The two men were stopped by a conservation offer, who found the moose carcass (Facebook/Saskatchewan Association of Conservation Officers)

By Lane Hoffart

Provincial Court

Out-of-province Indigenous men convicted of illegally hunting moose calf

Sep 25, 2025 | 6:00 AM

Two Indigenous men from other provinces were convicted in Saskatchewan Provincial Court in Outlook on Sept. 18, after hunting a moose calf in Saskatchewan without having the Treaty hunting rights to do so.

According to their testimony, Timothy Bayly and Douglass Powless were hunting wild boar at the McDonald Creek Pasture near Vanscoy on Nov. 10, 2023. They were driving in Powless’s truck and pulling a flatbed trailer with an ATV on it.

While driving along trails in the pasture, they spotted a cow moose and her calf in a low area. After seeing the moose, both men got out of the truck carrying their rifles and walked around the perimeter of the low area in opposite directions.

Bayly testified that he eventually saw the calf by itself and, seeing that it appeared to have something wrong with it, he decided to shoot it, despite not having a moose-hunting licence.

Bayly and Powless field-dressed the calf, loaded it onto the trailer and then then left for home.

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A conservation officer spotted the two men while driving through Delisle and stopped them to conduct a hunting compliance inspection after seeing the carcass. He noticed the lack of a big game hunting seals attached to the animals, as is required by law.

The officer then asked Bayly and Powless for identification. The men produced their driver’s licences and treaty cards; Bayly’s treaty card was for Treaty 3 in Manitoba and Powless’s card was from Ontario.

The men admitted to the officer that neither of them had a licence to hunt the moose. Bayly then confessed to the officer that he shot the moose, while also insisting that he had Treaty 6 hunting rights out of Duck Lake, near Prince Albert, and that Saskatoon would have a record of it.

While at the scene, the officer learned that neither of the men’s treaty cards conferred Indigenous hunting rights in Saskatchewan but did not immediately charge them as he wanted to investigate more.

Both men were later charged with hunting wildlife without a licence where a licence is required under The Wildlife Act or its Regulations, as well as the offence of possessing wildlife taken in contravention of the Wildlife Act or its Regulations.

Bayly testified that he believed he qualified for Indigenous hunting rights in the province because he has ancestors from Saskatchewan. He said that he had been unsuccessfully working on obtaining a Saskatchewan treaty card for the past few years.

The judge found that this meant Bayly did not have hunting rights in Saskatchewan and need a valid licence to hunt the moose calf and convicted him.

The Crown argued that Powless was guilty of unlawfully hunting the moose since he helped Bayly after he killed the moose calf. The judge found that Powless assisting Bayly in transporting the animal to his residence does not fall under the definition of hunting, which is defined in Section 2 of The Wildlife Act as including “taking, wounding, killing, chasing, pursuing, worrying, capturing, following after or following on the trail of, searching for, shooting at, trapping, setting snares for, stalking or lying in wait for any wildlife, or attempting to do any of those things, whether or not the wildlife is then or subsequently captured, wounded or killed.”

Both men were found guilty of possessing wildlife taken in contravention to The Wildlife Act and its Regulations. Bayly was found guilty of unlawfully hunting moose while Powless was guilt of possessing the wildlife but not guilty of hunting it since he didn’t shoot it.

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lane.hoffart@pattisonmedia.com