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

<title>Daily Darwin: Sunday, August 13, 2023 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Attention International Darwin Awards Selection Committee: We have a winner....

Daily Darwin: Sunday, August 13, 2023

 Attention International Darwin Awards Selection Committee: We have a winner...

Heinz mark

Mark Heinz

Fishing

Upper Sunshine Reservoir near Meeteetse is popular with local anglers, particularly for ice fishing, but the reservoir is being drained so fishing there won't be an option for two years.

The Greybull Valley Irrigation District is draining the reservoir “to perform critical irrigation infrastructure repairs,” according to the Wyoming Game and Fish Department.

Upper Sunshine is expected to be completely drained by Sept. 1, so engineers can inspect infrastructure and determine what repairs are needed.

It will start refilling Oct. 1 but will be drained again in 2027 for the repair work. Repairs are scheduled for completion by April 2028.

“Game and Fish will not stock the small pool that will form during the 2026-2027 period, as it will be drained again in the fall of 2027. Stocking to rebuild the fishery will resume in the fall of 2028, once repairs are completed and water levels stabilize,” according to the agency.

Dalton Epperson of Cody and his friend Tyler Geving of Meeteetse have fished at Upper and Lower Sunshine reservoirs for years.

Upper Sunshine is primarily for ice fishing, they said.

“It’s usually the first thing that’s frozen” in the area, Epperson said.

Upper Sunshine doesn’t have much fish variety, he added.

“It’s all suckers and cutthroats,” he said.

Meat from the suckers makes good lake trout bait, he said.

Because this past winter was so dry, Upper Sunshine Reservoir wasn’t in the best shape anyway, Geving said.

“It was pretty low during ice fishing season,” he said.

Even so, with plentiful fish and easy access, it’s remained popular, Geving said.

“Upper Sunshine is a good starter lake. It’s a good place to take somebody and teach them ice fishing because you can catch 14- and 15-inch cutthroat all day long,” he said.

The reservoirs are the site of an ice fishing derby during the first week of February.

Epperson said Upper and Lower Sunshine are go-too fishing spots for Park County locals because they're about 40 minutes from Cody.

And from Meeteetse, “locals can be there in about 10 minutes and have their boats on the water,” he added.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Long-Term Goals"}]

While the drainages and construction will tank fishing at Upper Sunshine Reservoir in the short term, the repair work should have lasting benefits for the fishery, according to Game and Fish.

“Recent sampling has indicated reduced growth rates in stocked Yellowstone cutthroat trout, likely due to an overabundance of longnose suckers competing for resources, and the drawdown will significantly reduce the sucker population,” Cody regional fisheries biologist Jason Burckhardt said in a statement from the agency.

Refilling the reservoir will release “a surplus of nutrients” from plants and soil, he added.

That will boost plankton production, so trout should grow faster and bigger, Burkhardt said.

While Upper Sunshine Reservoir is down, anglers can turn their attention to Lower Sunshine Reservoir and other waters in the region.

Some of those include Boysen Reservoir south of Thermopolis, Buffalo Bill Reservoir west of Cody, and Meadowlark Lake in the Bighorn Mountains.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Let’s Go Splake Fishing"}]

Epperson and Geving said draining Upper Sunshine Reservoir will put a pinch on their local angling opportunities. But they understand the work has to be done, and there’s no shortage of other places to fish.

“I know they’ve got to upgrade stuff and keep things fixed, to keep the reservoirs running right,” Geving said. “And Lower Sunshine is more fun to fish because it’s got lake trout and splake, and bigger fish.” 

Splake are a sterile hybrid species popular among Wyoming anglers. They’re produced in Game and Fish hatcheries by crossing male brook trout with female lake trout.

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<title>Upper Sunshine Reservoir Near Meeteetse Drained, No More Fishing For Two years | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Upper Sunshine Reservoir near Meeteetse is popular with local anglers, particularly for ice fishing, but the reservoir is being drained, so there won’t be any fishing there for two years. It’s expected to be completely drained by Sept. 1.

Upper Sunshine Reservoir Near Meeteetse Drained, No More Fishing For Two years

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's business and tourism reporter, Renée Jean

Renée Jean

Wyoming Life

A 1955 Walt Disney movie about Davy Crockett fired the imagination of a German orphan growing up in Cheyenne, sparking a lifelong fascination with the American West. Eventually that love, born in Wyoming, would carry Paul Andrew Hutton to the New York Times bestseller list — and now to one of Western literature’s highest honors, the Owen Wister Award. 

Named for Owen Wister, author of “The Virginian,” widely considered the father of the modern American Western novel, the award is given by the Western Writers of America for lifetime achievement. 

Winning the award puts Hutton in the company of Wyoming writers such as Craig Johnson, who 

, and the Cody-based writing duo W. Michael Gear and Kathleen O’Neal, who won it in 2021.

Hutton now lives in Cody, which he told Cowboy State Daily is his favorite American town, first and foremost because it’s the hometown of a Western figure he admires, Buffalo Bill Cody. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Pioneer Melting Pot"}]

Cody is one of seven out-sized figures whose biographies became the foundation for Hutton’s latest book, the New York Times bestseller “The Undiscovered Country: Triumph, Tragedy, and the Shaping of the American West”, released in August 2025. 

The others are Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, Red Eagle, Mangas Coloradas, Kit Carson and Sitting Bull.

“I feel biography is a great way to approach history,” Hutton said. “The travails of humans in their lifetime I think appeals to a broad audience. When you learn that, gee, Kit Carson had a lot of the same problems I had, it really makes them living and breathing. 

“And that’s what I wanted to do in the book. I wanted to show Americans how our country was shaped by the Western movement. How it shaped our character, how it shaped our outlook, how it gave us an exceptional character as a people.”

America’s great diversity, Hutton added, came from so many different people, with so many different agendas, pursuing their dreams all in one vast place.

“And really it was encapsulated in popular culture by Buffalo Bill, who showed Americans, no matter where they came from, that we had this shared identity,” he said. “So that a kid like me, who comes over from Germany and falls in love with the West, and falls in love with cowboys, and who found my identity as an American — that’s been the immigrant experience in this country. It doesn’t matter if you come from Bulgaria, Germany, China or Africa, you can find your American identity out of the story of the American West.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Falling For Cody Town"}]

Hutton first discovered the town of Cody six decades ago just after graduating from high school. He and two buddies had set out in a Volkswagen bus to discover America.

Hutton had a different idea about what that meant than his friends. 

For them, it was all about going to Las Vegas while listening to Simon & Garfunkel tunes. 

Hutton was excited about Vegas, but he also made his friends stop along the way in the Black Hills and at the Little Bighorn Battlefield, as well as a little museum he’d heard about in Cody, the Buffalo Bill Historical Center.

“It had just moved out of the log cabin into the new digs we have here now,” Hutton recalled. “And in those days, there was no Plains Indian Museum. There was no Draper, no gun museum. But it just blew us away. Certainly, it blew me away. It was such a fabulous facility.”

While Hutton was visiting the museum, he couldn’t help but notice Cody’s charm. It might have been a little touristy around the edges, but there was an authenticity that immediately appealed. 

Over the years, Hutton found excuses to return to Cody as often as possible. 

“There’s just something about it that has always drawn me,” he said. “Cody has retained its sort of westernness and its appreciation of Western history as a town, as a community. A lot of that, of course, is owed to Buffalo Bill, who founded the town and did so much to bring people here.”

Getting to come back to Cody and serve as the Hal and Naoma Tate Endowed Chair of Western History and Curator for the Buffalo Bill Museum, which is now part of the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, has been “cosmic and gratifying,” Hutton said. 

“There’s hardly a better place to be from than Cody, Wyoming,” he said. “That sounds like you’re a real Western writer if you’re from Cody.”

Getting a history book on the New York Times bestseller list was a pleasant shock for both Hutton and his publisher, Dutton Publishing. 

“It’s very difficult to do with any kind of serious nonfiction,” Hutton said. “It’s mostly self-help books, cooking books, movie star memoirs and that sort of thing.”

Hutton said he believes part of the book’s success lies in how he strove to capture that first, epic feel the Davy Crockett movie of his youth gave him. Here were larger-than-life pioneers, cast as heroes. But, in addition, Hutton wove in some of the great contradictions of an early America headed West.

“We built something great that the world stands in awe of,” he said. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"But it came at a cost."}]

“It was a terrible price in terms of trampling the rights of others, the natives who were here first and, of course, environmental degradation on a huge scale,” he added. “Which we’ve been trying to make right ever since.”

Hutton’s sensitive treatment of this material has garnered rave reviews, including from the Wall Street Journal’s Peter Cozzens, who praised the book’s immersive narrative style, blended with solid historical research. 

“There is nothing didactic about ‘The Undiscovered Country',” Cozzens wrote. “The narrative never wavers. The author’s use of the lives of seminal figures to anchor the narrative draws the reader more deeply into the story than would a more conventional approach. It is an experiment in writing history that succeeds admirably.”

“Undiscovered Country” earned Top Ten Book of the Year from the Journal. It also won Best Historical Non-Fiction Book honors from True West Magazine and Hutton received the Western Writers of the America Spur Award for Historical Nonfiction.

"With ‘The Undiscovered Country,’ Mr. Hutton has produced the definitive popular history of the American West,” Cozzens concluded.

After that review, Hutton’s book sold out in 10 days. 

“So, I kind of lost some momentum there for a while,” he said. “But once it was back in print, it continued to sell very well.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Not Done Yet"}]

While the Owen Wister Award is a lifetime achievement award, which to Hutton signals the “final glide path” of a career, the author said he’s far from done.

He’s already working on what he hopes will be his next New York Times bestselling history novel, this time about Buffalo Bill Cody.

“There have been a lot of books on Buffalo Bill, but surprisingly only two modern biographies,” Hutton said. “Louis Warren from 20 years ago, which was very good, but very academic, and then Don Russell from 1960, which is also a good biography, but very dated.”

Hutton plans to adopt the same treatment for his Buffalo Bill Cody book as he did for “Undiscovered Country.”

“It’s going to be solid history, but the emphasis is going to be on telling a good story,” he said. “Of course, when you have Buffalo Bill, one of the world’s great storytellers, as your subject, you’ve got fabulous material.”

And being an author who is sitting on what is essentially the “mother lode” of Buffalo Bill material, Hutton said he feels uniquely advantaged for his next piece.

“There are collections in Laramie and Denver and actually at Yale that I will need to consult,” he said. “But it will be a great book, because I have so much to work from, just right here in Cody.”

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<title>Cody Author Paul Hutton Wins Lifetime Achievement Honor For Western Literature | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Cody’s Paul Andrew Hutton has landed one of Western literature’s top honors, the coveted Owen Wister Award for lifetime achievement. That elevates the New York Times bestselling author of “The Undiscovered Country” into the ranks of top Western writers.

Cody Author Paul Hutton Wins Lifetime Achievement Honor For Western Literature

Facing extreme drought in the wake of an exceptionally mild winter, officials in Colorado and Oregon have thrown up their hands and told anglers at some reservoirs: Catch all the fish you want, because they’re going to die anyway.

Conditions aren’t nearly so dire at two of Wyoming’s premier fishing reservoirs, Flaming Gorge in Sweetwater County and Boysen in Fremont County, where limits remain in place and the angling should remain good this summer, a state park manager and marina owner told Cowboy State Daily.

In northeastern Oregon, fishing limits were lifted on three reservoirs on the Powder River, a tributary of the Snake River, which originates in Wyoming.

Colorado is allowing unlimited angling on Antero Reservoir on the South Platte River in the central part of the state, and the Nee Noshe Reservoir to the southeast.

Utah has loosened catch limits on Crouse Reservoir, east of Salt Lake City, and Nine Mile Reservoir, south of the city.

In each instance, state agencies surmised reservoirs are getting so low and stagnant the fish are doomed regardless, according to numerous media reports.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"No Emergency, Yet"}]

Despite drought conditions across the state, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department doesn’t have “immediate plans to enact emergency regulations to liberalize creel limits,” according to fisheries management coordinator Mark Smith.

“However, conditions could change rapidly. If an emergency change to creel limits were to occur that information would be disseminated widely to the public and posted at the water for anglers to find,” Smith said in an email to Cowboy State Daily.

Some of Wyoming’s larger reservoirs have conservation pools, or “dead pools,” to act as buffers for fisheries when water is running low, Smith said.

Even so, “all stored water has limitations,” he added. The water at Flaming Gorge and Boysen is expected to drop enough to render some boat ramps useless.

So, Game and Fish is watching closely for a “tipping point” that might warrant a change in fishing regulations, Smith said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Bad New For Small Waters"}]

For smaller fisheries, the news isn’t quite so good.

“Ultimately, our goal is to protect all of our fisheries, but we recognize that some of our small waters have already been lost, or will be lost, to drying,” Smith said.

Sometimes that happens so fast there isn’t time to react, he said.  

“For example, when we were finally able to access roads and assess small ponds in the 33 Mile country north of Casper this May, most of those fisheries had already succumbed to low water elevations and poor water-quality conditions,” Smith said.

“Other sagebrush stock-water reservoirs could face a similar fate,” he added.

Emergency regulations require the governor’s signature.

“Emergency regulations take effect immediately upon the Governor’s approval and would be lifted if conditions improved and fish were likely to survive,” Smith said.

Boysen Reservoir has been roughly 70% full during June, Boysen State Park superintendent John Bass said.

Boysen is one of Wyoming’s top destinations for walleye, and also boasts good trout fishing.

Bass said he doesn’t anticipate the reservoir dropping to the point of mass fish die-offs or calls to lift all fishing limits.

According to Bureau of Reclamation estimates, Boysen will slowly fall, but remain above 50% capacity.

All four Boysen boat ramps are usable, he said. They are Bannon, Tough Creek, Fremont Bay and Cottonwood Bay.

“Although, as the lake starts falling, the Fremont and Cottonwood Ramps will be too shallow to use. But that’s a fairly common occurrence in my 10 years here,” Bass said. "The Brannon and Tough Creek boat ramps will be usable for the remainder of the year, until ice-up.” 

Likewise, there’s no reason to think officials will call for a free-for-all at Flaming Gorge, which straddles the Wyoming-Utah state line, Buckboard Marina owner Tony Valdez said.

“I don’t think we’ll be at the stagnant water level, where we could lose all of the fish,” he said.

Flaming Gorge draws anglers from all over the region for its prized kokanee salmon. It’s also known for lake trout and other species.

The Bureau of Reclamation this spring announced that Flaming Gorge is set for a million-acre-foot drawdown to make up for severe shortages downstream at Lake Powell, on the Utah-Arizona state line.

An acre foot is the amount of water that would flood an acre of land to the depth of one foot.

Valdez has previously expressed concerns the drawdown could ruin kokanee spawning areas. Kokanee are already under pressure because of competition with lake trout and burbot.

Wyoming Game and Fish and the Utah Division of Wildlife already lifted catch limits on smaller lake trout (under 28 inches) and burbot, in hopes of helping the kokanee.

Valdez said he doesn’t expect fishing limits to be suspended on any other species.

However, boat ramps could be rendered useless as the reservoir drops for the drawdown, he added.

Valdez said his marina could also tank this summer.

“This year, the marina could be gone. In fact, I’ve got to go deal with that right now, and move some stuff around (because of dropping water levels),” he said during a telephone interview with Cowboy State Daily.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Catfish Getting Scarce"}]

Valdez said if there’s any danger of water dropping to fish-killing levels it would hit first upstream, at Fontenelle Reservoir.

“If it did get that low, the first one to go would be Fontenelle, then the Green (River) and then Flaming Gorge. But I don’t see it dropping that low,” he said.

Drought has ruined some of the fishing on the Blacks River, which feeds Flaming Gorge on the west side, Valdez said.

That river once was a hot spot for catfish, he noted.

“People still catch catfish near the confluence, more so in the lake than on the river. The river gets stagnant,” he said.

While Flaming Gorge is holding its own for now, the long-term picture could be stark.

During a Tuesday meeting in Denver, members of the Upper Colorado River Commission said conditions along the river system – which includes the Green River – are dire.

Wyoming state engineer Brandon Gebhart said it could be the 

Antero reservoir 6 26 26

<title>Colorado And Oregon Lift Fishing Restrictions, Drought Will Kill Fish Anyway | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Facing extreme drought in the wake of an exceptionally mild winter, officials in Colorado and Oregon have told anglers at some reservoirs: Catch all the fish you want, because they’re going to die anyway. In Wyoming, emergency measures are on hold.

Colorado And Oregon Lift Fishing Restrictions, Drought Will Kill Fish Anyway

Wildlife

Colorado Parks and Wildlife is trying to determine why a black bear attacked a woman Sunday on a popular hiking trail, and then followed her for 30 minutes despite her shouting and throwing rocks at it.

“We don’t know for sure, because we haven’t found the bear,” Kara Van Hoose, CPW's northeast region spokeswoman, told Cowboy State Daily on Wednesday.

The bear was thought to be a “yearling, or young adult,” she added.

Predatory attacks, in which a bear is deliberately stalking a person as prey, are extremely rare in both black bears and grizzlies.

Most bear attacks are defensive or territorial.

The consensus among bear biologists is that while grizzlies are more likely to attack humans, black bears are more likely to attack in a purely predatory manner.

While the bear’s behavior was alarming, CPW doesn’t think it was predatory, Van Hoose said.

“It makes us think more likely a food-conditioned bear, not a predatory black bear,” she said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Bear Wouldn’t Give Up"}]

The woman, who CPW did not identify, told wildlife agents that she was attacked from behind and suffered scratches on one leg at about 5:20 p.m.

She was on the Enchanted Forest trail in the 700-acre Apex Park near Golden in Jefferson County. CPW shut down the park after the reported attack.

The woman told investigators the bear continued to follow her despite her repeated attempts to intimidate and haze it by making herself look big, shouting, and throwing rocks and sticks.

Toward the end of the encounter, the woman was joined by two hikers who responded to her calls for help. Even with all three people shouting at it, the bear was undeterred, CPW reported.

Eventually, the bear turned down another trail, where it reportedly started following other hikers, according to CPW.

The woman is an avid hiker who has had previous bear encounters, and acted appropriately by trying to intimidate and haze the bear, Van Hoose said.

The woman gave CPW a short cellphone video she took during the encounter, which helped the agency identify the bear as relatively small and probably young, Van Hoose said.

CPW isn’t at liberty to share the video with Cowboy State Daily, she said.  

 reported the woman reached out and shared the video and details of the encounter but declined to be named in their report.

The woman told Denver 7 the bear was “circling” her.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Problems Human-Caused"}]

British Columbia bear researcher Lana Ciarniello told Cowboy State Daily she couldn’t comment on the specifics of the Colorado attack, but affirmed that predatory behavior is extremely rare in both black bears and grizzlies.

Most human-bear conflict is rooted in human mistakes, such as deliberately feeding bears or allowing them access to garbage or other food sources, she said.

People who recreate in bear territory should “take training courses” on avoiding close encounters, and what to do if one occurs.

And “carry bear spray,” Ciarniello said.

Van Hoose said it wasn’t known for certain whether the woman attacked in Colorado was carrying bear spray.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Time To Fight Back"}]

Ciarniello noted that a video tutorial, “Staying Safe in Bear Country”, was made years ago by the International Bear Association (IBA) but remains a “gold standard” bear-safety training tool.

In one segment, the difference is noted between defensive actions by bears versus deliberate approaches.

Bears that deliberately approach people might be driven by curiosity or food conditioning, according to IBA. In rare instances, bears see people as prey.

A predatory bear will move in “with its head up and ears erect, its approach is confident and persistent,” according to IBA.

If a predatory bear makes contact, it’s time to fight back because “you’re fighting for your life,” IBA states.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"What Happens To The Bear?"}]

It’s not certain what will happen to the bear once CPW finds it, Van Hoose said.

More information is needed before it can be determined whether it will be euthanized, or if other action is needed, she said.

Agents need to determine if it has persisted in following people or displayed other aggressive behavior, and whether it might be malnourished or suffering from disease, Van Hoose said.

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<title>Colorado Wildlife Officials Uncertain Why Black Bear Attacked, Followed Woman | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Colorado wildlife agents are trying to determine why a black bear attacked a woman on a hiking trail in Denver and then followed her for 30 minutes despite her shouting and throwing rocks at it. The woman who took video of the encounter said it was "circling her."

Colorado Wildlife Officials Uncertain Why Black Bear Attacked, Followed Woman

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily reporter, Jackie Dorothy.

Jackie Dorothy

They have been dubbed by historians as the Arapaho Five, warriors who found themselves fighting against the cavalry in the Battle of the Little Bighorn 150 years ago this week. In the spring of 1876, these young bucks, as they called themselves, snuck off from the fort where their band was camping and became part of history. 

[{"type":"text","text":"Their names were Left Hand, Yellow Eagle, Yellow Fly, Water Man and Sage."}]

In 1919, Tim McCoy, actor and adopted member of the Arapaho tribe, was sitting in a powwow with several Arapaho friends on the Wind River Indian Reservation along the Little Wind River. 

He later related the story to Darryl Ponicsan in a June 1977 article for the American Heritage magazine, 

“High Eagle The Many Lives Of Colonel Tim Mccoy

“They started telling me that Old Water Man was in that fight,” McCoy said. “I sort of scoffed at it because every Indian and his brother was in that fight. Practically all of them killed Custer.”

However, when McCoy began asking Water Man questions, the old Arapaho answered them all accurately. Determined to have the old men tell the stories themselves, McCoy arranged for separate interviews with Water Man and Left Hand in nearby Riverton by 1920. 

The other three warriors had already gone to the “great mystery” according to Left Hand and 

. However,  Sage, was still living near St. Stephens under the name of Sherman Sage. Only remnants of Sage's own story were ever recorded.

The two warriors McCoy knew about agreed their stories needed told.

“I had lived 22 snows at the time of the great battle on the Little Bighorn River,” 

told McCoy. “Soon Left Hand and I must go to the long sleep, and no one will be alive to tell the story, so I will tell you, whom the Arapahoes call their Soldier-Chief, everything just as I saw it, and nothing that is not the truth.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Left Hand & Water Man"}]

Five young Arapaho braves snuck off from Fort Robinson 150 years ago this week and fought the 7th Cavalry at Little Bighorn, where General Custer met his demise. They later told their story to actor and adopted member of the Arapaho tribe, Tim McCoy.

Daily Darwin: Sunday, August 13, 2023

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