It gets better. He had been authorized to kill two adult wolves in the pack that had settled down in his neighborhood to enjoy convenient meals of beef.
His employees mistakenly killed a pup (judging the age or size of a wolf from a distance isn't necessarily all that easy,) and then killed a female wolf in an admittedly messy fashion -- but sometimes killing things gets messy, especially when you want to make sure that wounded animals get finished off. But they were told they could kill two wolves and killed two, and no more.
But that's not the best part. As it turns out, the feds ended up killing every wolf in the troublesome pack.
So the poor guy is being cited for killing two wolves that would have been killed by the feds anyway.
Once wolves are delisted and the feds are gone, they will be completely under the management of the Montana FWP -- and it can't happen soon enough. While FWP management will also have its problems, ranchers will presumably have better luck getting fair treatment and reasonable responsiveness from their fellow Montanans.
