A poaching case quietly closed March 8, 2022, involving a web of individuals and incidents of fraudulent tagging, improper disposal and transferring licenses, according to court documents and reports by the Wyoming Game and Fish Department.

The case resulted in more than $25,000 in fines and a 35-year hunting license suspension, a cautionary tale ahead of the 2023 hunting season.

The investigation began Oct. 20, 2021, after the WGFD’s Dayton office received a tip from Matt Culver who claimed he and a friend, Ryan Schmidt, had killed a buck mule deer, failed to tag the buck and wasted the carcass in a ditch.

According to the incident report filed by then game warden Dustin Shorma, the investigation uncovered several other buck mule and whitetail deer Schmidt had killed illegally since the fall of 2020.

Culver reported he went hunting with Schmidt the morning of Oct. 16, 2021, on private property in Dayton, with permission from the landowner. Culver said the two of them chased a herd of deer from an adjacent property to the one on which they were permitted to hunt. Schmidt saw a buck and shot at it four times — the first two shots missed and the latter two struck the torso and the rear right leg — but the buck was not on the right property. Culver said Schmidt then dragged the buck into a nearby ditch and left it there.

According to the incident report, Culver told WGFD he believed Schmidt had killed multiple bucks in the past and improperly disposed of some of the carcasses. Posts from Schmidt’s Facebook account confirmed several of the alleged incidents through photos.

WGFD was granted a warrant to search Schmidt’s home and vehicle by Circuit Court Judge Shelley Cundiff Oct. 26, 2021. Inside Schmidt’s residence, WGFD wardens recovered multiple items that substantiated evidence found at the crime scene and seized the rifle allegedly used in the incidents.

A second warrant was granted to allow WGFD to investigate Schmidt’s phone. According to the incident report, six additional incidents of poaching were uncovered through photos depicting Schmidt posing with dead game, dated between Oct. 15 and Nov. 20, 2020. According to the report, some of the deer were properly tagged, some were snuck back to Schmidt’s apartment and some were fraudulently tagged with friends’ licenses.

Schmidt was cited with five counts of taking an antlered big game animal without a license, two counts of taking a deer without a license, one count of wasting or abandoning a big game animal and one count of failure to tag a big game animal.

Amanda Freeman, a neighbor of Schmidt’s who was found to have assisted Schmidt with the butchering of several poached buck deer and the illegal tagging of others, was cited for transfer of license and accessory to taking a deer without a license.

Circuit court documents report Schmidt pleaded guilty March 8, 2022, to six counts of taking an antlered big game animal without the proper license, one count of waste or abandonment of a big game animal, one count of failure to tag a big game animal and one count of taking a deer without a license. March 8, 2022, Schmidt was sentenced to 90 days in jail on each count, suspended in lieu of one year of unsupervised probation.

In addition to a year of probation, Schmidt’s hunting license was suspended for 35 years, he was ordered to forfeit the rifle used in the crimes to WGFD and to pay $25,070 in fines. Freeman was ordered to pay $1,170 in fines.