The two Fort St. John men who were caught and charged for riding a swimming moose have been convicted and fined under the B.C. Wildlife Act.
Jaysun Allan Pinkerton and Bradley Dale Crook were charged in 2016 with harassing wildlife using a boat, attempting to capture wildlife, and hunting big game while it’s swimming.
The pair appeared in a Fort Nelson court on Friday, where they were convicted of harassing wildlife. The other two charges were stayed.
Pinkerton and Crook were ordered to pay $4,000 each, plus another $2,000 per person to the Habitat Conservation Trust Foundation.
The incident took place in July 2014 on Tuchodi Lakes in Northern Rocky Mountains Provincial Park, about 1,500 kilometres north of Vancouver. It was captured on video, which sparked outrage on social media, made international headlines, and eventually led conservation officers to the perpetrators.
The 2015 video shows one man standing on the edge of a motorboat as it inches closer to a moose swimming across the lake. With the boat nearly on top of the animal, the man jumps onto the moose. He throws one of his arms into the air and rides the animal for the next 15 seconds before falling off into the water.
When the video was first released, David Vince, a sergeant with the B.C. Conservation Service, told Global News that he’d never seen anything like it.
“I’ve never seen anybody go out of their way to scare wildlife,” he said.
The shocking video was posted to Facebook and quickly deleted in 2015. Before it was removed the owners of Wolftracker TV recorded the video and posted it to Youtube. They also took screenshots from the original post, which they passed on to conservation officers.
Pinkerton and Crook were charged after a year-long investigation.
