Iditarod Champion Found Guilty Of Moose Poaching

On October 24th, a federal magistrate found Jeff King of Denali Park, Alaska, guilty of moose poaching in the park. King, a four-time champion Iditarod sled dog racer, was found not guilty on a second count of driving his ORV into the park to retrieve the moose. During the trial, King testified that it was his college-age daughter who drove the ORV across the park boundary, and she was not charged in the case.  The decision brings to an end over a year of investigation, trial preparation, and court testimony by Denali rangers. Ranger John Leonard and Alaska state trooper Thomas Lowy first contacted King and his daughter in a hunting camp near the northern boundary of the park in September 2007. At that time, King said that he had harvested a bull moose southwest of his camp, and all appeared to be in order during the camp and license check. On a subsequent patrol of the same area two days later, rangers Leonard and Scott Pariseau found a pile of fresh moose bones southeast of King’s camp, the opposite direction from what King had stated.  The investigation connected the bone pile to a kill site within park boundaries by genetically matching a meat sample collected from the kill site to meat seized under a search warrant of King’s residence. Although King mounted several defenses, including that the park had not properly marked its boundaries, the magistrate’s decision found that the park had met both legal and practical standards in marking its boundary (the text of his decision can be found at http://media.newsminer.com/docs/jeffking1024.pdf).  Sentencing for King is scheduled for December 4th.