Taxidermist Faces Prison, $10,000 Fine

Sun., Jan. 16, 2000

From Staff

An Orofino taxidermist has pleaded guilty to a charge that he violated federal wildlife law by falsifying a report about a mountain lion.

Rocky Jacobsen, 47, faces a maximum sentence of a year in prison, a year of supervised release and a $10,000 fine.

Jacobsen also was a licensed outfitter in Oregon. Officials investigated him after tips that he was outfitting mountain lion hunts in Idaho without a license.

The Idaho Department of Fish and Game and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service conducted an investigation that found Jacobsen was taking out-of-state hunters mountain lion hunting in Idaho. The agencies contend Jacobsen often charged two to three times his normal rate for the resulting taxidermy work in lieu of an outfitting fee.

The basis for Jacobsen’s guilty plea stemmed from a 1996 incident in which he took an undercover Idaho Fish and Game Conservation officer hunting. The department says Jacobsen forged the officer’s name on a required report about the mountain lion the officer killed.

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