As punishments go, the month Vern Hoff must spend in a halfway house for his crime may pass quickly. But as a federal judge noted Thursday, the lifetime ban on firearms will require some big adjustments for the man who took his new bride hunting for their honeymoon. "Your inability to possess firearms is going to require a real change in lifestyle for you," U.S. District Judge Ann Montgomery told Hoff as she sentenced him for his role in an ill-conceived caper and attempted cover-up involving two dead gray wolves in the Superior National Forest.

Hunting has been a big part of life for Hoff, 55, whose Finland home is "a trophy case" of mounted game, his defense attorney said. Losing the right to have hunting rifles "probably hurts him more than anything that happened here in the courtroom," defense attorney Dan Scott told the judge. She agreed.

Hoff was one of two men indicted last July for killing the wolves; Hoff was also accused of lying about it to federal investigators. The other man took a plea bargain; Hoff went to trial. In November, a federal jury in Duluth acquitted Hoff of conspiracy but convicted him of a felony count of lying to a federal officer and a misdemeanor count of violating the Endangered Species Act. At the time of the February 2010 incident, gray wolves were protected species, and hunting them was illegal. They were removed from the endangered list in Minnesota in January 2012.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Laura Provinzino had asked Montgomery to lock Hoff up for at least three months, half the maximum called for by federal sentencing guidelines. The prosecutor said Hoff had long thumbed his nose at authority in general and wildlife laws in particular. Calling the crime "cowardly," she said Hoff has "a deep disregard both for authority and for the law" and that he'd shown "no sense of contrition or sense of responsibility."

Given the chance to speak, Hoff apologized "for being a burden to the court" and also apologized to his wife, seated in the gallery's front row. "I'm here to take responsibility for my actions," he said to end his brief comments. Hoff owns Vern Hoff Land Construction, a company with contracts to plow snow on forest roads and clear waste trees from federal land. He and his employees were on one such job the morning of Feb. 17, 2010, when the events that led to the charges unfolded.

Employees Kyler James Jensen, then 30, of Silver Bay, and Samuel Underwood, then 39, of Aurora, were driving to the worksite in the Superior National Forest when they rounded a corner and came upon five gray wolves trotting down a freshly plowed road. Jensen sped up. Ridges of plowed snow lined the narrow lane and the wolves had no escape. Jensen told Underwood, "I'm going to get me some wolves," hit the accelerator and ran over two of the animals.

The two men stopped at a clearing down the road. Jensen phoned Hoff and told him he'd killed two wolves. "Good job!" Hoff allegedly replied. Hoff then told Jensen to pick up the carcasses and bury them before the U.S. Forest Service forester they were working with arrived at the jobsite. The men loaded the dead animals into the back of the truck. Later that day, Jensen bulldozed a trench and buried the carcasses. He and Underwood -- who had protested the killings -- got off work about 5:30 p.m. and stopped at a bar for a couple of beers together.

Later that evening, Underwood went to Hoff's home. He was angry he hadn't been paid in two weeks, and told Hoff he wanted his money. As a prosecutor contended, "Hoff responded that pay was not his department and that he did not have a check." Things got heated. Hoff grabbed a pool cue and pointed it at his employee. Underwood grabbed the cue and snapped it over his knee, flinging the pieces to the floor. Hoff grabbed a shotgun and aimed it at Underwood. Underwood grabbed that, too, wrestling it away from his boss. He told Hoff he'd return the shotgun when he got paid.
Hoff fired him and told him he'd mail his last paycheck to him.

Fuming, Underwood left and called the Lake County sheriff's office to report the assault (a state court jury eventually acquitted Hoff in the assault) and then called the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources to report the incident with the wolves. Later that night, DNR Conservation Officer Daniel Thomasen and Special Agent Ronald Kramer of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service met Underwood in the national forest. Underwood had told them about the incident and Hoff's involvement, and he planned to show them where Jensen buried the wolves.

As the three drove to the site, they encountered Jensen in his truck. Thomasen pulled him over and asked him what he was doing in the forest at 11:30 p.m. "It probably has something to do with the two wolves that I hit this morning," Jensen replied. Jensen had come back out to the forest to dig up the carcasses. The lawmen could see parts of the animals sticking out from beneath a tarp in the back of his pickup.

Jensen lacked a driver's license, and his lone passenger had been drinking, so Thomasen told Jensen to call someone to drive them home. He called Hoff. When Hoff arrived, Kramer asked him if he knew anything about the wolves. Hoff denied knowing what Jensen had done, denied telling his employee to bury them and denied even having spoken to Jensen on the phone. (When he testified at his own trial, Hoff told jurors he didn't know Jensen had intentionally killed the wolves.)

In July, Hoff and Jensen were indicted by a federal grand jury for conspiracy to violate the Endangered Species Act. They were also charged with violating the act (Jensen with two counts, Hoff with one), and Hoff was named in an additional count of making a false statement to a federal officer.
Jensen took a plea bargain in November, pleading to the two counts of violating the Endangered Species Act. His sentencing is scheduled for Monday.

Provinzino had argued that Hoff should get jail time because his crimes "were flagrant, intentional, and wholly unnecessary." She also said he had a "significant criminal history dating to 1981, including numerous wilderness violations, for which there has been little accountability." She said he had illegally possessed wolf pelts in 1981, and in 2005, Canadian officials charged him with nonresident camping without a permit and fishing out of season; the Canadian Ministry of Natural Resources fined him and banned him from fishing for six months.

In 2006, Hoff was found to be in possession of a motorized auger in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, and was convicted and ordered to pay a fine. "Hoff's conduct demonstrates a deep and long-standing disregard for fish and wildlife laws," Provinzino wrote in a presentencing memo to the judge.

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