Montana Mountain King: Man in court accused of cloning giant sheep for trophy hunters

An 81-year-old Montana man faces sentencing in federal court Monday for illegally using tissue and testicles from large sheep hunted in Central Asia and the United States to illegally breed hybrid sheep for captive trophy hunting in Texas and Minnesota.

Prosecutors are not seeking prison time for Arthur “Jack” Schubarth of Vaughn, Montana, according to court records. He is asking for a one-year suspended sentence for violating federal wildlife trafficking laws.

The maximum penalty for the two Lacey Act violations is five years in prison. The fine can be up to $250,000 or twice the defendant's financial gain.

In his request for a suspended sentence, Schubarth's lawyer said cloning the giant Marco Polo sheep hunted in Kyrgyzstan had “ruined his client's life, reputation and family.”

Marco Polo sheep are the largest in the world, can weigh 300 pounds (136 kilograms) and have curled horns that are up to 5 feet (1.5 meters) long.

The sentencing also congratulated Schubarth on the successful cloning of the endangered sheep, which he named “Montana Mountain King.” The animal was seized by the US Fish and Wildlife Services.

“Jack did something no one else could or has ever done,” the memo said. “On a ranch, in a barn in Montana, he created Montana Mountain King. “MMK is an extraordinary animal, born of science and of a man who, if he could rewrite history, would have left the challenge of cloning a Marco Polo only to the imagination of Michael Crichton,” author of the science fiction novel Jurassic Park.

Schubarth owns Sun River Enterprises LLC, a 215-acre (87-hectare) alternative livestock ranch that buys, sells and raises “alternative livestock” such as mountain sheep, mountain goats and ungulates, primarily for private hunting preserves where people shoot captive trophy game for a fee said the prosecutor. Schubarth said he had been in the game farming business since 1987.

Schubarth pleaded guilty in March to charges that he and five others conspired to use tissue from a Marco Polo sheep illegally imported into the United States to clone that animal and then use the clone and its offspring to create a Creating larger, hybrid sheep species that do this would be more valuable for captive hunting operations.

Schubarth sold MMK semen along with hybrid sheep to three people in Texas, while a Minnesota resident brought 74 sheep to Schubarth's ranch to inseminate them at various points during the conspiracy, court documents say. Schubarth sold a direct descendant of MMK for $10,000 and other sheep with lower MMK genetics for smaller amounts.

According to court documents, in October 2019, Schubarth paid a hunting guide $400 for the testicles of a trophy-sized Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep that had been harvested in Montana and then removed and the semen sold, court documents say.

As part of the conspiracy, breeds of sheep not allowed in Montana were brought into the state, including 43 sheep from Texas, prosecutors said.

The five co-conspirators were not named in court records, but Schubarth's plea agreement requires him to fully cooperate with prosecutors and testify if asked. The case remains under investigation, Montana wildlife officials said.

Schubarth said in a letter included in the sentencing memorandum that he becomes deeply passionate about every project he undertakes, including his “sheep project,” and that he is ashamed of his actions.

“My normal way of thinking was clouded by my enthusiasm and I looked for a gray area in the law to raise the best possible sheep for this sheep industry,” he wrote. “My family has never been broke, but we are now.”