Anyone know this Ellis fella?
Taken from Field and Stream:
March 08, 2012
Guide Charged With Illegal Trapping of Mountain Lions in Utah and Colorado
--Chad Love
A Colorado hunting guide has been charged in federal court with trapping mountain lions for his clients to shoot.
From this story in the San Jose Mercury News:
A hunting guide has been charged in federal court for allegedly conspiring to conduct illegal mountain lion hunts in Colorado and Utah. According to a charging document, Marvin Ellis worked with four other hunting guides to track and trap mountain lions and bobcats days before bringing clients in to kill the animals. On two occasions, according to the court documents, Ellis and the other guides trapped mountain lions in leg-hold snares to ensure the lions couldn't escape before a paying client could be brought to hunt them. In one of those instances, a guide also shot a mountain lion in the leg to keep it from fleeing, according to the court filing.
In three other instances, Ellis and the other guides are accused of holding bobcats and a mountain lion in cages before releasing them for a customer. Ellis and the guides are also accused of taking clients on mountain lion and bobcat hunts without the proper licenses and on one occasion working to sneak the carcass of a mountain lion illegally hunted in Utah back into Colorado. It is legal to hunt mountain lions and bobcats in Colorado and Utah with the proper licenses. In both states, though, animals treed or trapped must be killed immediately or released. It is against Colorado law to use leg-hold traps on public land. Ellis is charged specifically with conspiring to violate the Lacey Act, which makes it a crime to transport across state lines any animal hunted in violation of the originating state's law. He could face up to five years in prison and up to a $250,000 fine.
At a time when mountain lion hunting has been in the news a lot lately, things like this certainly don't help the cause. If true, how high on the disgusting scale does such behavior fall?
