Utah Outfitter Pleads Guilty to Selling Canned Lion Hunts

Outfitter Wade Lemon was sentenced with a fine and prison time for tricking clients into participating in canned mountain lion hunts. (Photo by Evgeniyqw)

A Utah big-game hunting outfitter and his houndsman were recently convicted and sentenced for tricking their clients into participating in an illegal hunting method.

In a recent news release, the U.S. District Attorney’s Office in Utah said the two men pleaded guilty to conspiring to defraud their clients by leading them on “canned hunts for commercial gain.”

The Idaho Statesman reports that charging documents claim a “canned hunt” is “when a cougar is treed, cornered, held at bay or its ability to escape is otherwise restricted to allow a person who was not a member of the initial hunting party to arrive and take the cougar.”

Canned hunts obviously violate the ethical framework of fair chase.

According to Utah law, when dogs are used to hunt cougars, the hunter who intends to kill the cougar must be present when the dogs are released and must participate in the hunt until it’s completed.

In the news release, Federal officials say Wade Lemon, of Holden, Utah, longtime owner and operator of Wade Lemon Hunting, tricked his clients into believing they were participating in live, fair chase mountain lion hunts.

Officials said clients paid between $5,000 to $7,000 per hunt, and his houndsman, Kasey Yardley, would often corner the mountain lion long before the client arrived for the hunt.

The outfitter’s website, which boasts of an almost 100% success rate on trophy mountain lion, claimed more than 3,000 clients had “achieved their dream of harvesting a Trophy Mountain Lion.”

“What the website does not mention is that Wade Lemon has been cheating,” federal officials said. “His cougar hunts were canned.”

Experienced mountain lion hunters know that tracking a cougar often requires several long days, officials said.

During one of Lemon’s canned hunts, the client was “on the mountain for only 37 minutes before the hunt was over.” The client didn’t know that Yardley’s dogs had already cornered the cougar before the client even got there, sentencing documents say.

In 2022, The Salt Lake Tribune reported that officials have been investigating Lemon for years. In fact, the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources has investigated him more than eight times for “allegedly breaking the law to ensure a successful hunt.”

Lemon also faced multiple felony charges for allegedly baiting a black bear that Donald Trump Jr. shot in 2018 and making it seem like a legitimate hunt.

Officials said Lemon was sentenced to two months in prison on July 18 and ordered to pay a $10,500 fine and banned from commercial activities on federal land for one year.

After Yardley, 47, plead guilty to his involvement in the scheme, officials said he was sentenced to six months of bench probation. He is also banned from federal land for commercial purposes as part of his probationary terms.

“This is a unique and important case because hunting is an important part of Utah’s culture,” said U.S. Attorney Trina A. Higgins of the District of Utah in the news release. “Canned hunts are illegal because they create an unfair advantage and can lead to inhumane treatment of the animals. It is also unfair to hunters who paid thousands of dollars for a guide and had no idea that they were participating in a canned hunt. My office and our law enforcement partners take these crimes seriously because they negatively impact our state and the hunting community.”