Guide, pilot convicted in helicopter case

Will Shoemaker
Times Editor

A helicopter pilot and Utah-based guide have been convicted on wildlife harassment charges stemming from an investigation that lasted more than a year. The case surrounded a mule deer hunt involving a controversial so-called “Governor’s tag.”
A trial in the case of the pilot, Bryson Gray of Montrose, was scheduled for last month. However, J Wenum, area wildlife manager for Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW), indicated this week that Gray opted instead to plead guilty to the charge of unlawful harassment of wildlife.
Wenum described Gray as a “complicitor” in the case.
Muley Connection owner Michael Brownlee of Lehi, Utah, also was charged with unlawful harassment of wildlife. He pleaded not guilty but was convicted following a trial earlier this year.
Brownlee declined comment this week when contacted by the Times.
As a result of the convictions, both men were assessed $100 fines and 10 points on their hunting privileges. In Colorado, if a person accumulates 20 or more points, he or she faces the possibility of license suspension.
The investigation gave rise to changes to rules — proposed in 2013 by a local wildlife advocacy group — surrounding use of the Governor’s tag.
The incident occurred Dec. 4, 2012 near in the “Miller Ridge-Antelope Ridge” area northwest of Gunnison, according to a citation.  
Wenum said CPW received a report from two eyewitnesses that a helicopter had flown overhead at a low elevation.
“It was flying low and doing kind of a sweeping, searching-type pattern,” he said, noting that the eyewitnesses captured video of the flight.
Upon receiving the report, Wenum said CPW officers were sent throughout the Gunnison area in an attempt to observe the helicopter.
Also, officers waited at the Gunnison-Crested Butte Regional Airport for the helicopter to return.
“We were there waiting and contacted three folks on the ship,” Wenum said. “They were cooperative. We sat down and talked with them.”
The three on board the helicopter included Brownlee, Gray and a person whom Wenum described as a bystander.
Colorado law prohibits hunting the same day as, or the day after, a flight. Regularly scheduled, commercial flights are an exception.
While that law did not appear to have been broken, the pattern of the helicopter’s flight resulted in the harassment charges, Wenum said.
“It was the fact that they were flying at a low elevation and were using a sweeping pattern,” he explained. “And it was the behavior of the animals. … The video footage showed the deer were responding to the helicopter.”
Brownlee’s hunter ultimately harvested a trophy mule deer buck in the Gunnison Basin using the Governor’s tag about two weeks after the helicopter incident.
Annually, Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) distributes 18 Governor's tags for seven different species to conservation groups, which either auction or raffle them off. From the typically high-priced auction tags, 75 percent goes to CPW and the other 25 percent to the conservation groups.
Previously, for deer, the tags could be used in Colorado basically anytime between late August and the end of the year — on any public lands open to hunting or private lands by permission.
However, in response to the helicopter investigation and other perceived abuses, Gunnison Wildlife Association (GWA) proposed shortening the amount of time the tags could be used for mule deer.
GWA member Navid Navidi called the helicopter incident “the straw that broke the camel’s back.”
“The outfitters would find (a trophy deer), they’d call the hunter, he’d show up on a plane and they’d take a snowmobile to kill the animal,” Navidi described of situations that led GWA to propose the shorter Governor’s tag season. “It was kind of bothersome to see that kind of what they call hunting.”
In January 2014, Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission agreed, approving a closure of the Governor’s tag season for mule deer one month early, on Nov. 30, "unless there is an existing buck or either-sex season extending later in a specific Game Management Unit."
Written violations in the case weren’t issued until May 16 of last year.
“It was pushing the statute of limitations, which is 18 months,” Wenum said. “There were a lot of intricacies.”
Among them, Wenum said CPW worked with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service through the course of the investigation as a result of federal airborne hunting laws that could be applicable.

(Will Shoemaker can be contacted at 970.641.1414 or editor@gunnisontimes.com.)