Mother of the South Dakota rancher facing prison over pre-1950 fence calls on Trump for help
Heather and Charles Maude each face 10 years in prison and $250,000 in fines over an inherited fence built before 1950. Keely Covello • Mar 27, 2025
Randi and Tom Hamilton are asking the Trump Administration to intervene in the criminal case of their daughter, South Dakota cattle rancher and mother of two Heather Maude, who along with her husband Charles face a decade in prison over a fence dispute with the Forest Service.
“I know Trump and his team have a lot going on,” Randi says. “But the government is on steroids to make people’s lives miserable. Socially, financially, emotionally—in every regard. It’s beyond my comprehension that anyone would do this.”
As previously reported, Heather and Charles were indicted in June 2024 over dispute regarding the placement of a fence they inherited, built sometime between 1910 and 1950, that marks the boundary between their legacy ranch and USFS land. The fence line has been acknowledged as the official property boundary by the USDA every single year since the start of the National Grasslands program in 1960. For 114 years, the Maude family has farmed and irrigated the land with no objection from the Forest Service. Through several generations, their permits have been renewed and transferred. That all changed last June.
Now Charles and Heather each face 10 years in prison and $250,000 in fines for theft of government property. Both are under a gag order, unable to speak about their case with media. Their trial is set for April 29.
Randi and Tom traveled from their home in Wyoming to look after their two grandkids during the couple’s recent hearing. “My little granddaughter is 7. She said, ‘Grandma, what’s going to happen to us if mom and dad go to jail today?’ It broke my heart.”
The local South Dakota ranching community is terrified. Neighbors say they have been targeted by the Forest Service, too.
“Heather and Charles are being made an example of,” Randi says. “If they lose this deal, it’s going to affect everybody. You never think it’s going to happen to you. But it is.”
Facing 10 Years in Prison Over a Fence Dispute
The ranch family’s ordeal started on March 29, 2024, when a hunter allegedly complained about a “No Hunting” sign on a fencepost. USFS requested the Maudes take the sign down, which they did.
“They’re busy trying to make a living,” Randi says. “That fence was put there before they were born.”
To her knowledge, this mysterious hunter has never been identified.
“I don’t believe any hunter would have accidentally discovered an issue with that fence,” Tom says. He claims that onX, a navigational app hunters use to determine property lines, did not even have the line correctly marked at the time. “I think it was someone who knew way more about Forest Service land than a hunter.”
The couple then met with District Ranger Julie Wheeler. Forest Service Special Agent Travis Lunders was also present.
The Maudes sought a solution, suggesting a special use permit or a land exchange under the Small Tracts Act. They were told the Forest Service would first need to re-survey the land to determine property lines. The Maudes agreed. They were told this would occur at some point in the next year.
Instead, Lunders and a survey team arrived at the Maude ranch five days later. Lunders surveyed the fence in dispute. Without permission, Randi says, Lunders then crossed the rectangular piece of private property the Maudes own in the middle of USFS land to also examine their fence on the opposite side. The Maudes have a pivot irrigation system; a machine that waters an area in a circular pattern. While there is no dispute that all permanent components of the pivot are on private ground, Lunders allegedly decided the wheel and end of the pivot at the far end of the line may cross into USFS land.
“How did this happen so fast?” Randi says. “Who gave the OK? This was so extreme."
Just 87 days passed between the mystery hunter’s alleged complaint and federal indictments for the young couple. Like the original complaint by the unnamed hunter, the survey has also been withheld.
“There’s a human side to this,” Randi says. “Heather volunteers with the local farmer’s market. Charles is the local volunteer fire chief and a first responder. He has worked with the Forest Service on fires. He goes above and beyond in volunteering and serving his community. He has never gotten so much as a speeding ticket. They both do so much.”
Their case has sparked national outrage. Political leaders and ranching groups have spoken out in defense of the couple, including Senator Mike Rounds (R-SD) and Congresswoman Harriet Hageman (R-WY). Randi has reached out to both the Biden and Trump administrations, so far with no success. She was told former Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack never received her letters.
Fencing in rough country is an inexact science. In the vast and rugged rangeland of backcountry South Dakota where the Maudes have grazed cattle since before the Forest Service existed, fence lines constructed prior to modern tools and technology are at times crude in tracing boundaries across thousands of acres of imperfect, mountainous terrain.
At the spot in dispute, the Maude’s fence was suspended over Cheyenne River breaks.
“The Forest Service has about the same number of Charles and Heather’s acres on their side of the fence as Charles and Heather have of the Forest Service’s,” Randi says. “It’s just due to the practicality of putting fences where they belong. The Maudes have always allowed that land to be treated as public property. It’s rough country.”
Drawing on her years growing up in Colorado before its urban boom, Randi says urban Americans can relate to murky questions surrounding boundaries, too. She recalls an acquaintance who had a dispute with a neighbor after buying a house in town and building a fence two inches off the line. Imagine this but on a much bigger scale, she says, where a property owner has to account for the curvature of the earth.
“I explain it to town people like that. You’re not even guaranteed that the fence in your yard is on the line.”
The result is a chilling effect on ranchers who share boundaries with state and federal agencies. After the devastating wildfires near Gillette, Wyoming last year, she says many ranchers are too afraid to rebuild their own fences.
“This scares a lot of ranching people because nobody’s fences are on the line,” she says. “I tell them I wouldn’t do it. If the government will do this Charles and Heather, they will do it to you.”
Randi said the couple has tried to have the property resurveyed, but no company will touch the project due to the government’s involvement. To her knowledge, the USFS has never made a copy of their survey available.
Many of the ranchers in this community believe they are being persecuted intentionally by government agents. Some think these agents, including Lunders, are seeking to secure a wildlife corridor between the Badlands National Park and the Black Hills National Forest.
“Heather and Charles and a couple other neighbors are right in the middle of that corridor,” Randi says. “Every rancher that borders that proposed corridor has had more problems than average with the Forest Service. You try not to be a conspiracy theorist but when they won’t give you any answers—in all that dead silence, theories get tossed around.”
The ordeal has taken a toll on the whole family.
“Now when I’m there with the kids, if they see a vehicle they don’t know, they’re just immediately scared it’s the Forest Service.”
Randi and Tom are desperate to help their daughter and son-in-law. They admit they are surprised they have not yet heard from anyone in the Trump Administration. Escalating an issue over the placement of a century-old fence to the point of threatening two young parents with imprisonment is an example of the overreach Trump campaigned on ending.
The Maude’s story is just another example in what resembles a targeted harassment campaign against working Americans—in particular, farmers and ranchers.
“President Trump keeps saying, ‘I am standing in the way; they are really going after you,’” says Randi. “Those words keep going around in my head. These are just ordinary people trying to make a living.”
Keely Covello
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Keely Covello
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