Impressive hunter, prolific social media poster faces jail time for poaching

JACKSON — Rodney Gilstrap is a talented hunter, by all accounts.

No one knows that better than James Hobbs, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department’s former Afton warden, who investigated him for several years.

Between 2018 and 2022, Gilstrap harvested several impressive trophy animals in western Wyoming, including deer, elk and an antelope. A bull elk he shot in Teton County on opening day in 2021 had a 340-class rack; a mule deer buck he shot in Sublette County in 2020 was in the 200-class range.

Hobbs, who is now the regional wildlife supervisor in Green River, went public with the details of Gilstrap’s case — which initially included two counts of illegally harvested bull elk in Teton County — last week, almost seven years after the department first received a tip about Gilstrap illegally hunting as a resident in Wyoming. The investigation took four years, followed by more than a year of legal proceedings and then a year of appeals from Gilstrap before it was resolved.

“He was an accomplished hunter and he worked hard, so he harvested really quality animals, albeit illegally, over that few years,” Hobbs said.

Gilstrap was hunting using resident licenses, though he never lived in Wyoming for the year necessary to qualify, Hobbs said. He rented a spot at a mobile home park in Afton and had a Wyoming driver’s license and truck registration, but was employed in Idaho Falls throughout his time hunting in Wyoming. He split time between the two, according to court documents.

Gilstrap was initially charged with 22 crimes, a combination of illegally harvesting animals and making false statements to procure resident licenses, across Teton, Lincoln and Sublette counties, according to Game and Fish. Three counts were in Teton County.

Gilstrap ultimately pleaded guilty to three counts of making false statements and three counts of illegal take of animals in Lincoln County.

Hobbs believes that Gilstrap was an aspiring hunting influencer. Gilstrap often spent multiple hours in the field photographing his kill — and himself with it — from several angles before removing a backstrap, Hobbs said.

Gilstrap, who is 50 years old, categorically denies that claim.

“I’ve posted a picture here and there of a deer,” he said. “But I am not a social media guy. I’m too old for that crap.”

His posting underscores his perceived innocence, he said.

“Why the hell would anybody in their right mind post a picture of something they shot if they were poaching?” he said. “It makes zero sense.”

The case

Game and Fish launched an investigation into Gilstrap in 2019 after receiving a tip. In 2021, the department received warrants to go through his social media. In April 2022, the department obtained a cellphone warrant. In 2023, the Teton, Sublette and Lincoln county attorneys charged Gilstrap with crimes stemming from hunting as a resident when he was not.

The investigation took a long time in part because of the Covid-19 pandemic, Hobbs said.

During Gilstrap’s time hunting in Wyoming, from 2019 to 2022, he killed three bull elk, a buck antelope and three buck mule deer, investigators said.

An elk Gilstrap killed in Teton County on opening day in 2021 was harvested without a license, according to Hobbs. Gilstrap then had a friend buy him a license and put it in the gas cap of his vehicle.

Photographs taken by Gilstrap and shown by Hobbs at a recent Game and Fish meeting indicate that Gilstrap shot the animal at 8:30 a.m. The timestamp on the license purchase was 10:50 a.m.

When Gilstrap was hunting in Wyoming, he had a Wyoming driver’s license and had a vehicle registered in the state, Hobbs said. While he rented the spot in a mobile home park in Afton, Hobbs said his truck was never observed there.

On Gilstrap’s hunting licenses, his address was listed as the credit union in Afton, which Hobbs took as evidence that he never actually lived at the mobile home park. He would have known his address if he did, Hobbs said.

Cellphone records from November 2020 through October 2021 indicate that Gilstrap spent 17 days in Wyoming, Hobbs said.

“The only time he spent in Wyoming was during hunting season,” he added.

Gilstrap maintains that he believed himself to be a Wyoming resident at the time and was unaware that what he was doing was illegal. He moved to Afton to work on a project with an associate and believed that the gig was eventually going to be full-time, he said.

“Playing dumb is not an excuse, and I know that,” Gilstrap said. “The fact that I didn’t do the research I should have, that’s on me.”

It is hard to become a Wyoming resident, which takes a full year of residency to begin with and then over 180 days of residency per year thereafter. That’s more than what’s required to claim residency for hunting in most other states, Hobbs said.

“A lot of people that move here have a hard time waiting a full year before buying licenses,” he said.

Gilstrap’s punishment includes $10,000 in restitution to Game and Fish, $17,900 in fines to the State of Wyoming, 21 days in jail, and an 18-year suspension of his Game and Fish privileges, according to Game and Fish.

The state also suspended Gilstrap’s antler-hunting privileges during his three years of probation and seized the heads of animals he hunted in Wyoming.

Gilstrap appealed his sentence in December 2024, to no avail. In September 2025, Gilstrap’s attorney filed motions seeking to reduce his sentence and eliminate most of the jail time, fines and revocation of hunting privileges.

Gilstrap is set to go to jail next month, after recovering from a back injury, he said. He would have fought the charges rather than pleading guilty if he had the means.

“I honestly feel like at the very least my punishment would have been much less severe,” he said.

Hobbs, for his part, felt the punishment was lenient.

“It felt in some ways that it just didn’t do it justice, with the quality of animals that this person had been able to kill,” he said. “That he had removed from the opportunity for a legal hunter to be able to harvest.”

Aspiring influencer?

Gilstrap’s case is an outlier for a Game and Fish investigation in terms of the number of photographs he took. But poachers often thoroughly document and post about their hunting, Hobbs said.

“A lot of people, in my experience, when they break the law like that, when they kill something big, they want to be able to brag about it,” Hobbs said. “In the past it was to friends and now they want to post it online.”

Hobbs has reason to believe that on several occasions Gilstrap never quartered his harvest, as the femur was still attached to the pelvis in several cases when Hobbs visited kill sites. There were also no knife marks on some of the bones.

In all the pictures Hobbs saw, he never saw a photo where an animal was quartered out.

Under state law, a certain amount of meat has to be removed from the field, including the front quarters down to the knees, hindquarters down to the hocks and the meat along the backbone between the neck and hindquarters, including the loins and tenderloins. Game wardens can confiscate heads if hunters do not harvest the minimum meat required.

Hobbs could have pursued “wanton waste” charges against Gilstrap, but opted to focus on what was easy to prove, he said.

“Deep down, I’m pretty certain he didn’t take it out,” Hobbs said.

Gilstrap said he packed out all the meat that was good.

“Often, I would pack out the meat and have to go back for the head,” he said.

Sy Gilliland, the former president of the Wyoming Outfitters and Guides Association, believes that some of these allegations are representative of broader trends seen in hunter behavior across the state.

In recent years, Gilliland, who has hunted in Wyoming for 50 years, has observed hunters more interested in social media than harvesting meat.

“The culture of what people seem to be out there hunting for has changed a lot,” he said. “It seems it has become more trophy-oriented and less experienced-oriented.”

Gilliland and other outfitters have been pushing Game and Fish and lawmakers to require hunters to remove the meat first and the head last, if a hunter is unable to pack it all out at one time.

“First and foremost, as hunter-gatherers, what we’re doing is collecting meat,” Gilliland said. “You can’t go and purposely destroy an animal just to cut the head off and leave the meat to go to waste.”

Hunters should be focused on meat and the experience, Gilliland said. Antlers are an added bonus.

Gilstrap, for his part, said experience is what he was after.

“I hunted because I had a passion for being in the woods and going places that nobody else has the drive or determination to get to,”  he said.

Many of the areas Gilstrap hunted — which Hobbs later had to locate — were steep, heavily wooded or generally difficult to get to.

“I wasn’t there for the trophy,” Gilstrap added. “That’s how I’ve always felt, but you can’t explain something like that to someone.”

This story was published on Jan. 21, 2026.