https://www.straight.com/news/...r-dall-sheep-shot-in


Link has article, video and photos.



Guide outfitter loses court bid to overturn hunting-licence suspension after Dall sheep shot in Yukon, not B.C.

by Charlie Smith on November 28th, 2021 at 6:01 AM


Abraham John Norman Dougan is proud of his ability to hunt big game in B.C.

On YouTube, videos show many large B.C. animals taken by his guide-outfitting clients, including one called "Trophy Gallery".

However, he ran into trouble when his company killed Dall sheep in Yukon in 1999 while he held a B.C. hunting licence.


That led the B.C. government to suspend his licence for two years in 2018.

On November 25, a B.C. Supreme Court Justice Robert Punnett dismissed Dougan's judicial-review application to have that decision overturned.

Dougan alleged that the Enviromental Appeal Board made 18 errors in upholding the licence suspension. He claimed that the provincial body engaged in "an abuse of process" by duplicating Provincial Court proceedings and through the length of time between his offence and the penalty.


The lawyer for the deputy director of the wildlife and habitat branch narrowed these 18 grounds to five areas. In each instance, Punnett sided with the respondents, which included the Ministry of Forests Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development, the minister, and the Environmental Appeal Board.

Back in 2014, Dougan pleaded guilty to charges of hunting by aircraft and wastage of meat under the Yukon Wildlife Act for the 1999 hunting expedition. This netted Dougan $15,000 in fines and he was banned from hunting in the Yukon for 20 years.

The following year, he was convicted on four counts after he was charged with 12 offences under B.C.'s Wildlife Act and the Wild Animal & Plant Protection & Regulation of International and Inter-Provincial Trade Act. But then the judge stayed all the charges against Dougan because of Crown counsel's delays in bringing the case forward.

Eighteen years after the Yukon hunting expedition, the province notified him in 2017 that his hunting privileges might be revoked.

That same year, Dougan told the Vancouver Sun that his business had suffered enormously because of media coverage of his legal woes.



In 2017, the NDP government banned the trophy hunt of grizzly bears in B.C.

What a poorly written and inaccurate piece of garbage. There is no doubt that Dougan has been in trouble for a number of wildlife offences and I doubt anyone is going to feel a lot of sympathy for him when it comes to paying the price for committing the offences, but the guy that wrote this has things really screwed up as to what exactly took place with both the hunting offences, the court decisions and the basis for action by the game department.

Accurate reporting has always been a problem, but is especially rare these days. Oh well...I guess the bottom line is that he was found guilty of several different offences and had his outfitting privileges revoked by the province.

I met Abe about 20 years ago on a sheep hunt in the Yukon. When I read of his troubles, I was quite surprised. He did not seem to be that kind of guy. I guess I was wrong.