It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming, for Tuesday, August 6th. I’m Wendy Corr, bringing you headlines from the Cowboy State Daily newsroom - brought to you by the Wyoming State Fair! Beginning August 13th in Douglas, the Wyoming State Fair has something for everyone. For more info visit WY-STATE-FAIR dot com"
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Firefighters battling the Pleasant Valley fire near Guernsey, Wyoming, have barricaded the massive wildfire in the steep terrain of the Haystack Range that is blamed for burning the homestead of U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman, the state’s lone congresswoman, and briefly threatened historic Fort Laramie.
Meanwhile, Cowboy State Daily’s Pat Maio visited Hartville, which was right in the path of the inferno. He said many residents were concerned that the wildfire would leave them with nothing.
“One dude I talked to named Clay, he literally hopped in his truck, left his wife and daughter behind at the fair, and he drove up here like 80, 85, 90 miles per hour from Wheatland… he grabbed his wife's multi generational saddle that she's had for years, and had birth documents and clothing and stuff like that, threw him in the back of the truck and got the heck out of Dodge.”
In addition to the Pleasant Valley Fire, the Clearwater Fire has been burning in the steep Shoshone National Forest about 11 miles west of Wapiti, between Cody and Yellowstone National Park. Cowboy State Daily’s Jackie Dorothy has the latest on that fire.
“It is close to the east gate of Yellowstone right there in Cody, right outside of Wapiti. There are no slurry bombers or retardant being dropped, because it was explained to me that retardant will only get the crowns of the trees. And this is a ground fire, so it is mostly being fought by firefighters on the ground, creating fire lines, putting up sprinklers, trying to save both the highway and the structures in the area.”
Additionally, two separate wildfires in the northeastern part of Wyoming have grown to about 24,000 acres combined, stretching resources in that part of the state as well.
Read the full story HERE and HERE.
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A Campbell County Sheriff’s deputy shot and killed a suspect in a shootout Sunday night after the suspect fired a shotgun at the deputy in his cruiser.
The deputy wasn’t hurt, Campbell County Sheriff Scott Matheny told Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland, but the suspect was killed when the deputy returned fire.
“Matheny said that it was a domestic call, and he said that he knew the woman had been punched in the face… She'd been on the phone with dispatch. She'd been trying to get out of the house. She was still on the phone with dispatch when she said, ‘Oh, he's fired a warning shot or something to that effect.’ And Scott Matheny described it. I mean, little did she know that that was actually the shot that packed the windshield of that cruiser?”
Campbell County Coroner Paul Wallem declined to identify the suspect, a 55-year-old man, pending notification of his next of kin.
Read the full story HERE.
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Senate President Ogden Driskill filed an election complaint against his own county Republican Party on Monday challenging a large donation it made.
Driskill has made a formal complaint with the Secretary of State’s office over a $25,000 donation the Crook County Republican Party made to the Wyoming Freedom political action committee, the campaign arm of the farther right group of Republican state legislators known as the Wyoming Freedom Caucus.
Cowboy State Daily’s Leo Wolfson reports that Driskill is asking that the complaint be immediately forwarded to Attorney General Bridget Hill because he believes Secretary of State Chuck Gray has a conflict of interest on the issue.
“He actually requested that the complaint be forwarded on to the Wyoming Attorney General's office because the wife of the Chief General Counsel of the Secretary of State's office is the director of the Freedom Caucus, the Wyoming State Director… Secretary of State Chuck Gray said that Driskill's claims were false and defamatory, but he did end up forwarding the complaint on to the Attorney General's office just to avoid any optics of impropriety.”
Sherri Davis, Crook County GOP committeewoman, told Cowboy State Daily that her county party received legal advice before making its donation, and that it doesn’t view the Freedom PAC as a candidate.
Read the full story HERE.
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A video taken by an avid hiker from Lander appears to show two rattlesnakes “dancing” together, as their bodies wind together in a nearly vertical position, then tumble to the ground.
It turns out that what Susannah Bletner caught on video in the Sinks Canyon area wasn’t snakes grooving or engaged in a courtship ritual. Outdoors reporter Mark Heinz says she actually caught a rare sight of two male Western diamondback rattlers battling to see which one could lay claim to the territory.
“Male rattlesnakes, when they're trying to claim territory, will do this thing where they get up, they stretch all the way up to where they're like, standing, and they tangle with each other and knock each other over. Basically wrestle. I mean, it looks like a dance, but it's actually a fight. It's a fight for dominance. Eventually, they usually end peacefully, one gives up and slithers away, and then the other one has that territory, and that's his.”
The chances of getting the ritual on video are few and far between. Biologists say dominance in snakes is rarely observed in the wild by people.
Read the full story HERE.
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This might be the most delicious game of chicken ever played.
A year after Laramie-based Weitzels Wings, also known as Double Dubs, sold more than 48,000 chicken wings in 24 hours to shatter the world record, the previous record-holder - Village Casino in Bemus Point, New York - has reclaimed its perch as top chicken wing seller in the coop.
Cowboy State Daily’s Greg Johnson spoke to Trent Weitzel, who said he’s not discouraged.
“Trent Weitzel, the owner of Weitzel wings, is an incredibly, very, very competitive guy. And he said, You know, it's all, it's all good natured competition, but he doesn't like to lose, and he said that he intends to get the record back, and do it in a way that makes anybody think twice about trying to reclaim it from him.”
Weitzel said Double Dubs plans to reclaim the 24-hour sales record very decisively next year at Cheyenne Frontier Days, aiming to sell 75,000 wings in a 24 hour period. Read the full story HERE.
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Along with some other friends who enjoy firearms and history, Zach Martin and Konner Hafner of Rock Springs love hearing bullets wallop a hardened steel target. And when the local shooting target set up for public use wasn’t working for them,
Martin, an engineer, and Hafner, who is the band director at Rock Springs High School, told outdoors reporter Mark Heinz that they took it upon themselves to clean up a spot east of town and set up a hardened steel target there.
“There is one iron target that's hung up at the base of White Mountain outside of Rock Springs. But … these guys all get off work in the evening as a lot of people do. And the way that target was facing, they'd always be getting the setting sun in their eyes, and so they … can't see very well to shoot their rifles. And so they, you know, say, You know what? This is, kind of a bunch of BS, why don't we just go find a place where we can get a more easterly facing target so we can shoot our rifles in the evening?”
They’ve left the target, which cost more than $100, out there so others can enjoy it too. The friends hope their donation to the community is treated with respect and that nobody steals or vandalizes it.
Read the full story HERE.
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A judge on Monday gave a 74-year-old Carbon County man to between 40 and 80 years in prison for trying to gun down his grown niece and nephew over a dispute about money.
Melvin Bagley had tried to kill his nephew, Marvin “JR” Bagley, and JR’s wife Stephanie on Sept. 3, 2023, by driving his truck to theirs and opening fire on them through his open truck window and theirs, according to crime and courts reporter Clair McFarland.
“He pulled up truck window to truck window. There was a brief conversation. He pulled out a gun, shot his nephew in the face, disabling his eye, and then it also went through the nephew's hand, and then shot the nephew's wife in the shoulder, Stephanie Bagley, the nephew's wife, said Monday that she still doesn't feel at ease knowing that Bagley has a window for appeal.”
Carbon County District Court Judge Dawnessa Snyder also ordered Melvin Bagley to pay nearly $300,000 in restitution, a huge chunk of which consists of his nephew’s two air ambulance trips.
Read the full story HERE.
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A 36-year-old woman drove a pickup into the outdoor pool of a Gillette, Wyoming, hotel Friday evening, then admitted to consuming both prescription drugs and alcohol, local police say.
The woman whom the Gillette Police Department declined to identify by name drove a 2011 Dodge Ram truck east through the parking lot at the National 9 Hotel on Highway 14/16, then crashed into the hotel pool. Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland said the real concern at the time was, how to get the truck out of the pool.
“You can’t just back it up. You have to vertical hoist it. And then at some point, they wedged like a metal arm under between the back two wheels. And then they got a sling in the front under well in the the front two wheel wells. And then they were able to leverage it out, and they let it hang there, parallel to the surface of the water for a while, and just weep. And then they backed it out of there.”
One bystander who attests in the video to having witnessed the incident says the woman was driving about 20 mph and “didn’t even hit the brakes.”
Read the full story HERE.
