Kelowna Man Hit with $13,000 in Fines for Illegal Bighorn Ram Hunt

A Kelowna resident by the name of Heith Proulx, has been fined $13,000 and banned from hunting sheep in British Columbia for three years after he was found to have illegally killed a bighorn ram. The incident took place in October 2023, approximately 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) northwest of Pavilion Lake in a wildlife management area near Lillooet where bighorn sheep hunting is prohibited.

Proulx initially claimed the ram was killed in a legal hunting zone, but GPS coordinates later revealed the true location. In March 2024, the BC Conservation Officer Service (BCCOS) interviewed Proulx at his home, where he admitted to providing false information about the kill site. Following the admission of guilt, officers seized the sheep’s horns and cape from a taxidermist.

Proulx pleaded guilty to making a false statement in a book, record, report or return, a violation under the Wildlife Act. In a Facebook post, the BCCOS, in collaboration with a provincial wildlife biologist, emphasized the ecological consequences of the act. British Columbia is home to the entire Canadian population of California bighorn sheep, with the Fraser River region supporting roughly half of the province’s population.

Hunting California bighorn sheep in British Columbia is tightly regulated to ensure sustainable populations. The province allocates a limited number of tags annually through a lottery system and special auctions, managed by the Ministry of Environment. Tags are distributed across designated wildlife management units (WMUs), with allocations based on population surveys to ensure harvests do not exceed sustainable levels, typically 1-3% of the total population. In recent years, British Columbia has issued around 20-30 permits annually for California bighorn sheep, with specific WMUs like those in the Fraser River region allowing limited harvests of mature rams (defined as having at least a half-curl horn).

Special auction tags, such as the British Columbia Mountain Sheep Special Hunting Permit, are highly coveted and fetch significant sums at events like the Wild Sheep Foundation’s Sheep Show. In 2024, a special permit for bighorn sheep in British Columbia sold for $430,000, a record high compared to $275,000 in 2021. Since 2000, these auctions have raised over $4.2 million for conservation efforts and often allow hunting in any open unit, providing greater flexibility than standard lottery tags, which are unit-specific.

The majority of Proulx’s fine will be directed to the Habitat Conservation Trust Foundation in order to continually support wildlife conservation efforts in the province of British Columbia.