A Central Valley man was sentenced to six months in federal prison for conspiring to smuggle the body of an endangered wild sheep into San Francisco International Airport from Pakistan. Jason Keith Bruce of Galt, a town about 26 miles south of Sacramento, received his sentence on Tuesday. Bruce pleaded guilty early last year to conspiring to smuggle the carcass of a Ladakh urial, an endangered wild sheep native to the high desert and alpine habitats of northern India’s Ladakh region.

Bruce was indicted in 2023 alongside Pir Danish Ali of Pakistan, the CEO of a hunting guide company that Bruce hired during big game hunting trips to Pakistan in 2017 and 2018. Beginning in 2016, the two men conspired to hunt a Ladakh urial and declare it as a different species to customs enforcement, going as far as forging documents from Pakistani authorities – a violation committed by at least 25 of Ali’s clients between 2013 and 2018, prosecutors said.

The Department of Justice noted that Bruce was aware of the fact that the Ladakh urial had a local population of only 180 when he shot the animal during a 2017 hunt that he paid Ali $50,000 for. According to court documents, Bruce then posted photos to Facebook of himself and a dead animal later identified as the Ladakh urial. He traveled back to the U.S. without the animal, then returned for a different hunt in 2018 and flew home with eight animal carcasses in tow, including the illegal urial. Upon his arrival, U.S. Customs and Border Protection stopped him and alerted U.S. Fish and Wildlife to the contents of his baggage.

Forged documents presented by Bruce to Customs and Border Protection and Fish and Wildlife listed the animal as being among two Punjab urials and two Blandford urials, different species of urial that are legally hunted through hunting trips in India and Pakistan. Court documents state that shortly after Bruce’s arrival at SFO, he and Ali exchanged Facebook messages in which Bruce expressed that he was worried about Fish and Wildlife becoming suspicious of the number of carcasses he was bringing back after such a short hunt.

Ali replied, “F-k,” followed by, “We should have thought of that.” He then recommended that Bruce tell officials “he did shoot all of those animals because he was shooting into a herd,” court documents state.

While Fish and Wildlife held the carcasses over the following months, the two men exchanged conversations over Facebook detailing their attempts to quash the situation. At one point, Bruce asked Ali to “have someone fake call” Fish and Wildlife officials and claim to be from Pakistan’s game department, to which Ali replied, “Yes I can certainly do that,” court documents say. The following month, Ali said that if Fish and Wildlife conducted a DNA test on the Ladakh urial, “we will get f-ked.” Bruce then told Ali: “dude delete all messages emails and whatsapps we have sent each other.”

In May 2018, Ali told Bruce that he would created a counterfeit Ladakh urial carcass and give “it to the local government so it would appear that the trophy had not been exported,” court documents state.

In a memo filed with the U.S. District Court last week, Bruce’s attorney asked the court to consider allowing Bruce to carry out his sentence from home “so that Mr. Bruce can continue to work and not lose his business.” Bruce owns a Stockton-based construction firm. The letter then references a photo of a room in Bruce’s house containing numerous taxidermied animals, stating “the animals in the room were all legally hunted, legally harvested, and then stuffed. There isn’t anything criminal about that.”

In a letter written to U.S. District Judge John A. Mendez by Bruce himself, Bruce describes his proclivity toward hunting as a “deep compulsion.” He then mentions potential negative impacts to the families of his employees should he be incarcerated, and expresses intentions to begin meeting with a psychologist.

“When I hear the word addiction, it seems to refer to drugs, alcohol, or gambling,” Bruce wrote. “But I have definitely felt a deep compulsion about hunting, so much that I see it clouds my decisions.”

Mendez ordered Bruce to serve two years of supervised release following his six-month prison term, the Sacramento Bee reported. He was also ordered to pay an $85,000 fine.

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This article originally published at Hunter gets prison time for smuggling dead endangered animal into SFO.