Former Wasilla hunting guide charged with 30 counts

PALMER — A former hunting guide who allegedly assisted clients in a laundry list of wildlife violations has been charged with 30 criminal counts.

Richard A. Kinmon Sr., 62, owner of Wasilla-based Alaska Trophy Hunters, was charged Tuesday in Alaska District Court in Delta Junction. Also charged, but with fewer crimes, were assistant guide Colin S. Marquiss, 23, of Wasilla and one of Kinmon’s clients, Joseph C. Hahn, 24, of Pittsburgh, Penn. Kinmon was a licensed guide from 2008 to 2013.

“The investigation began when the Anchorage Wildlife Investigations Unit received a complaint in July 2012 from one of Kinmon’s former clients indicating that another client on a guided hunt had killed a Dall sheep in September 2009 without possessing a valid non-resident sheep tag,” Alaska State Troopers announced in a press release Thursday.

During the course of the investigation, troopers say they uncovered evidence that between 2009 and 2011 Kinmon allegedly:

• Sold big game tags to four clients in hunting camps after they’d shot their animals.

• Guided a caribou hunt in Game Management Unit 20A — an area near Fairbanks — despite not being licensed to guide caribou hunts in that particular area

• Baited a brown bear with a moose carcass he moved from the site it was killed with an all-terrain vehicle.

• Allowed Marquiss to harvest a moose while guiding clients.

• Helped take a sub-legal moose.

• Falsified public records.

Marquiss, meanwhile, is charged with three counts of unlawfully guiding and hunting a big game animal with clients in the field.

Hahn was charged with four counts of taking a brown bear without a valid hunting tag, unlawfully possessing game, and falsifying public records.

“Several of the charges carry a maximum penalty of one year in jail and up to a $10,000 fine. Some of the guiding charges carry maximum penalties up to one year in jail and a $30,000 fine. As part of the investigation, troopers seized two Argos that were used in the commission of these alleged crimes,” troopers report.

This is the second set of charges to result from the investigation. In August 2012, Kinmon was charged, also in Delta Junction, with six counts relating to his alleged illegal guiding. Troopers say that case involved Kinmon and his clients harvesting a grizzly without a valid hunting tag.

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.