One More For The Road

[{"type":"text","text":"Ladies and gentlemen, the world's fastest garbage can..."}]

One more for the road 5 5 23

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

<title>One More For The Road: Friday, May 5, 2023 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Ladies and gentlemen, the world's fastest garbage can...

One More For The Road: Friday, May 5, 2023

 Ladies and gentlemen, the world's fastest garbage can...

Heinz mark

Mark Heinz

Wildlife

A wildlife rescue hospital on the fringe of the Denver metro area’s urban sprawl is accustomed to taking on tough cases. A young red fox with a severely broken leg is among the latest.

Rocky Mountain Wildlife Alliance’s critter hospital in Sedalia, Colorado, has taken in 627 patients so far this year, founder and executive director Emily Davenport told Cowboy State Daily.

This spring, the center treated a bald eagle 

, after eating a carcass with bullet fragments in it.

June and July are typically the busiest time of year, with roughly 200 animals per month arriving. Roughly one-third have suffered injuries from vehicle collisions or some other sort of physical trauma, she said.

The young fox (or kit) was likely born in April and was brought in June 6, Davenport said. The kit is believed to have been struck by a vehicle at a remote county road intersection near the small prairie town of Elbert, Colorado.  

At the hospital, he joined a coyote pup recovering from head trauma after being hit by a vehicle, a red-tailed hawk that suffered bone fractures in a vehicle strike, and many others.

“We’ve had 110 different species in this year. That’s a 26% increase in the number of species over last year,” Davenport said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Little Fella, Big Surgery"}]

Davenport runs the center with the philosophy of returning wildlife to the wild whenever possible. She likes to give every animal a chance, even against long odds.

The fox kit was such a case. He had severe bone fractures in his right front leg.

An orthopedic surgeon was brought in to realign the bones and install a metal plate to keep them in place. The center raided enough money through donations to pay for the surgery.

“The surgery went well and there were no issues. He was standing on the leg the day after the surgery,” Davenport said.

“We take on some of the more difficult cases, where other shelters might euthanize (the injured animals,” she added.

But she sees it as a matter of doing right by wildlife.

Some might argue for “nature taking its course” with injured animals, and Davenport understands that, when the circumstances are natural.

“I’m a big believer that it’s not nature taking its course if an animal is hit by a car or bird flies into a window. That’s human-caused,” she said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"‘A Pretty Good Plan’"}]

The plan is to keep the little fox at the center until late August or early September, helping it to learn how to hunt and then turn it back loose in the wild, Davenport said.

Biologist Robert Crabtree told Cowboy State Daily he thinks the fox has good chances of survival.

“It it’s a pretty good plan. The fox should be fine, as long as it’s learned to hunt on its own,” said Crabtree, the founder, chief scientist and president of the Yellowstone Ecological Research Center in Bozeman, Montana.

Canines such as wolves are on the “social end of the spectrum” and are raised into supportive packs, he said.

Foxes are on the “more solitary end of the canine spectrum, he said.

However, they typically mate for life and “dad is involved” in helping to raise the kits, he said.

Kits typically disperse on their own in September, Crabtree said.

There might be one, usually a female, that still hangs around with the parents.

“There is often a helper, that helps mom at the fox den,” he said.

Retired biologist Franz Camenzind of Jackson also gave the fox kit good chances of returning to the wild on his own.

“If it’s physically all good, it should have a good chance, said Camenzind, who studied coyote behavior in and around the National Elk Refuge near Jackson.

Foxes also adapt fairly well to human development, so long as they can find natural food sources, such as mice, and stay out of trouble, he said.

“If there is a group that’s trying to heal an animal like a fox and put it back into the wild, I would certainly encourage it,” he said.

Davenport said foxes play a vital role in the ecosystem and can be beneficial to humans.

“Not only are they cute to boot, they serve a really important ecosystem function with pest control,” by devouring mice and voles, she said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Urban Sprawl"}]

Davenport doesn’t expect business at the wildlife hospital to slow down anytime soon.

The Denver Metro area is growing, with no end in sight.

“As the human environment expands, we’re seeing more and more conflict with wildlife,” she said.

There are “lots of massive housing developments bringing changes that animals can’t adapt to quickly," she said.

Sedalia is nestled in the foothills of the Rocky Mountain front and has so far escaped the worst of it, and Davenport hopes it stays that way.

"We’re in this amazing little rural pocket surrounded by the Denver metro area,” she said.

Rocky Mountain Wildlife Alliance 685362380 959399060172653 9117888975218967458 n 6 27 26

<title>Urban Sprawl Is Flooding Wildlife Rehab Center With Eagles, Foxes and Coyotes | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Amid Denver's urban sprawl, Rocky Mountain Wildlife Alliance is rescuing a fast-growing number of injured animals. The animal hospital has taken in 627 patients this year with roughly one-third having suffered injuries from vehicle collisions.

Urban Sprawl Is Flooding Wildlife Rehab Center With Eagles, Foxes and Coyotes

Outdoors

Hunting

Many hunters would be happy shooting just one buck pronghorn big enough to make the Boone and Crockett Club record books. Larry Hicks of Baggs has bagged 16, including 14 from Wyoming.

The key was figuring out how to consistently and accurately “field judge” whether a buck is one for the books, he told Cowboy State Daily.

In other words, he had to tell by looking at pronghorn, commonly called antelope, through binoculars or spotting scopes, and then decided on sight which bucks had trophy-class horns.

“After 20 years of trying, I finally got to the point where I cracked the code” for spotting record book antelope, he said.

Hicks’ accomplishment is phenomenal, prominent outdoorsman Guy Eastman of Cody told Cowboy State Daily.

“He’s got everybody I know beat,” said Eastman, who represents the third generation of the famous outdoor multimedia family that launched Eastman's Hunting Journal, along with a television show and YouTube channel.

Hicks, who serves as a Republican Wyoming state senator, regards antelope as a Wyoming icon.

“We so under-value antelope,” he said. “We are tremendously blessed in Wyoming."

Antelope live in several Western and Southwestern states, but Wyoming has the most abundant populations. So, there’s plenty hunting opportunity here, Hicks said.

Moreover, antelope hunting is highly accessible. It doesn’t require the expensive gear, time and physical effort of backcountry elk hunting, he said.

“If you’ve got a two-wheel-drive pickup and a .30-06 with a four-power Weaver scope on it, you can go antelope hunting,” he said.

And while the absolutely huge monster bucks come from New Mexico and Arizona, the sheer number of antelope in Wyoming means there are more trophy-sized bucks by volume here, Eastman said.

“Statistically, Wyoming is the best place to kill a Boone and Crockett (B&C) record book antelope buck,” he said.

"If you remove New Mexico from the list, we have more B&C antelope bucks than all the other states combined,” Eastman said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"By The Numbers"}]

The B&C record books are considered the gold standard for fair-chase trophy hunting.

Animals are scored by inches. For antlered or horned game, scores are compiled from numerous length and circumference measurements taken at different spots on the horns or antler racks.

For antelope, that includes measurements of the horns’ overall length, plus circumference at four spots on each horn. 

Also taken into account is the size of the prong protruding from the front of each horn — for which the species is formally named.

Green score, gross score and net score are also terms to bear in mind.

Green score refers to initial measurements taken right after the animal is killed, and the horns might still contain some moisture. 

An official score can’t be taken until after a mandatory 90-day drying period, during which there might be some shrinkage.

The gross score is the compilation of all the measurements after the drying period. What really counts is the net score, which is calculated after deductions are made for any asymmetry in the horns.

B&C has awards record books, which are issued every few years, and then the all-time records book.

An antelope’s net score must be 80 inches to qualify for the awards records, and 82 inches for the all-time records.

Hicks’ trophy antelope so far include three awards record bucks and 13 all-time record bucks.

His largest buck so far scored 87 inches net, 88 inches gross. He shot it in Carbon County in 1999.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"‘The Golden Square’"}]

While antelope can be found just about anywhere in Wyoming, the best place to find B&C trophy bucks is in the “golden square” at the heart of the Red Desert country in Carbon, Sweetwater and Natrona counties, Hicks said.

It’s thought that about 90% of a buck’s horn growth takes place during their first three years. Bucks have to be roughly 5 years old before they start to hit true trophy sized, Hicks said.

The peak years for antelope in Wyoming were from about 2000 to 2008, he said. There were several mild winters during that period.

However, a harsh winter during the last year of that streak knocked the herd back, he said.

An absolutely brutal winter hit the heart of Wyoming’s antelope country in 2022-2023. That sent trophy buck numbers plummeting, Hicks said.

The herds are still in recovery mode, and although there aren’t as many bucks that are old enough yet to be huge, “they’re out there,” he said.

Eastman agreed that overall numbers are down. This past mild winter, however, with abundant food for antelope probably contributed to robust horn growth.

Buck antelope shed the black outer sheath of their horns in October and November, and they grow back over the winter, Eastman said.

“The numbers might be down, but I think the quality of the bigger bucks this fall is going to be nuts,” he said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Mass Matters"}]

To the untrained eye, a buck’s trophy quality might be all about the length of the horns, Hicks said.

When it comes to judging horn length in the field, consider that the top of a buck’s ears is about 7 inches, he said.

So, a buck that has as much horn above the tips of his ears as below them might be entering trophy territory, Hicks said.

But those circumference measurements, or mass of the horns, it what really adds up, he said.

That can be devilishly difficult to judge in the field, Hicks added. A quarter-inch at each of the four circumference points on a buck’s horns can add an additional 2 inches to the score.

However, “trying to determine a quarter-inch difference through binoculars at 400 yards is extremely hard,” Hicks said.

“I tell novice hunters to look for a lot of black,” he said. Or in other words, signs of real mass in the horns. “Our antelope in Wyoming tend to have shorter antlers, and more mass."

As are as horn length in Wyoming goes, “16 inches is rare, 17 inches is really rare, and 18 inches is unheard of,” Hicks said.

Extremely mild winters with plentiful feed are what produces world-record setting monster antelope bucks in Arizona and New Mexico, Eastman said.

“There was a movement at one time to recognize them as their own subspecies, because they’re so ridiculously huge,” Eastman said. "Their horns will be 18, maybe 19 inches long, they’re just insane.”

The biggest antelope of all time came from the southwest and was in the neighborhood of 97 or 98 inches, Eastman said.

“As far as I know, no antelope has ever broken 100 inches, but they’ve come close,” he said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Wyoming Antelope Are Tough"}]

Even so, Wyoming’s antelope have bigger bodies than their southwestern counterparts, Eastman said.

“Our bucks are big, horse-headed animals built for the winters," he said.

Wyoming antelope can survive conditions ranging from 50 degrees below zero in the winter, to over 100 degrees at the height of summer, he said.

“Pound-for-pound, they are the toughest animals in North America, in my opinion,” Eastman said.

Hicks said antelope are perhaps his favorite animals. Even when it’s not hunting season, he loves watching them.

“I invented distracted driving,” he said. “I’ve probably spotted 100 or more B&C trophy book-class Wyoming antelope bucks, just alongside the highways.”

Antelope meat gets a bad rap, but Hicks thinks that’s unfair.

The key is to “make a clean kill” and get the meat cooled off as soon as possible.

“If it’s a really hot day, I’ll get the meat off the bone and into a cooler right away,” he said.

When it’s handled correctly, antelope is some of the best wild game there is, Hicks said.

And he still hopes to add to his collection of record-book bucks.

“The good Lord willing, and the Wyoming Game and Fish Department still providing the opportunity, I’m going to hunt antelope until the day that I can’t walk out of the house,” he said.

Larry Hicks Antelope 4 6 27 26

<title>Wyoming Hunting: Larry Hicks Is King Of Trophy Antelope With 16 Record-Book Bucks | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Larry Hicks of Baggs has bagged 16 record-book trophy antelope bucks, including 14 in Wyoming. “After 20 years of trying, I finally got to the point where I cracked the code for spotting record book antelope," Hicks said.

Wyoming Hunting: Larry Hicks Is King Of Trophy Antelope With 16 Record-Book Bucks

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

Andrew Rossi

Around Wyoming

The Fry family lost their 14-year-old corgi Lola on May 16. She was wandering near her home along Wyoming Highway 50 south of Gillette when she disappeared without a trace.

Nearly a month later, Lola turned up in a Facebook Classified post in Wisconsin, more than 1,000 miles away.

“I got a call at 8:15 a.m. and just cried," Kimberly Fry told Cowboy State Daily. “By 10 a.m., my husband, dad, and a family friend were on the road and drove all night to get her from Wisconsin.”

Lola is frazzled and lost a little weight after her strange journey, but is doing fine otherwise. Fry’s children, 7 and 3, were overjoyed to have the family dog back home.

Nevertheless, Fry is still trying to parse out what happened. She believes her corgi was stolen and abandoned by the people who stole her, making their reunion a miracle.

“You try not to give up faith,” she said. “After a month of hell, it’s very surreal to have her back.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"'My Newspaper Dog'"}]

 but she’s a bit of a handful in her old age. After all, she’s at least 98 years old in dog years.

“She’s deaf, her back leg shakes because of a partially torn ACL, and she’s on a sensitive dog food diet because of heart issues,” Fry said. “But she’s the sweetest thing ever.”

Fry called her corgi “my newspaper dog” because that’s how she 

 found her. It’s a reminder of just how old she is.

“Someone put an ad in the newspaper that they had puppies for $150,” she said. “We don’t really have newspapers anymore.”

Lola’s routine has been spending most of her time outdoors on the family ranch. Fry said she hangs out with the sheep, horses and chickens, and has been happy “doing her thing” for years.

Then, in her old age, Lola suddenly started to “see people,” as Fry put it.

“Two years ago, she decided she was lonely and walked a mile to visit the neighbors and their cats,” she said. “She’s just a friendly old dog.”

That’s why the Fry family wasn’t immediately concerned when Lola wasn’t home one night. It was the first night of an agonizing ordeal for the family.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Lola Lost"}]

On the morning of Saturday, May 16, Fry’s 

-year-old daughter was taking Lola to her kennel when the dog slipped out of her collar.

“It's common for ranch people to have their dogs' collars pretty loose,” Fry said. “She made it into the kennel but without her collar.”

With Lola in her kennel, the family went into town at 1 p.m. When they returned home at 2 p.m., Lola was gone – the kennel’s door hadn’t been fully shut.

Nobody panicked. They figured Lola was off visiting someone and would be back soon. It was only when it got dark that the family started getting worried.

“My husband looked a little that night, but there was no sign of her,” Fry said. “We figured she’d be back tomorrow. She never came back.”

By Monday, the Frys figured someone must have taken Lola to the pound. When they called that morning, Lola wasn’t there.

That’s when, according to Fry, “the real panic started.” She started posting about Lola in every Facebook group she could, asking for any sign of her missing corgi.

“On Tuesday, we searched with a lady who had a tracking dog,” Fry said. “We found that she had gone to the neighbors, and someone had seen her near the highway on Sunday.”

On Wednesday, they searched with another tracking dog, thermal scopes, and a drone. No sign of Lola.

Fry feared the worst, but the evidence didn’t add up. That was simultaneously hopeful and dreadful.

“If she had passed away, the tracking dogs would have smelt her,” she said. “We were set on (the explanation) that someone had picked her up.”

If so, they weren’t reaching out. Fry tearfully recalled the long wait for any information.

[{"type":"text","text":"“You never want to give up,” she said."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"'I Have Your Dog'"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"One week. Two weeks. Three weeks."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Still no sign of Lola."}]

Both of Fry’s children celebrated their birthdays without their corgi. Fry gave herself an emotional break from posting about Lola, but started again in mid-June.

[{"type":"text","text":"On June 14, Fry got a call. It was a woman from Wisconsin."}]

“She said, ‘I have your dog,’ and I just started bawling,” Fry said. “I asked if she was sure, because we had a couple of people reaching out trying to help, and she said, ‘Yes, I have your dog'.”

The Wisconsin woman had acquired Lola via Facebook Marketplace. Someone was trying to give Lola away, for free, to anyone who’d take her.

According to Fry, the woman who picked up Lola got some details from the people who had her. It was a young couple who apparently picked up Lola while moving from Wyoming to Wisconsin.

“They saw her on the side of the road and picked her up,” she said. “They just took her.”

The couple said they tried asking someone nearby if they knew who Lola belonged to before taking her. They claimed they weren’t aware she was missing and desperately wanted back.

The woman wasn’t aware Lola was missing either, but Fry said she had “the gut intuition” to check.

“She was going to pick Lola up because she wanted to be the free home, and was OK getting an old dog,” Fry said. “But she had a gut intuition to look into it, she searched Facebook and found us right away.”

Lola made it home at 7:30 a.m. June 19. She was tired, flustered, and had lost a little weight, but quickly settled in when she realized she was where she belonged.

“We’ve taken her to the vet, and everything’s good, all considering,” Fry said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Jumped And Dumped"}]

Lola’s back, but Fry is still trying to determine what happened to her dog. The circumstances have left her upset and angry.

The couple who picked up Lola claimed they had no idea anyone was looking for her. Fry doesn’t believe it.

“I had missing posters all over Facebook and at every veterinarian in the area,” she said. “I posted in the In Search of Missing Dog group on Facebook. I called the police and the sheriff’s department. I contacted every pound in the state.”

Assuming they didn’t know, their decision to give her away for free on Facebook Marketplace is, for Fry, telling.

“She has issues, and she was probably puking because she didn’t have her special dog food,” she said. “I feel like (the couple) decided she was more work than they wanted, and they put her up for free.”

Fry said if the couple had made a point of checking whether anyone in the Gillette area was missing a corgi, they could have easily found and contacted her, and gotten Lola back much sooner.

[{"type":"text","text":"Instead, they took the dog to Wisconsin and gave her away."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"“I don’t believe they even tried to find me,” Fry said."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Almost The 7%"}]

Getting Lola back was an emotional moment for Fry. The moment of full emotional catharsis is when Lola was reunited with her children.

“They were with their grandparents that week,” she said. “We kept it as a surprise for them.”

After a month of “sleepless nights,” Fry is resting easy now that Lola is finally home. She’s been reunited with her $150 newspaper dog thanks to a “For Free” post on Facebook.

“She’s old and has had a rough, rough month,” she said. “In the research that I've done, there is a 93% chance you'll get your dog back. I was almost in the 7%, and had it not been for this lady who had that intuition to look, I would have been in the 7%. It’s surreal.”

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<title>Hooray! Desperate Search For 14-Year-Old Gillette Dog Has Happy Ending In Wisconsin | Cowboy State Daily</title>

When Gillette's Kimberly Fry got a phone call at 8:15 a.m. that someone had found their 14-year-old corgi in Wisconsin, she started crying. An hour later, her family was on the road and drove more than 1,000 miles straight to get their rescued dog.

Hooray! Desperate Search For 14-Year-Old Gillette Dog Has Happy Ending In Wisconsin

Jen kocher

Jen Kocher

Law Enforcement

Authorities are working to unravel the mysterious deaths of a man and woman who were found in Laramie County earlier this year within three months of one another in unrelated incidents.

The first, a woman thought to be between 30 and 50 years old, was struck by a vehicle and killed on the side of Interstate 25 outside Cheyenne in late April.

The second is an unknown man found near a commercial building on South Greeley Avenue earlier this month.

Both deaths are under investigation, pending autopsy results from the Laramie County Coroner’s Office.

The fatalities were not publicly announced by authorities, but instead entered into the National Unidentified Persons System — known as NamUs — which is the country’s only centralized database for tracking missing and unidentified persons.

Although anyone with an account can enter missing people into the database, only law enforcement and those with coroners' offices can add unidentified people.

For both, distinctive tattoos could help investigators track down who they are.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Potential Assist"}]

Twin genealogists are working to identify a John and Jane Doe found two months apart in Cheyenne earlier this year. “They don’t have a voice,” the sisters said, “but their distinctive tattoos could help investigators track down who they are.”

One More For The Road: Friday, May 5, 2023

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