Kamloops-area influencer hunt nets $7,000 fine

A Lower Mainland woman was hit with a $7,000 fine after a hunting trip with her social media influencer boyfriend west of Kamloops.

Nicole Elie Rogers, who pleaded guilty to one charge, was one of four people charged after a year-long investigation into a set of hunting trips that were filmed and posted to an account called Backcountry Carnivores. Rogers faced the fewest Wildlife Act charges with four of the combined 43 against them.

Pleading guilty to two of them on Dec. 1, the judge heard Rogers was an inexperienced hunter who was “misled” by the more experienced group, which included her boyfriend Daniel Gazzola.

Crown lawyer Monica Fras told the court she “didn’t understand how significant this type of violation is, or the undermining of the system.”

Rogers, a 29-year-old kinesiologist from the Lower Mainland, twice swapped deer tags with another hunter. In October 2023, she shot her first ever deer in the Cache Creek area but didn’t have the correct tag at the time.

Without holding a tag for that region, she used Gazzola’s and claimed it for herself. The aftermath was filmed and used for the Backcountry Carnivores account. In the other incident that week, Gazzola shot a deer near cabins in the Sheridan Lake area. Rogers gave him her tag for the kill.

When the BC Conservation Officer Service announced the charges, it prompted backlash against the four hunters, the court heard.

“There was also significant media backlash that (Rogers) experiences, so there was also that sheer embarrassment of actually being called out publicly,” her lawyer Jamie Gagnon told the court. “She does not want to repeat that.”

Along with the fine, the court also ruled that she be banned from reposting the social media videos in the future, while the Backcountry Carnivore page appears to be removed.

Two of the four, including Gazzola, are still before the courts. Another man, Cole Rogozinski, was similarly fined $7,000 in August.