A big-game hunting guide who faked living in Utah in his relentless pursuit of a prized wildlife trophy has been banned from hunting in 47 states for the next decade.
Larry Altimus, of Pearce, Ariz., was found guilty in July 2017 of wanton destruction of wildlife — a third-degree felony — after three days of testimony in a courtroom in Utah’s Kane County. An eight-person jury found that Altimus illegally obtained a Utah resident hunting permit to kill a desert bighorn ram, according to Utah’s Division of Wildlife Services.
Altimus, 69, had previously applied for such a permit 21 times without success. And without Utah residency, Altimus realized that the chances he would draw a non-resident bighorn sheep permit were very slim.
“But, if he claimed residency in Utah, he knew he had a good chance of drawing a permit reserved for Utah residents,” Mike Fowlks, director of Utah’s Division of Wildlife Services, said in a statement.
Altimus rented a home in Kanab, Utah, near the state’s southern border with Arizona, in August 2013 and then used that address to apply for one of 10 desert bighorn sheep permits available to state residents that year. In May 2014, Altimus’ number was called and he received the permit. A month later, in June 2014, Altimus moved back to Arizona before returning to Utah in October of that year to kill the desert bighorn ram using the illegally obtained permit.
In addition to losing his right to hunt for 10 years, Altimus has paid $30,000 in restitution and a $750 fine for killing the ram, whose head and horns have been seized by investigators. Altimus is also banned from hunting in 47 states, since Utah is part of the Interstate Wildlife Violators Compact. The only states not included in the agreement are Delaware, Massachusetts and Hawaii.
“If you lose your hunting privileges in one of the states, you automatically lose your privileges in all of them,” Fowlks said. “Altimus won’t be hunting in any of the 47 states for a long, long time.”
Desert bighorns are Utah’s most coveted big-game species to hunt. Sheep tags can auction for as high as $70,000, according to the Salt Lake Tribune, which cited 2014 state data revealing that a total of 5,174 Utah hunters applied for 35 desert bighorn tags and 7,814 nonresidents vied for a total of three.
“This is a big tag,” Kane County prosecutor Jeff Stott told the newspaper. “It’s huge in the hunting world.”