Hunting guide to stand trial for shooting, slurs

Music educator Heather Stenner plays a recorder as three of her students — from left, Shaurya Singh, 5, Georgia Johnson, 4, and Bruce Zuckerman, 5 — play rain sticks for a song they just learned Friday at the Erie Community Library in the High Plains Library District. Stenner, owner of Enthusic Music Company, visits schools and libraries to teach children music and composition.

Andy Cross, The Denver Post

A hunting guide accused of shooting at turkey hunters near Kersey and yelling racial slurs at them pleaded not guilty to two counts of felony menacing this week and will stand trial in the spring.

According to the arrest affidavit, Kevin Dunnigan owns property neighboring land on Weld County Road 388, just outside Kersey, owned by Jim Arnold, 38, and his wife, and often let Arnold use it for guided hunting trips.

Trouble started when the Dunnigan family and their friends began to hunt in the area, the affidavit stated. Arnold would “harass” them, according to the report.

On April 22, two friends of the Dunnigan family claimed Arnold appeared and began yelling at them and firing guns.

The next day, the Dunnigans’ son, Taylor Dunnigan, and his friend set up a camouflaged tent through which to shoot, they later told Colorado Parks and Wildlife officers, and everything was fine until Arnold showed up.

Taylor Dunnigan said Arnold fired shots at them for two hours, some of which hit foliage as near as 5 feet from the tent.

The Dunnigans spoke to Colorado Parks and Wildlife officers the next day, and they arrested Arnold the next week.

In a phone interview Thursday, Arnold said Taylor Dunnigan had been fired from his wife’s company Waterfowl Haven Outfitters in February. The charges against him, he said, amount to “false accusations by an ex-employee that’s disgruntled.”

“The truth will come out in trial,” he said. “That’s why we set it for trial.”