Wisconsin Poacher Loses 10-Year Montana Hunting Rights, Owes $20,000

Dylan Charles Boyer, 23, of Wisconsin walked out of a Helena courtroom April 1 with no hunting, fishing, or trapping privileges in Montana for the next decade, the penalty for a poaching operation that stretched across six counties over more than a year.

The Lewis and Clark County judge imposed more than $20,000 in restitution, a 10-year revocation of all Montana hunting, fishing, and trapping licenses, and an eight-year trespass ban from the Marias River Wildlife Management Area. Co-defendants in the case received similar administrative sanctions.

Prosecutors traced Boyer's illegal activity to incidents between October 2022 and November 2023, spanning Lewis and Clark, Jefferson, Toole, Pondera, Deer Lodge, and Broadwater counties. The most serious charges included felony unlawful transport of illegally killed animals and wanton waste. Prosecutors alleged Boyer left four bull elk carcasses across the landscape with only the heads and backstraps removed.

Under Montana law, wanton waste carries revocation points that amplify administrative penalties well beyond what a standard poaching conviction produces. Combined with the felony transport charge, those points drove Boyer's privilege loss to a full ten years.

The Marias River Wildlife Management Area, named specifically in Boyer's trespass order, is a public hunting corridor familiar to Lewis and Clark County sportsmen. The geographic specificity of that ban reflects how seriously the court treated the pattern: not a single lapse, but a sustained, multi-county operation.

Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks coordinated with county game wardens across multiple jurisdictions to build the case, drawing on field evidence, harvest-check data, and aerial counts. That interagency effort was necessary to link incidents scattered across six counties into a single prosecutable pattern.

The inclusion of co-defendants facing comparable sanctions signals that prosecutors and FWP pursued this as organized poaching activity. Boyer's outcome shows what Montana's combined criminal and administrative enforcement can produce when felony conviction, wanton waste findings, and repeat conduct stack together.