Victory has turned bittersweet for conservation officials who successfully proved a B.C. hunter shot a sheep without a licence in 1999 only to see the charge stayed because of judicial delays.

Abraham Dougan was accused of killing a Dall sheep in Yukon when he was only allowed to hunt in British Columbia.

Never mind that the crime happened 16 years ago and Dougan wasn't charged until 2012; Kamloops Provincial Court Judge Stella Frame said it shouldn't have taken a further three years to bring the matter to a close.

"No matter how one looks at it, the (then) 13-year-old shooting of a sheep that is not endangered is not of such complexity or importance that 37 months from charge to decision can be called reasonable," she wrote.

Grainy clue to 16-year-old mystery

The case is outlined in a pair of provincial court decisions: The first reads like a combination of CSI and Duck Dynasty.

For years, Dougan and the sheep were immortalized by a grainy picture in the Big Game Records Book of British Columbia.; it was the second biggest Dall sheep kill on record.

But Yukon conservation officers received a tip in 2011 saying the animal hadn't been killed in B.C. at all.

Armed with only the photograph, investigators set about finding the location of the hunt.

Investigators claimed this picture of a Yukon mountaintop matches the spot where Abraham Dougan killed the Dall sheep. (The Canadian Press)

The picture showed a camouflaged Dougan posed beside the sheep with a mountaintop in the background. Officers used a computer simulator to pinpoint the location and then flew there by helicopter, hiked in and took photographs which they entered into evidence.

Frame noted similarities between the rocks in the picture and the background.

Dougan submitted photographs of other, similar mountain ranges in B.C. But Frame said there were slight differences.

"It appears for all intents and purposes, to be an otherwise identical range located in an entirely different place," she said.

There was no DNA found at the suspected kill site and no spent rifle cartridges. Which meant that Frame had only the picture to go on to decide where the animal was killed.

"The way this investigation unfolded leaves me with a great deal of discomfort," she wrote.

"Discomfort, though, is not reasonable doubt."

Man kills sheep, delay kills conviction

That, though, was only half the story.

Frame went on to consider the defence's application for a judicial stay.

She noted the impact of the overall delay on the case itself: the publisher of the Big Game Record Book died; Dougan threw away old copies of photographs; and one prosecution witness ended up in jail.

Crown argued that the defence also contributed to the amount of time it took to bring the trial to a conclusion, but Frame found that the "most significant" delays had to be laid at the feet of the Crown and the court itself.

Frame said the offence itself should not be taken lightly: "However, justice must remain paramount and must not be sacrificed on the altar of conviction at any cost."

The judge pointed out that Dall sheep are not endangered and the killing happened in an area where they can be shot.

"That does not excuse the unlicensed killing of the sheep," she wrote.

"But it must put it into perspective when considering the length of time it took to bring the trial to conclusion."

Last year, Dougan was fined $15,000 and prohibited from hunting and guiding in Yukon for 20 years after pleading guilty to wasting meat and hunting illegally while guiding an American big game hunter.