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Michael P. Ramirez

Daily Cartoon

[{"type":"text","text":"By Michael P. Ramirez"}]

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Cowboy State Daily is Wyoming’s largest newspaper with Wyoming’s most experienced journalists. 

<title>Daily Cartoon: Wednesday, April 19, 2023 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

By Michael P. Ramirez

Daily Cartoon: Wednesday, April 19, 2023

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's Feature Reporter, Andrew Rossi.

Andrew Rossi

Outdoors

Wildlife

[{"type":"text","text":"How many wolverines are in Yellowstone National Park?"}]

The National Park Service doesn’t have an easy answer for a census of these 

Neither does biologist Jim Halfpenny, but he does have an estimate based on decades of confirmed evidence — and it’s a lot more than most people think.

 seven “documented” wolverines in the region from 2006-2009. Halfpenny’s nearly 50 years of research says there are dozens more, at least 31 verified in the last five years and "83 absolute verified wolverines” since 1990.

That was the story Halfpenny shared recently at the historic Range Riders Lodge in Silver Gate, Montana. Dozens of people attended his presentation on what he calls the “elusive, sparse, and downright rare wolverine.”

“Tonight, I’m dealing with verified reports only,” he said. “No matter how much I trust somebody who says they saw a wolverine, that's not counted. This is where I have positive verification.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Bad PR"}]

The wolverine, in Halfpenny’s opinion, has a bad reputation through no fault of its own. He’s spent decades reversing their public image by fastidiously learning more about them.

“We're going to talk about the real wolverine,” he said. “The real wolverine is quite a different creature than the stories you probably grew up with.”

The wolverine has been known by many names, among them “the Devil Bear,” “the Glutton,” and “The Evil One.”

Even Peter Krott, a biologist who hand-raised wolverines alongside his own children, titled his 1959 book on wolverines “Demon of the North.”

“I hate to say it, (but) the wolverine is a plain out-and-out victim of bad PR,” Halfpenny said.

Halfpenny has been tracking and studying wolverines in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem since 1979. In that time, he said he’s seen the truth about “the curious big weasel.”

“Dave Need and I picked up a grant for $80,000, which was a lot of money then, for three years of chasing lynx and wolverine,” he said. “That was the start of the wolverine hair snagging for the United States.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Fact And Fiction"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Wolverines have long been depicted as almost mythical creatures. "}]

The earliest accounts from North American explorers depict them as fearless, vicious, and ill-tempered animals that battle bears and eviscerate anything in their path.

Halfpenny has always been focused on verification. When it comes to understanding the truth of the wolverine, everything else is pointless.

“There's two basic eras of wolverine knowledge: the natural history books and things that we read there, and the modern science,” he said.

The natural history books say a wolverine could grow up to 80 pounds. Modern science, in the form of over 700 in-the-field weighings of wild wolverines in North America, reached a much more conservative conclusion.

“The largest weight ever is 37 pounds,” Halfpenny said. “A male might hit 35, but the average weight is around 30 pounds.”

Natural history says a fully grown wolverine could be more than 6 feet long. Modern science hasn’t found a wolverine larger than 3 feet long.

Halfpenny has seen wolverines interact with grizzlies but never engage them in combat. If anything, wolverines are extremely deferential to their much larger neighbors.

[{"type":"text","text":"Wolverines were also nearly hunted to extinction. "}]

In fact, Halfpenny believes they might have been extinct in Montana by 1920, partly due to the National Park Service's early archaic anti-predator policies.

“If you read the Yellowstone superintendent’s report from 1877, which really irritates me, it says, ‘strychnine poisoning for wolves and wolverine habitats will go on in Yellowstone.’ That was the period of massive predator slaughter in the ecosystem,” he said.

Halfpenny asked his audience to make a mental note that a wolverine had been spotted in the southeast corner of Yellowstone in 1871.

“Put that in your memory,” he said. “We’re going to come back to it.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Rocky Mountain Reunion"}]

Halfpenny’s story of wolverines was simultaneously a story of how technology changed the dynamic of wildlife conservation in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.

When he started studying wolverines, the first method of verification was to physically trap the elusive animals.

“We had a 12-foot-square cage with a noose inside,” he said. “We grabbed the back legs, laid them in the center of a tarp, and rolled them up like a hot dog.”

He had a special guest on his earliest trapping projects: singer, songwriter, and actor John Denver, who chronicled the adventure in the 1978 television movie “

“John pitched in just like everybody else and worked his tail end off to do that,” Halfpenny said. “It was great to be working with him.”

In one scene, Denver is carrying one end of a wolverine cage with a wolverine inside through a blizzard in the mountains. Halfpenny noted the peculiar way Denver was walking that had nothing to do with the deep, blowing snow.

“If you look at the end (of the cage), that opening's big enough for a wolverine paw to come through and get a piece of John's ass, to put it one way,” he said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Science Marches On"}]

As Halfpenny continued trapping, other scientists were undertaking the first modern studies of wolverines in North America. 

The next big advancement was radio-collaring, started by Howard Hayes in northwest Montana.

Then in the 1980s, Halfpenny became acquainted with CyberTracker. It was a handheld computer program developed by Louis Liebenberg to track and study wild animals in South Africa.

“He developed a picture-icon system for PDAs,” Halfpenny said. “It was a way to manage wildlife without a budget.”

When the Wildlife Conservation Society started trapping wolverines in the 1990s, they introduced implanted trackers and DNA sampling.

“By grabbing DNA samples, we could start looking at the populations,” Halfpenny said. “With radio collars and CyberTracker, we could create a map and gather years of behavioral studies.

[{"type":"text","text":"Then in the 2000s, biologists had the money for helicopter surveys."}]

These individual studies pooled their knowledge and assembled the first comprehensive analysis of wolverine diversity and distribution in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, he said.

[{"type":"text","text":"Halfpenny had an unlikely ally in his endeavors. "}]

He regularly worked with commercial fur trackers, who diligently informed him when they trapped a wolverine and allowed him to see, study, and measure the specimen for first-hand verification.

[{"type":"text","text":"“The trappers always provided us with locations and DNA,” he said."}]

That’s why he categorized the classification and federal protection of the wolverine as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act in 2023 as “a trade-off.”

“That seems like it might be good for the wolverine, but it's poor for our knowledge,” he said. “It depends on which side of the coin you want to take.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Family Inheritance"}]

In August 2022, biologists Doug McCartney, Steve Moore, and Bill Turner were hiking in the mountains in the southeast corner of Yellowstone. 

That’s when they saw something incredible: 

13 wolverines in the same snow-covered bowl.

Halfpenny said this sighting has been “highly disputed.” After extensive forensic analysis of McCartney’s photos, pixel-by-pixel in Gaia GPS and Photoshop, he feels he has verified 12 of the 13 wolverines.

[{"type":"text","text":"“I can’t find the 13th one,” he said."}]

He could even verify that the wolverines in the photos were two adult males, three adult females, and two other adults, with the rest being younger individuals.

With no carcass in the area, Halfpenny has an incredible theory: family inheritance.

“I think one of those was an adult female with an adult male,” he said. “The other two females were daughters, each of whom had their two (offspring), and one was mated with the second adult male.”

As evidence, Halfpenny cited the sighting of a wolverine in the same area in 1871.

“This is favorable habitat,” he said. “I can’t prove it, but I'm arguing this is a family unit that's taken over that area.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"So, How Many?"}]

Then there’s the debate over just how many wolverines are in Yellowstone.

The “old park estimate,” according to Halfpenny, was six individuals. After decades of research and verifiable evidence, Halfpenny says the actual number is “much higher.”

[{"type":"text","text":"However, that doesn’t make it any easier to give a hard number."}]

“Yellowstone is 3,400 square miles, and the ecosystem is 23,000 square miles,” he said. “You want me to tell you how many secretive, elusive, 3-foot-long creatures there are in that area? Yeah, thanks.”

Nonetheless, Halfpenny has a number: 83 verified wolverines between 1990 and 2026, and at least 31 individuals verified in Yellowstone in the last five years.

“No question,” he said. “I have the evidence. I have 83 absolute verified wolverines.”

Halfpenny is so confident in his estimate because he and his colleagues are able to identify wolverines individually based on their appearance. 

Everything from a wolverine’s ears, cheeks, and tail to its movement and coloration can be ascribed to an individual known from photos, trail cams, or DNA analysis.

That’s led Halfpenny to believe, with “no question,” that Yellowstone’s wolverine population is increasing, all based on verifiable evidence.  

“If we sit down and look over the years at the number of positive verifications, starting back in 2015, what you see is the numbers increasing,” he said. “It’s more than just cellphones. A lot of these we had in hand, either dead, collared, or anesthetized.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"'Shoot, Shoot, Shoot'"}]

Over time, Halfpenny and his colleagues have developed an understanding of the biology, ecology, and geographic range of wolverines, leading to a better assessment of their population health and conservation status.

Nobody’s trapping or radio-collaring wolverines anymore, and CyberTracker has been obsolete for decades, he said. 

The key to the scientific verification of wolverine verification in Yellowstone is in the hands of citizen scientists.

As smartphones became more widespread in the late 2000s, the number of wolverine sightings in Yellowstone increased.

Halfpenny has used amateur photographers of wolverines to build his scientific case for the growing population of wolverines.

“These excellent photos and videos have characteristics we can recognize,” he said.

Yellowstone visitors don’t have to venture too long before having a chance sighting of bison, elk, grizzlies, or wolves without leaving their vehicle. 

If they want a guaranteed sighting of these animals, there are certain hotspots where they have a higher chance.

“Where can I find a wolverine in Yellowstone? They are where they find you,” Halfpenny said.

On a practical level, wolverines seem to favor the northeast and southeast corners of the park, as it appears to be their ideal habitat.

It’s much easier to find wolverine tracks, especially in the snow. That’s why Halfpenny says every Yellowstone visitor should carry a 6-inch ruler with them.

“(If) you find a track, get a ruler in there,” he said. “Don't put a hand. Don't put a foot. Don't put a $1 bill. We need something solid with exact measurements. Even a comb or a pen is better. Hands don’t count.”

Regardless, Halfpenny wants any and all photos and videos of wolverines in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.

That, he said, is the next chapter of “the wolverine story” and why he encouraged anyone with a smartphone or camera to “shoot, shoot, shoot.”

“We need positive evidence of wolverines, and all the reports I've talked about tonight come from positive, verified evidence,” he said. “Photos are cheap. Electrons are cheap. So, shoot, shoot, shoot and send (your photos) to me.”

Wolverine in Yellowstone 12 8 23

<title>Biologist Says There Are Dozens More Verified Wolverines In Yellowstone Than Reported | Cowboy State Daily</title>

A prominent biologist with 50 years of research says there are dozens more confirmed wolverines in Yellowstone than are reported by the National Park Service. He says there at least 31 verified wolverines in the last five years and 83 since 1990.

Biologist Says There Are Dozens More Verified Wolverines In Yellowstone Than Reported

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily reporter, Dale Killingbeck

Dale Killingbeck

Wyoming Life

Around Wyoming

For a man in the 1950s, the little 10-by-13-foot wooden jail house in Kaycee, Wyoming, that held some of the West’s most notorious outlaws proved to be an escape from the law.

In the jail was the last place he figured anyone would look for someone trying not to get caught.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"It was not always that way."}]

Laurel Foster, director of the Hoofprints of the Past Museum in Kaycee, said the wooden jail that served the area well during the years of the Hole-in-The-Wall Gang and and other Western outlaws was built to keep the bad guys from breaking out.

The jail now sits behind the museum next to a wooden schoolhouse that once served as Johnson County Deputy Sheriff Leonard Beard’s home. 

It was Beard who who enforced the law there from the late 1890s until his resignation halfway into the next century.

“He was known as being a very tough character and very good at his job,” Foster said. “He actually chased down a lot of rough outlaws. He captured some of them. 

"Tom O’Day was one of them he chased in pursuit (as well as) Kid Curry.”

The jail was built with 41 layers of 2-by-6-inch boards that were laid flat to make up the walls of a jail that was outlaw resistant from the inside and out due to knives or other instruments trying to whittle holes in the building.

Foster, a native of Kaycee, said the jail would have been used to house more significant prisoners for a short time before they could be transported to the Johnson County jail in Buffalo.

The interior of the jail has a hole in the ceiling for a stove and the museum now displays it with a small bed to one side.

Foster said Beard used five kegs of nails to put together his jail.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A Full House"}]

According to local historian J. Elmer Brock who collected oral histories and other material that was part of the 1982 book “Our Powder River Heritage," the little jail on one occasion was filled to capacity.

“He wrote that at one time there were 13 people thrown in there after they were drinking too much and being too rowdy,” Foster said, noting how small the tiny jailhouse was. “The last one was thrown on top.”

In his account of Leonard, Brock, who lived and ranched in the area during Leonard’s tenure, called the deputy “a man with unlimited courage.”

He dealt with Hole-In-The-Wall outlaws and others when the growing community, businesses were starting — and recovering from the impact of the 

Brock wrote of Leonard arresting a man named Razor Dick Hale who had a $1,000 bounty on his head. 

The lawman shot the outlaw’s horse and Hale in the arm. The outlaw never made it to the jail because while trying to get a vehicle to transport the wounded prisoner, he escaped.

The Natrona County Tribune on Sept. 11, 1902, reported about Johnson County Sheriff Kennedy returning from a chase after Hale.

“Mr. Kennedy has a close call in Powder River canyon being kicked by a horse, thrown down and being rolled over by another horse until he saw stars by the millions,” the newspaper reported.

Beard also chased Wild Bunch outlaws associated with the Wilcox train robbery in 1899, getting in a shootout that left one outlaw wounded as well as Beard’s horse.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Stolen Horses"}]

During an encounter with noted outlaw Tom O’Day and another character named Earl Shobe, Beard caught them with several stolen horses from South Dakota.

“He shot it out with them and took the horses, and the men’s pack horse as well,” Brock wrote. “O’Day later said that, ‘Beard’s bullet cut off a lock of my hair.’”

According to Brock, Beard’s jail housed several rough criminals and was the scene of just one escape.

The schoolhouse that sits next to the jail at the museum has a history with Beard as well.

The deputy lived in the building, but whether that was after it was moved to town or before is not clear. 

The building was the first home on the Kaltenbach family homestead, Foster said. 

After the family built a more substantial home it was moved to into the town area and, according to Brock who wrote his article, in the 1950s had a trap door built in it and a tunnel to a gulch.

Kaltenbach had no knowledge of the trap door.

Brock speculated that it likely was there to give him an edge on any criminals trying to ambush him.

The building also saw use as a school in addition to a stint as city hall.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Sheep-Shearer"}]

In 1903, the jail was likely overnight housing to a Dr. Norris Potts, who reportedly shot and killed a sheep-shearer outside a Kaycee bar in May 1903.

“Early last Monday morning a telephone message from Kaycee announced that a sheep-shearer known as Box-car Jackson had been shot and instantly killed in Jack Toddy’s saloon during the previous night,” the Savannah Democrat in Missouri published on May 29, 1903. 

“Potts had been on a drunken spree at Kaycee for some two or three weeks and was very boisterous and disagreeable,” the account reported.

Jackson had been shot through the chest and was unarmed. 

The newspaper, reprinting a Buffalo Voice story, stated that the doctor was arrested by the deputy sheriff in Kaycee. Potts had been brought to Buffalo and denied that he had shot Jackson.

“So far as The Voice has been able to learn, the doctor has always born a good reputation,” the newspaper reported. “Samuel Jackson, the murdered man, was about 45 years of age and has been engaged in sheep-shearing and ranch work in this country for the past three years.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Drunken Bartender"}]

Foster recounted another story about the jail and how Jack Toddy himself apparently became too drunk and unruly one night and Leonard put him in jail.

“The next day he was yelling and yelling for someone to come that he was thirsty,” Foster said. “Apparently, it was unlocked and he could have walked out an anytime.”

For those who were locked in, the jailer used a strong iron bar that was positioned across the front of the door along with a lock to secure prisoners inside.

Beard left his role with the county in 1905. 

An article in the July 8, 1905, Buffalo Bulletin said the lawman had put in his resignation and was headed to Oklahoma.

“Deputy Beard has made a good officer and his resignation will be regretted by the people generally,” the newspaper reported.

A more modern story associated with the jail involves a man who robbed a saloon and grocery store somewhere outside of Kaycee in 1950. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"The thief then made a beeline for town."}]

Foster said the story was not clear where the thief came from.

“They just came up here and hid out in the jail for several days,” she said. “It depends on the time of year, I guess, but I don’t know the timing. 

"I don’t know if it would be in a newspaper or if it was just one of those things and nobody wrote it down.”

In his account of the story, Brock characterized the thief as “living the ‘Life of Riley’” for a few days, alluding to an old TV comedy show from the 1950s. 

“When finally discovered and taken to the county jail in Buffalo, the man complained bitterly, claiming he much preferred the Kaycee jail and its stock of drinking whiskey and food,” Brock wrote.

The jail was sold in 1952 and moved to the museum location in the 1990s, Foster said. It originally sat on Nolan Street just more than a block north of the museum’s location.

Kaycee Jail Inset and Interior 7 19 26

<title>Wyoming History: How A Thief Once Tried To Hide From The Law In The Kaycee Jail | Cowboy State Daily</title>

The 125-year-old jail in Kaycee, Wyoming, once housed outlaws from the Wild Bunch era It was also where a thief hid from the law for several days. In the jail was the last place he figured anyone would look for someone trying not to get caught.

Wyoming History: How A Thief Once Tried To Hide From The Law In The Kaycee Jail

Zakary Sonntag

Jen Kocher - Headshot CSD

Jen Kocher

Crime & Courts

FREMONT LAKE — High up on the western flank of the Wind River Range in a pontoon boat at an elevation of 7,400 feet, Bill Dohse is searching for dead bodies encased in old barrels on the stark black bottom of the state's deepest lake.

He’s got top technology, a determined team — and a fat chance.

Dohse, president of the nonprofit Organized Search and Rescue (OSAR), is looking for the bodies of Virginia Uden and her two sons — Richard, 11, and Reagan, 10 — who were murdered in 1980 by her ex-husband, Gerald Uden.

Uden claims he put their corpses in barrels and sank them here at Fremont Lake. The problem is he’s claimed a lot of things, and they haven't all added up.

“A lot of people say Uden’s full of BS, and he's just playing games,” said Dohse, a sun-browned man with a buzzcut, looking out on the glassy morning surface of Fremont Lake this past week.

“But our new technology is superior, and I’m hopeful we'll find what we’re after,” he added.

It’s day one of a privately funded mission dubbed Operation Cold Current, the first major search effort for the Uden bodies in more than a decade. Depending who you ask, it may be the biggest fool’s errand in as many years, too.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"‘I Think I’ve Got Something Here'"}]

Previous searches produced nothing save major costs and frustrations as dark as the lake itself, which with a maximum depth of 610 feet is known by locals as “The Deep.” 

Officials were certain the killer had put them on a goose chase. But Dohse’s intuition has been blaring like a smoke detector that won’t shut off. 

Lo and behold, it suddenly looks as though that gut feeling is dead on.

“Guys, I think I’ve got something here,” said Carter Sinclair, the mission’s drone operator, eyeing a blip on the sonar readout coming from a remote operated vehicle (ROV) on the lakebed below. “It’s about the right size. Let’s go take a look.”

There it is, 388 feet deep: a ribbed and rusted oil drum.

Dohse’s face went slack when he saw the image on the ROV’s controller screen.

Short of breath, sounding both amazed and afraid, his response seemed to channel nearly half a century of wondering.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"“You're f***ing shitting me,” he said."}]

Within the hour, members of Sublette County Sheriff’s Office Tip Top Search and Rescue (TTSAR) were racing across the lake. 

Just like that, a decades-old missing persons case was shocked back to life. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"What Happened In 1980?"}]

The murders of Virginia, Richard and Reagan went unsolved for more than three decades until investigators finally got the lead they needed in 2013. 

Uden testified that he shot his ex-wife and adopted children in their heads with a rifle on Sept. 12, 1980, at a rural crossroads near Pavilion, Wyoming, where he’d lured them under the pretext of going on a hunting trip.

“Richard was standing beside the tailgate of the station wagon, and I shot him behind the ear,” Uden confessed in court in 2013, adding that he shot 10-year-old Reagan behind the ear as well, Cowboy State Daily 

"That took approximately 10 seconds. Reagan saw what was happening, and he ran, and he tripped and he fell in the ditch,” he added.

His reasons for the killings were that Virginia and the boys had become a nuisance in his subsequent marriage to Alice Uden, a woman of kindredly morbid regard. Alice was later found guilty for the murder of her previous husband, Ron Holtz, who she’d killed before meeting Uden. 

Uden said he concealed the bodies of Virginia and the boys in a nearby mine until postmortem gasses dissipated. 

He claims that he then transferred them to barrels, Virginia in a 55-gallon drum and the two boys together in a larger galvanized trash canister. The drums were sealed and punctured with bullet holes to ensure they’d sink in water.

Yet subsequent sonar-based search efforts in 2013 and again in 2014 turned up nothing.

“I thought he was full of shit,” said John Linn, water search team leader at Sublette County TTSAR. “The barrels were definitely not where he said they were.”

Once onboard the OSAR vessel this past week, however, with a live image of a corroded drum before him on the lakebed, Linn is rethinking a lot.

Triple-murderer Gerald Uden says he put the bodies of his 1980 murder victims in barrels and sunk them in Fremont Lake, Wyoming's deepest. Officials were skeptical — until they found a barrel 388-feet deep last week. “You're shi**ing me!” a searcher said.

Daily Cartoon: Wednesday, April 19, 2023

Michael P. Ramirez

Cartoonist

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