Rancher Defends Business of Killing Exotic Animals : Drought: He says the fees he charged shooters helped him reverse farming losses caused by lack of rain.

A Monterey County rancher who was accused of importing former zoo animals and charging shooters to kill them at point-blank range defended his operation to investigators as a necessary business move and said he thought the charges were overblown.

“These are surplus animals, . . “ Floyd Lester Patterson III told investigators, according to court records. “I can’t see where it hurt anyone. Four or five cats helped me get out of a pinch for the year.”

Patterson said in an interview Thursday that the drought forced him to sell half his cattle in the last year and that his barley farming operation “went belly up.” As a result of the lack of rain, he said, he had little grazing for his cattle, couldn’t afford to continue buying feed and had a disastrous barley crop.

He started the animal-killing operation to recoup his losses, he told investigators. Patterson paid an Arizona broker $1,800 per animal and charged about $3,500 on the average for a “cat hunt,” according to his wife’s statement to investigators. Most of the animals came from zoos, he told authorities.

The problem of game ranching is growing nationally, and there are currently investigations of several other illegal operations, said Tom Riley a regional director for the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.

“It can cost up to $20,000 to go on an African safari,” Riley said. “That’s why these kinds of operations are around.”

Patterson’s ranch is set in the rolling foothills of southeastern Monterey County. He is known for conducting legal boar and ram hunts on the property, drawing hunters from Los Angeles and San Francisco to his “California Ram Hunt Monterey County.” His business card--with the embossed heads of an elk and a bighorn sheep--advertises the hunting of several kinds of sheep and also deer, wild pig, dove and quail.

But a criminal complaint filed this week against Patterson alleged that he purchased a number of endangered animals, including Bengal tigers. He was charged with 27 misdemeanors; his wife, Dawn, was charged with four.

Kenneth Joseph Oravsky, a taxidermist who prepared the trophies for Patterson, was also charged with 28 misdemeanor counts. The three face up to a year in prison and a $1,000 fine for each misdemeanor. They are scheduled to be arraigned in the King City Division of Monterey County Municipal Court on May 9.

The majority of the charges involve violations of endangered species laws and permit procedures. Federal felony charges may soon be filed for interstate transportation and killing of endangered species, authorities said.

Some of the animals were too old to be kept in zoos, investigators said, and others may have been raised in captivity in Mexico. In some cases, hunters shot the animals a few feet from their cages. Photographs and videotapes of the killings were taken.

Some animals had few teeth remaining and wouldn’t leave when their cage doors were opened. They were shot in the cages, investigators said.

One client was charged with possessing a dead tiger, leopard and mountain lion and at least one more client is expected to be charged when the investigation is completed, said Assistant Dist. Atty. Klar Wennerholm.

“There’s something demented about shooting an old, feeble animal at short range and then claiming it as a trophy,” said Wennerholm. “There is no challenge, no danger, nothing sporting about it at all.”

Although Riley said the origin of the animals killed on the Patterson ranch is unknown, zoos are prime sources for exotic animals that end up in private hands.

But many institutions, including the Los Angeles Zoo, try to ensure the well-being of retired or surplus animals that are sold at auction. Los Angeles Zoo officials track them by checking with the buyers every six months about the animals’ fates. The buyers are also required to report if they resell them.

“It is counterproductive to our role as an institution to have the animals be shot by some fat slob,” said Bob Barnes, a curator at the Los Angeles Zoo. “ . . . It is a humiliating end to an animal of dignity.”

But Patterson said the killing of the exotic animals “was blown way out of proportion . . . and didn’t go on for very long. Things were not how they’ve been portrayed.”

There were up to five shooting expeditions in three months, said Bill Talkin, a special agent with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.

The investigation began when Oravsky borrowed a neighbor’s hunting dog without permission. The neighbor contacted state game wardens and turned over photographs of a Bengal tiger and black panther that had been skinned in Oravsky’s taxidermy shop.

According to court records, the neighbor told game wardens he had seen a tiger and a panther caged at Oravsky’s house, and at the Patterson ranch he saw four mountain lions, two Bengal tigers and a jaguar in cages.

Patterson’s wife, Dawn, told investigators that animal dealer Thurston Comstock of Dragoon, Ariz., approached them about buying exotic cats for hunts. They had previously purchased bighorn sheep and goats from Comstock for legal hunting.

In the spring of 1990, Comstock delivered two Bengal tigers and one black panther, a leopard and other animals, Dawn Patterson told investigators.

Some of the exotic animals had been sedated, caged and placed in the center of a truck trailer, investigators said. The rear of the trailer was then filled with sheep to obscure the cages from agricultural inspectors at the state line.

After arrival, the cats were kept in livestock trailers for a few days and fed goat meat and chickens, Dawn Patterson said.

In an interview Thursday, Comstock denied transporting exotic animals to the Pattersons’ ranch.

“I’ve hauled him some domestic sheep and goats, that’s all,” he said. “I don’t know anything about that other stuff.”

Comstock is being investigated by the Arizona Game & Fish Department for importing several species of African antelope without a permit, said Will Hayes, a regional supervisor for the department.

Floyd Patterson told investigators the animals were shot shortly after arrival. “I don’t bring animals in unless I get someone (a shooter). I never keep them longer than two days,” he said.

The animals come from “zoos that no longer want them,” he told investigators. Other animals come from Texas, he said.

“There are animal finders,” he told investigators. “Exotic sales in Texas. You can buy anything you want to buy in Texas. You can’t buy anything in California without a permit.”

One tiger known as “Tony” had once been a pet, Patterson told investigators. “He jumped out of a pick-up and mauled a little kid and they were going to have it put to sleep.”

The Patterson family has operated the cattle ranch for several generations. On a recent evening at the North Shore Inn, a tavern a few miles from the ranch, exotic animal hunting was the object of numerous jokes. The railroad car-sized tavern was packed, and the boisterous crowd meowed loudly, sang the song “Born Free,” which refers to lions, and asked the bartender for orders of “grilled Bengal.”

But when the jokes subsided, some people turned serious.

“This thing with the cats gives our area a bad name,” said Shawn O’Brien. “A lot of people around here work as guides for hunters or hunt themselves. This stuff with the cats is crazy. We don’t like it; it’s not hunting.”

Pat Hoctor, who breeds exotic animals on his property in Indiana and owns the Animal Finders Guide, said he deplored what he called “can shooting” in which animals are shot in enclosed pens or on small farms.

But he said he saw nothing wrong with hunting exotic animals at “fair chase facilities” in which the animals had the run of hundreds of acres.

“I don’t see any difference between that and your California Department of Fish and Game letting people go out and hunt deer,” Hoctor said.

Times staff writer Dan Morain contributed to this story.