WASILLA -- The Alaska Office of Special Prosecutions has charged a Wasilla hunting guide with 30 misdemeanor violations of state game and guiding laws during Dall sheep, caribou, bear and moose hunts between 2009 and 2011.
Richard A. Kinmon Sr., 62, offered the hunts through his company, Alaska Trophy Hunters. The company website describes a variety of hunts ranging from "predator expeditions" that start at $7,000 per hunter and target wolf, wolverine, lynx and fox to an $11,000 Yukon moose hunt and trips after grizzlies, sheep and caribou.
"The only comment I can say, it's frivolous, fraudulent, unethical and unconstitutional," Kinmon told The Associated Press on Thursday. "It's not valid, and it will come out in court."
He is being represented by Wayne Anthony Ross, an Anchorage attorney and board member for the National Rifle Association.
The state's charges against him were filed Tuesday in Delta Junction District Court. Arraignments are pending.
The state also charged assistant guide Colin S. Marquiss, 23, of Wasilla with unlawfully guiding and killing a moose while on a guided hunt, which is illegal. Four counts of taking a bear without a valid non-resident tag, unlawful possession of game and falsifying public records were also filed against former guided hunt client, 24-year-old Joseph C. Hahn, of Pittsburgh, Penn.
Alaska Wildlife Troopers also seized two Argos as part of the investigation.
The case started after a former client filed a complaint about Kinmon's business practices in July 2012 with the Anchorage Wildlife Investigations Unit, according to the troopers.
A number of the counts against Kinmon center on hunts involving a client from Michigan.
The client booked a $10,000 moose hunt near Delta Junction in 2009 and got all the requisite paperwork -- license, tag, harvest ticket - but later added an $8,000 Dall sheep hunt without getting a tag, according to charging documents filed in Delta Junction court by Assistant Attorney General Arne Soldwedel.
Kinmon told the client he could buy his sheep tag in camp and later signed a required hunt record claiming the client already had a tag and ticket to hunt the sheep, Soldwedel wrote. He was a licensed Alaska Department of Fish and Game vendor from 2008 to 2013.
The client got his sheep on a September hunting trip and, with Kinmon, took an Argo back to camp where Kinmon sold the client a sheep tag and backdated the record to a day before the hunt, according to the charging document. He also told the client to backdate a check for the tag and later told him to do the same with a sheep ticket purchased at the Fairbanks Fred Meyer.
The client worked for Kinmon in 2010 in exchange for a promise that his son could hunt Dall sheep in 2011, the document says. But the client was allowed to participate in hunts without a big game assistant guide license, which is illegal, the document says. In 2011, the client guided his son without an assistant guide license.
Asked why the client wasn't charged with any criminal acts as part of this case, Soldwedel said that was "being handled separately."
The charges also reference several other accusations against the Wasilla hunting guide, including baiting a black bear with a moose carcass he moved from a kill site.
Kinmon falsified black bear predator control permit documents, saying he took no bears when he killed four near Shirleyville in 2010, it says. He sold big game tags after the fact in camp to several other clients besides the man from Michigan.
He took a Wyoming client on a caribou hunt without being certified for that animal in a particular game unit, the document says. He also guided a hunt during which a client killed a sub-legal moose and without ever filling out a hunt record.
This week's charges aren't Kinmon's first brush with the law.
Last August, he was arraigned in Delta Junction court on six other guiding counts stemming from this investigation, troopers said. In that case, one of Kinmon's other clients allegedly harvested a grizzly bear in September 2008 without possessing a valid non-resident tag.
Court records also show past convictions for hunting violations: a 2009 guilty plea to a misdemeanor moose hunting season and bag limit violation and a 2010 guilty plea to a misdemeanor charge of using a motorized vehicle in a controlled-use area.
Kinmon did not return a message left by the Daily News on a phone with a message that identifies him as an Isagenix representative. Isagenix International LLC sells nutritional cleansing and other personal care products. The website for Alaska Trophy Hunters includes a "Hunters Health" link with before-and-after pictures of Kinmon's own weight loss.
Kinmon also guided a moose hunt featured on a 2009 episode of the Outdoor Channel television show "Best of the West".
Reach Zaz Hollander at zhollander@adn.com or 257-4317.
By ZAZ HOLLANDER