A Kelly big-game outfitter and avid wolf hunter trudged through the snow right past a boundary sign on his way to illegally shooting a female wolf inside Grand Teton National Park.

Gros Ventre Wilderness Outfitters owner Brian Taylor was pursuing wolves on closing day of the 2018 hunting season during a period when the federal government was shut down and some rangers were furloughed. It was a bitterly cold late afternoon in the Spread Creek drainage, Taylor told investigating park ranger Nick Armitage, when he led two hunting partners past one of the boundary sign posts while following wolf tracks that ascended from a bison hunter’s left-behind…