It shows him
with elk killed in Yellowstone as early as 1983.
The album "revealed that Don and his friends have gone
crazy shooting wildlife," said David Hintze, a Utah warden who
apprehended Lewis.
Montana game agents say the state's three-year statute of
limitations on poaching crimes will keep them from prosecuting
Lewis, even though the clock technically does not run when a suspect
is out of the state. Colorado game wardens say they are investigating
alleged violations in that state.
The deal to withhold Lewis' admissions was not a formal part
of the plea bargain. But attorneys commonly make such arrangements
so agents can clear up unsolved cases, Crofts said.
LEGAL 'REALITIES'
"Once he told us the number of elk and where they were and
those things we were able to piece it together fairly well," Crofts said.
"But our agreement was that we wouldn't use that , so we were still
kind of stuck with the evidence we had before that."
"That's frustrating, I guess, to the public and laymen
sometimes, but those are just the realities we deal with."
The videotapes seized from Lewis show he and Sims shooting
at 13 elk with bows and arrows near Yellowstone's Indian Creek
Campground in 1991, according to transcripts. Rangers Rick McAdam
and Bob Flather located each hunting site through landmarks pictured
on the tapes, including distinctive peaks and pine stands burned in
1988.
At least nine of the 13 elk died.
"One poor elk, when he staggers away, you see two or three
arrows sticking out of his guts," said Yellowstone law enforcement
specialist Pat Ozment. "It was astounding, all of what these guys did in
the park."
Lewis planned to turn the footage into a commercial how-to
hunting video. He and Sims "eventually admitted to killing or
attempting to all of the animals on the video," records say.
Stacy maintained it may have been difficult to convince a jury
that all the scenes were in the national park.
"There is certainly a strong suspicion that maybe there were
that many elk killed in Yellowstone National Park," he said. "But as
far as being able to prove there were that many killed in the park
beyond a reasonable doubt, no, we're not able to do that."
Lewis was a paid representative of Browning Arms of
Ogden, Utah, AFC Carbon Arrows of Chatfield, Minn., and Lynch
Game Calls of Liberty, Miss. He told agents he was driven to poaching
to maintain his reputation.
RIFLES, NOT BOWS
Although Lewis boasted of his bowhunting skills, he and his partners
killed some park elk with rifles, investigators determined. The
poachers removed the heads and antlers of some, packed them out of
the backcountry and shipped them home to Alabama.
Interstate transportation of illegal wildlife is a felony under
the federal Lacey Act. Agents suspected Lewis of violating that law.
But when Lewis admitted the crimes, attorneys had already promised
to prosecute Lewis and Sims only on the misdemeanor charges.
Sholly said he understood the legal hindrances, but said
taking Lewis and Sims to court on more charges might have deterred
other would-be poachers, such as those who killed two trophy elk in
Yellowstone this fall.
Utah prosecutors tried last year to present details of Lewis'
Yellowstone poaching to push for stiffer sentence for Lewis on Utah
poaching charges. However, the judge refused to admit the evidence
since federal attorneys had promised secrecy.
The outcome of the park poaching case disappointed Craig
Miya, assistant chief of law enforcement for Utah's wildlife agency,
which found the incriminating videotapes. Lewis deserved a tougher
penalty, Miya said, especially since he made his living hunting.
Trophy elk heads may be worth thousands, Stacy conceded.
"Maybe crime does pay," Miya said.
Federal agents Scrafford said he is satisfied with the fines,
but frustrated that the way the justice system works, "we cannot hit
them harder."
Attorney Salter said Lewis and Sims have already suffered
enough for offenses that would not be considered major crimes in
Alabama. Sims lost his job with the security division of Boeing in
Huntsville, Ala., last month. Once his hunting career failed, Lewis
returned to school to become an engineer, his brother said. Lewis
"feels awful about this," Salter added.
But the public is becoming less tolerant of poaching, Stacey
said. "Maybe five years from now, (if) somebody kills an elk in
Yellowstone, we'll be able to get him some real serious jail time for
it because attitudes will continue to change and solidify. We hope so."
- Donald E. Lewis gives thumbs up sign in an image taken from his
videotape, after killing a trophy elk in Yellowstone National Park.
- Image from videotape of 1991 poaching foray into Yellowstone
National Park. Donald E. Lewis and Arthur Sims stand over a bull elk
just shot. Trees in the background burned in 1988 fires.
- As hunting stature rose, Don Lewis was featured in hunting
equipment catalogs.
Special Report -Poachers Target Yellowstone
POACHING IN PARADISE
As the leaves changed colors in the Musselshell River country
northeast of Billings five years ago, Don Lewis took a hunting trip to
the Bull Mountains near Roundup. A few days later, Utah wildlife
filmmaker Ted Steinke arrived to film Lewis going after big game.
Lewis was a promising pick, with dozens of trophies to his
name. He had just joined the paid hunting staff of Browning Arms,
which supplied him with bows and clothing, and he was a featured
speaker at hunting conventions around the west.
Steinke would later turn his footage into a commercial
hunting videotape called "Bull Mountain Bonanza."
As his reputation boomed, though, Donald E. Lewis of Arab,
Ala., had one concern, the tall redhead confided to Steinke: He
wanted to lose his Southern twang.
"People think of poachers when they think about the South,"
he said, "and they might think I'm a poacher."
As it turns out, that might have been an understatement.
By the time he was finally arrested by Utah game wardens
three years later in 1991, Lewis had become one of the West's most
zealous poachers, according to reports form investigators still tracking
his legacy of wildlife crime.
Lewis, now 39, had tried to live a trophy hunter's dream: He
wanted to become the youngest archer with a "Super Slam" - a trophy
of each of the 27 game species in North America. It would be, Lewis
wrote to industry sponsors, "the greatest accomplishment in
bowhunting history."
But numerous interviews and government records obtained
through the Freedom of Information Act cast a different light on
Lewis' achievements. In his thirst for big-horned prizes, Don Lewis
warped his hunter's dream into a nightmare of wildlife destruction that
reached across the West and even into Yellowstone National Park, the
nation's pre-eminet wildlife preserve.
"It pretty much disgusts you," siad Montana Depertment of
Fish and Parks investigator Terry Hill. "This is the worst thing
someone could do. The anti-hunters see that we can't even police
ourselves for people that destroy our natural heritage."
STARTED IN THE SOUTH
Don Lewis was born in Georgia and developed a taste for
hunting in the South, where he told of having guided sportsmen since
he was a child.
In a magazine article he wrote when his stature rose, Lewis
talked of taking his first record mule deer from a group of "nine
velvet-horned trophies" he stalked in Colorado in 1976.
It's difficult to tell just when Lewis made hunting his career,
or when his big game ambitions broke free of the law. Lewis has
refused numerous interview requests both by telephone and in writing;
his attorney has advised him not to talk to the media. But a photo
album seized by authorities shows animals taken illegally as early as
1983.
As he climbed to hunting stardom, even before he sought the
fabled Super Slam, Lewis never hid his penchant for fall visits to
Yellowstone National Park to observe and photograph elk. He only
neglected to mention he was shooting them, too.
In fact, Lewis later admitted to agents, he had poached
animals in Yellowstone Park for nine years in a row.
BIG BOASTS
Steinke, the Utah wildlife filmmaker, met Lewis at a January
1988 hunting convention in Las Vegas. Lewis was flashing an album
of photographs of himself with trophy elk, deer and beers, Steinke
says, and cheerfully promoting his skills to equipment firms and
producers of how-to-hunt videos.
The friendly hunter talked of annually shooting 15 mule deer
worthy of a listing by the Pope and Young Club, the national keeper
of bowhunting records.
Impressed, Steinke decided to film an October hunt Lewis
had planned in Montana with Mike Murphy of Bull Mountain
Outfitters near Roundup. Like most everyone, Murphy took an instant
liking to Lewis.
"He was one of the nicest guys I ever had in my camp,"
recalls Murphy, who struck up a friendship with Lewis on that and
later hunting trips. "I thought, I'm going to become friends with the
up-and-coming person in the industry."
That description fir Lewis. Earlier in 1988, he had joined the
professional archery staff of Browning Arms, based in Morgan, Utah,
which featured him in catalogs. Browing's 1989 catalog shows Lewis
posing with a "cinnamon phase" black bear he had just killed in
Montana.
But Lewis did not have a bear permit in Montana, according
to a check of state records dating to 1985. It was not the first time his
claims would outpace reality.
A September 1990 article in Field & Stream said Lewis "has
twice taken three Pope and Young (elk) bulls in a single fall, one each
from Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho." Agents checked Idaho license
records since 1987 and found Lewis had not obtained an elk permit
there.
"Lewis stated that initially he set out to establish himself as
the world's greatest archery hunter and hoped to surpass Chuck
Adams in the total number of trophy animals entered in the record
books," reads a government account of Lewis' admissions. It was a
lofty goal: Adams, a Montanan, is the most famous bowhunter in the
nation.
"In order to produce the type of trophies that his new
reputation required, he found himself having to take animals out of
season and in national parks," the account says.
At Murphy's, Lewis boasted of shooting caribou in Alaska
and record antelope in Colorado and Wyoming. "had the time of my
life in a wildlife paradise," he wrote in the outfitter's guest book. In
1990, Lewis poached a deer in Montana, reports indicate, and left
Murphy's in the middle of hunting season to "film some elk" in
Yellowstone.
"he was wanting to become famous; he was wanting
everybody to think he was the Daniel Boone of the industry," Murphy
says. "Here he was, a professional hunter from Browning. This is the
last guy I was worried about hunting without a license."
"I'm mad at the industry for producing guys like this that are
so hungry to become a legend in their own mind."
DEMAND FOR TROPHIES
By 1990, the name Don Lewis was becoming well-known,
and Lewis was doing all he could to make it so. Petersen's Bowhunting
magazine featured him in an article called "MR. Big Bucks," which
talked of the 22 record-book mule deer he killed.
Lewis hoped to host his own television hunting show, he later
told wardens. He moved his residence to Alaska, where he also
licensed his blue Chevrolet pickup, to qualify for resident hunting
permits there.
Browing's 1990 catalog held pictures of a beaming Lewis
with six animals he had shot. Lewis "intended to better his impressive
string of trophies taken last year," the catalog said, "and he certainly
succeeded."
The M.L. Lynch Co., a Mississippi manufacturer of game
calls, offered a giveaway video featuring "the legendary Don Lewis."
Advertisements for AFC Carbon Arrows showed Lewis with a trophy
mule deer.
"This past season I took 12 Pope and Young record
qualifiers," Lewis wrote to browning. "Big game animals taken
included elk, mule deer, pronghorn, white-tail deer, mountain lion,
black and grizzly bear. These trophies raised my record book qualifiers
to over 50.
"According to the current Pope and Young record book I
would be listed with more elk, mule deer, and pronghorn than any
hunter in history. Also, I would be either number one or number two
on the all time list for most Pope and Young trophies, depending on
how many Chuck Adams has." In his three years of using Browning
equipment "both my stock and that of Browning Archery has risen
greatly," Lewis noted.
QUEST OF THE SUPER SLAM
"My goal now is to become the first bowhunter in history to
take a record specimen of all 27 animals listed in Pope and Young,"
Lewis wrote. He sought help with the $29,000 cost of a video series of
his feat. It would be called "In Quest of the Super Slam" and depict
"what certainly would be the greatest accomplishment in bowhunting
history."
Lewis also asked the M.L. Lynch Co. to sponsor him to the
tune of $5,000 a year, owner Allen Jenkins said. Lewis told Jenkins he
planned to enter all his wildlife trophies for records at once, to surpass
the tally of Chuck Adams overnight.
"the desire to be the greatest bowhunter ever - that's what was
in his head," Jenkins recalls.
In 1990, Quest Production Group, an Oklahoma City
producer of hunting videotapes, released two videotapes that featured
Lewis stalking turkeys in the South. The cover of one says: "A master's
degree in wildlife ecology and an unmatched big game record make
Don Lewis one of the most accomplished bowhunters of the present
age."
Jenkins was along on the turkey hunts. When wild turkeys
were scare, he remembers, Lewis and the filmmakers turned pen-
raised birds loose and killed them.
"I should have known then he would do anything," says
Jenkins, who quit the hunt. "I didn't want to believe he was breaking
the law. Like everyone, I guess I wanted to believe he was some kind
of a superhunter."
Lewis was skilled at shooting a bow, hitting targets up to 80
yards away. But Jenkins could not help questioning how the red-haired
gentleman had amassed such an array of huge wildlife trophies.
"You just don't go out and shoot three big elk in one year with
a bow," Jenkins says.
In his genteel way, though, Lewis always sidestepped queries,
even when Jenkins suggested that scenes on his videotapes looked
suspiciously like Yellowstone National Park. Lewis politely explained
he did not want to give away his secret hunting grounds.
"I never could pin him down to one place where he had killed
an elk in the Western states," Jenkins recalls.
The secrecy made sense. In 1990 and 1991, for example
Lewis drove into Yellowstone National Park, obtained backcountry
camping permits signed in at Yellowstone trail registers. Aurthor
Sims, a friend from Alabama who later pleaded guilty with Lewis to
hunting in the park, joined him on the 1991 trip.
Videotapes of the pair made of their three-night foray into
Yellowstone in 1991 show them hiding among burned lodge pole pine,
blaring siren calls at bull elk. As the grainy video proceeds, some bold
animals plod within 20 feet of the camouflaged hunters before they
are pierced with arrows.
"My goodness, that was an exciting hunt," Lewis beams as he
stands over a big-antlered bull elk he just brought down. In another
scene, while waiting for one elk to die, he uses a call imitating a
female elk to lure a second bull within range.
Investigators are not certain how many elk Lewis and his
partners killed over their nine years of poaching in Yellowstone. Their
1991 videotape shows them shooting at 13 and killing nine. They
packed out antlers from some and stashed them under camping gear
when driving out of the park.
Lewis was never able to persuade the Oklahoma City video
firm to make how-to videotapes of himself hunting big game, his
specialty. But he continued to cart trophies to hunting conventions
around the West, giving lectures about beckoning wildlife by imitating
their calls.
NO PRIDE
Heading to one show, Lewis filled a rented U-Haul trailer
with about 50 heads jumbled up like toys in a child's box. Prize
trophies that might find a special place in most hunters' homes instead
slid around Lewis' trailer, their antlers ripping into each other.
"He had no pride in them whatsoever," Jenkins recalls. "Most
people would cherish trophies like that. He treated them like they were
disposable."
Such crude snapshots so tarnished Lewis' hunting image that
others finally became curious, too. During a 1991 seminar in Slat Lake
City, Lewis touted an elk call made by E.L.K. Inc. of gardiner as his
own, recalls wildlife filmmaker Gordon Eastman. When Eastmen, a
partner in the Gardiner firm, confronted him, Lewis gently promised
to correct his error.
He never did.
At the same show, onlookers noticed Lewis' Self-mounted
trophy heads. Prize animals had bulging eyes and fraying skin. "Back
then, I thought he was just cheap," says Norton, the Browning Arms
archery adviser.
But there may have been another reason for the makeshift
mounts: Reputable taxidermists demand proof that animals were taken
legally.
Ed Wolff, then a wildlife filmmaker with Stoney-Wolf
Productions of Missoula, joined Lewis in New Mexico to film a five-
day elk hunt in 1991. Late on the first night, Lewis disappeared for
three days, saying he was going after trophy elk on his own.
Upon his return, he said de had lived on only fruit and candy
bars. If that seemed odd, there was also Lewis' astounding number of
trophies, his claims of spending $8,000 per year on hunting licenses
and his attempts to shoot wildlife with a bow from 100 yards, a
distance at which more animals are injured than killed.
"It just didn't add up," Wolff says. "This was just massive, the
extent of what he was doing. When you set up a hunting camp in
Yellowstone Park, that's pretty ambitious."
"But he fooled a lot of people for a long time."
Scott Carpenter was in the minority. A photographer and
sportsman in Kanab, Utah, he had seen magazine pictures of Lewis
with trophy mule deer. Captions described the terrain as Montana. But
to Carpenter, it looked like the rust-red Paunsaugunt Plateau of
southern Utah.
The Paunsaugunt is known for its trophy mule deer.
Carpenter and Ryan Hatch, another photographer, soon ran
into Lewis there. Another surprise: They began stumbling across deer
carcasses, all with antlers gouged from their skulls in the same
distinctive way.
So they followed Lewis, and photographed hum.
IMAGE UNRAVELED
When a Utah game warden stopped Lewis in November 1991,
the friendly Southerner said his fresh deer cape and antlers had come
from across the border in Arizona. But Lewis had killed no deer while
Hatch watched him in Arizona.
That loose thread unraveled Lewis' carefully woven image. A
week later, wardens spotted Lewis' pickup truck near Zion National
Park and found newly killed deer carcasses nearby. Lewis drove off,
but sheriff's deputies caught and arrested him as he headed for the
interstate.
The hunter had yet to enter one trophy in the record books.
In a search of the pickup, officers found six videotapes. They
showed Lewis poaching in Yellowstone, in Utah and other, still-
unidentified spots. Handwritten notes described his plans to shoot an
Alaskan moose, then drive to Wyoming to claim it as a world record
Shiras moose, a smaller species.
He also figured on submitting a whitetail deer from Texas as
a record Coues deer in Arizona.
After his arrest, Browning Arms but its ties to Lewis.
Browning archery adviser Bill Norton says company officials had
taken Lewis' claims at face value.
"He got into being famous and then you have to produce to
keep your reputation going." says Norton, also a professional hunter.
"It's getting more like that all the time."
Lewis never showed up for his trials in two Utah counties,
where he had to forfeit his truck and hunting equipment and pay
$10,000 in fines for poaching eight deer. He returned from Alabama to
serve 60 days in Utah jails only after the state began extradition
proceedings.
It was the first time Utah had tried to extradite someone on
misdemeanor game charges.
"People were ready to string him up," said Utah prosecutor
Brent Langston. "I mean, what's this guy doing coming here and
shooting all these big deer and just letting them lay and rot?"
Later, the Utah Legislature made it a felony to poach two or
more deer.
That wasn't the only legacy Lewis left behind. Some of the elk
heads he took were hanging in sporting goods stores and hardware
stores in Alabama and Georgia earlier this year. A July plea agreement
requires Lewis and Sims to forfeit all illegal trophies.
As of late last month, they still had not done so.
As Lewis sat in jail this year, game officers found him "a beat
man," says Craig Miya, assistant chief of Utah's wildlife agency. State
prosecutors have charged him with six new poaching counts, which
Lewis' attorneys are appealing to the Utah Supreme Court.
"His big career as a hunter is done," Miya says.
The end of Don Lewis' career may have been a relief for him,
says his brother Terry Lewis, a high school principal in Rome, Ga.,
who was fined for poaching with Don in Utah. The once rising star of
hunting, now a father, went back to college, discovered a penchant for
math, and has become an engineer in Huntsville, Ala.
"It got him out of that cutthroat industry," his brother said. "It
turned his life around. Breaking the law is not his nature."
---- End of Article ----
_______________________________________________________________________________
| Patrick Sullivan / CON4_PJS%G...@HOBBES.CCA.CR.ROCKWELL.COM |
| |
| All of us who love the ways of the wild, I have come to realize, should |
| have a river of our own. No matter where it flows. |
| - My Place |
| - M. R. James |
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