Serial poachers are the type of violators that game wardens spend a lot of time on. Dylan Wolff, a 28-year-old resident of Shawano County, Wisconsin, had earned a good amount of attention from the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, and now the details of that investigation are coming to light.
After conservation warden Clark Delzer made the bust in a Shawano County cemetery on Jan. 8, Wolff was found to have hunted and fished illegally 174 times in five northeast Wisconsin counties.
Wolff now faces two felony bail jumping counts, two counts of failure to get a hunting license, two counts of hunting deer during a closed season, and two counts of hunting after revocation, according to Fox11. Last month, circuit court judges in Waupaca and Forest counties ordered arrest warrants for Wolff after he failed to appear in court.
The Biggest Serial Poacher Case We’ve Seen
Wolff’s blatant disregard of hunting and fishing laws, including earlier incidents that led to his hunting and fishing licenses being revoked, was well known by local residents and law enforcement officers. Their cooperation helped provide Delzer with the information he needed to eventually arrest Wolff. Wardens also were able to determine where Wolff had been hunting through a GPS tracker they had placed on his vehicle; they also monitored his location with Flock cameras.
According to the warden’s reports, the investigation was conducted between Oct. 15, 2024 and the Jan. 8 2026 bust. Delzer led the investigation and worked with wardens from the surrounding counties where violations also took place. He also included Stockbridge-Munsee tribal wardens, since Wolff had also hunted illegally on tribal land. During the course of the investigation, Wolff killed approximately 22 deer, including a 10-point buck shot on private property. He also illegally harvested two turkeys and shot at bobcats.
Information for the charges came from multiple sources, including citizen informants, who had observed Wolff hunting on their property, observations made by wardens while on patrol, and surveillance. In-person interviews and analysis of information on Wolff’s cell phone were also used to corroborate hunting and fishing activities, including messages and Facebook posts he sent from his phone, which were recovered after his arrest.
Examples of texts recovered from Wolff’s phone include, “Blood trail, Yeah who else. I’m a 1 man band” and a video of a small buck he shot with the message “surprised you didn’t hear me shoot from your bedroom window” to a friend. Videos showed a doe shot over bait, while others documented smaller bucks in the bed of his truck — all while Wolff had his hunting and fishing licenses revoked.
The warden’s report also referenced the shooting and wounding of a big buck that wasn’t recovered. Surveillance cameras placed at locations Wolff was known to hunt also showed him putting on his camo clothing and loading his shotgun before a turkey hunt.
An example of his illegal turkey hunting took place on May 17, 2025, when a private property owner was hunting with a Shawano County police officer. They found Wolff on the property with hunting gear, but he told them he was only calling, not hunting turkeys. The property owner reviewed his trail camera footage and saw Wolff had also been illegally hunting his property earlier in the season. Wolff was also seen on a storage unit’s surveillance camera getting out of a truck with a shotgun while wearing a camo jacket.
Wardens knew Wolff often illegally hunted on tribal land and nearly caught him on Dec. 5, but that encounter didn’t result in an arrest. On that day, Delzer was dropped off by neighboring warden Mark Schraufnagel, while a tribal warden staged near a trailer park and another state warden, Lt. Andrew Lundin, was waiting at an intersection to assist with perimeter containment.
Delzer found Wolff’s truck where he expected and saw it had a flat tire. He followed Wolff’s tracks in the snow, leaving the truck “for approximately 115 yards,” according to the incident report, “until I observed a rock that had fresh snow disturbed on top as if someone had been sitting and possibly hunting from it.”
The track continued onto private property, then entered tribal lands again. The tracks looped back toward where Wolff was parked. But 100 yards from his truck, Delzer saw the tracks abruptly turn into the woods at a location where both Wolff’s truck and the squad truck were visible.
“Due to the spacing of the tracks and a hat that Wolff had (likely) dropped, (I saw) that he was likely running,” Delzer states in the incident report. The wardens decided to leave the area and attempt to make the arrest on another day.
When they walked back to Wolff’s truck, the wardens observed a tote with a blaze-orange jacket and a crossbow bolt in the bed of the truck, in addition to a deer antler and bags of corn and apples used to bait deer, which is also illegal in Shawano County. A crossbow and compound bow were in plain view in the truck’s cab along with a rifle ammunition holder on the front seat.
Wolff’s poaching rampage continued on Dec. 31, 2025. The New Year’s Eve hunt resulted in Wolff shooting a doe and a fawn on private property. Both deer were registered on Jan. 1 with Wolff’s mother’s deer tags.
The investigation culminated the afternoon of Jan. 8. Lt. Lundin dropped wardens Delzer and Kaitlin Kernosky off approximately 100 yards north of a local cemetery, where they took cover behind a maintenance building 40 yards from where they’d found Wolff’s truck.
“At 5 p.m. I observed movement in the private property east of the cemetery in the woods,” Delzer says in the incident report. “I heard a door slam on the vehicle and observed a dome light illuminated. As I hurried toward the vehicle, it started … I illuminated (it) with my flashlight and yelled ‘game warden, stop.’ The vehicle started backing up toward me, due to numerous past contacts with Wolff I recognized the driver was Dylan Wolff. I pounded on the driver side window and again yelled ‘game warden, stop.’ The vehicle did not stop and continued in reverse away from me. I ran to catch up to the vehicle and ordered Wolff to turn off the vehicle.”
Wolff then stopped his vehicle and was questioned by wardens. A video of the encounter shows the details.
After Wolff was patted down for weapons, Delzer asked him what the wardens would find when they followed his tracks into the woods. Wolff said they’d find a pile of corn and a stand. The wardens also found a crossbow hanging in the tree by the stand, although Wolff said he had not killed any deer on the property. Wolff also claimed the buck fawn wardens found in the back of his truck was shot by his mother. A loaded .270 rifle with a round in the chamber and the safety off was also found in the back seat of his truck.
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The wardens eventually restrained Wolff and escorted him home. He was later charged, but skipped his court appearances and now has outstanding warrants for arrest.
Prosecutors from the five counties are now working together to determine the best avenue forward in this unusual case.
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