Daily Darwin

[{"type":"text","text":"It's always good to emulate what you see on TikTok......"}]

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

<title>Daily Darwin: Tuesday, January 7, 2025 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

It's always good to emulate what you see on TikTok......

Daily Darwin: Tuesday, January 7, 2025

 It's always good to emulate what you see on TikTok......

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

Renée Jean

Business & Tourism

The first time Farmstead Cider went after old apples in Jackson Hole, it was just for the flavor. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"It soon became about the bears. "}]

Every fall as apples drop and ferment in the backyards and ghost orchards of Jackson Hole, grizzlies and black bears do what comes naturally. They follow their noses straight into trouble — calorie-rich fruits that taste oh-so-good when you’re a bear desperate to fatten up for winter. 

The first harvest, though, was all about the homesick wives, Farmstead Cider’s co-owner Orion Bellorado said. They had grown up on the East Coast, where apple harvests are a big deal. 

“We started harvesting the apples in our neighborhood off of peoples’ trees that were kind of derelict,” he said. “And they were tiny, so we pressed a bunch of juice and made some cider out of it.”

The party was great and word soon got around. 

“Someone from the county found out about it and said, ‘Hey, you should really put in for this community grant to start a business,” Bellorado recalled. “‘Because we’ve really been having issues with bears.’”

That was in 2016, and the business has been going ever since, bottling 5,000 to 7,000 gallons of native-yeast cider a year and selling it across Wyoming as well as other states such as Washington and Montana. 

In the process of climbing into backyards and abandoned orchards, Bellorado stumbled onto a bigger realization. Wyoming is curiously — if quietly — rich in apples across the state.

“They are everywhere,” he said. “I mean, Lander was called Apple Town before it was called Lander. It’s full on part of this interesting tidbit of our culture and our history that’s really been left behind.”

That history is being rediscovered thanks to a project called the Wyoming Apple Project. Through it, researchers have been cataloguing a hidden network of heritage and volunteer trees that have somehow survived a century or so of drought and neglect. Researchers say these hardy survivors might point the way to a new kind of apple economy in one of the harshest fruit-growing climates in America.

You wouldn’t know it from today’s landscape of hay bales and cattle, but Wyoming was once thick with apples. Homesteaders brought apple seeds to plant in their new homes, carving out orchards that were just as essential as a root cellar to their survival.

Apples meant sauce, butter, cider, vinegar and livestock feed. They were essential calories, but also comfort — the kind that could be stored up through a long, hard winter.

By the early 1900s, experimental orchards and private growers had tested at least 218 named apple cultivars across Wyoming, including 11 that were Wyoming-bred. 

Among the most ambitious of the early apple pioneers was an experimental fruit farm in Lander, which trialed 175 different cultivars under superintendent John Steinbrecht, who also developed 10 of the 11 Wyoming-bred cultivars. 

Not far away from Steinbrecht was Lander orchardist Ed Young, who planted a prodigious 3,000-some apple trees in 1882 — an act of faith in a place better known for blizzards than fruit blossoms.

At the time, Wyoming was held up as a national example of what’s possible on the frontier. 

“A lot of those early settlers, such as Ed Young, and their success in growing apples was used in news articles back east, to bring hope to people thinking about moving West,” University of Wyoming graduate and plant physiologist Jonathan Magby told Cowboy State Daily. “It helped show them that you can successfully inhabit this remote location of the United States.”

Wyoming’s apples at that time came from everywhere — Minnesota, Wisconsin, New York, Canada and even Russia. Several nurseries were involved in seeing which varieties could stand up to Wyoming’s brutal mix of cold, drought and wind, including 

At one point, at least 70 out-of-state nurseries and 20 in-state nurseries across 11 Wyoming cities were selling apple stock to Wyoming growers.

Then, slowly, the state forgot about its apples.

Wyoming’s agricultural identity shifted solidly toward cattle and general row crops. Many orchards were abandoned. Irrigation ditches shifted. Families moved away or sold off land.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Winters kept coming. "}]

And the apple trees that had been left behind continued growing. They became part of an unintended Darwinist experiment — one where only the fittest would survive. 

What’s left of the apple trees that once dotted Wyoming are now the toughest of the tough. Trees too full of Wyoming grit to give up and die.

Among the most interesting is a gnarled apple tree in Lander. Its limbs curl up to the sun like an insect on its back, and its trunk is so hollowed out, one wouldn’t be surprised to find a hobbit — or some other creature of legend — sleeping inside.

Somehow, though, this ancient tree is still alive, still leafing out, still stubbornly insisting on producing apples, despite a century or so in a place that routinely tries to freeze them to death.

Wyoming is not a state known for hardy trees. It is, after all, among the coldest and driest of states in the Lower 48. And apple trees aren’t known for being especially long-lived, either. Most never see a 100th birthday.

That makes this particular apple tree special. It’s passed a 100-year stress test, one where Wyoming wind and drought are separating the true pioneers from the pretenders.

To Magby, the Lander tree is far more than a curiosity. It’s a symbol of what Wyoming apples once were, as well as what they could be again. 

These survivors could help develop ever more hardy Wyoming stock, making apples a potential new and viable agricultural commodity. Because of that, the tree’s tissue was pulled and grafted onto new stock, so it can keep growing for another 100 years.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Like A CSI Detective"}]

Magby has been searching out all the old heritage apple trees of Wyoming using DNA finger-printing techniques more often associated with crime shows like CSI. 

So far he’s sampled 510 trees at 91 locations in 19 cities, from Lander and Sheridan to Buffalo and Casper, to figure out which trees match known cultivars and which might be lost or forgotten varieties. So far he’s found more than 150 unique genetic fingerprints that don’t match anything in old reference collections. 

Some of those varieties show up in multiple towns, suggesting they are long-lost cultivars that no longer exist anywhere else. hey are a living link to an era when Wyoming was serious apple country.

Two varieties that keep showing up, meanwhile, are Wealthy and Haralson, both bred in Minnesota. They are roughly one-third of all the identified surviving trees in his data set.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"More Than Charming History"}]

Magby doesn’t see Wyoming apples as a charming historical footnote. He believes these survivors are pointing the way to a viable agricultural commodity for the state, one that could lead to more products that are made in Wyoming, such as Farmstead Cider in Jackson Hole. Making products in Wyoming — referred to as value-added products — is a better bang for the buck. It keeps most of the economic value chain in-state.

Apple cider production makes a lot of sense in Wyoming, alongside the growing microbrewery scene, Magby said. People also just enjoy fresh produce that’s been grown in Wyoming, whether that’s an apple or other fruits.

“We take pride in anything that’s been produced in Wyoming,” Magby said. “So I’d love to see someone take a strong stance of producing and backing development of cultivars and revamping testing of grape and pear varieties and other small fruits, just to provide that diversity, not just in fresh food products, but also diversity of economies.”

Bellorado is already living that future at Farmstead Cider, thanks to bear-safety grants that helped launch a business to haul apples out of backyards and ghost orchards. 

Now, instead of attracting trouble, those apples are a useful and delicious product in a growing business. It’s more joy to the human world, all from abandoned, pioneer apple trees.

Apples Ian Mc Gregor co owner of Farmstead Cider Courtesy Photo 6 27 26

<title>Wyoming’s Ghost Apple Orchard Trees Have Been Rediscovered And Are Producing | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Wyoming was once thick with apples. In fact, it was a top apple producer. Now those forgotten apple trees are being rediscovered by small cider houses. "They're everywhere," said one cider house owner. "Lander was called Apple Town before Lander."

Wyoming’s Ghost Apple Orchard Trees Have Been Rediscovered And Are Producing

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily reporter, Jackie Dorothy.

Jackie Dorothy

Wyoming Life

Wyoming state Sen. George B. McClellan, standing 6 feet, 6 inches tall, was known throughout the Cowboy State as “The Bear.” He would regale his audiences both on the 

enate floor and off with stories of how he had earned his nickname.

In one bear story, McClellan tells of training a grizzly to carry him on its back. He once mistook a wild grizzly for his personal mount and didn’t discover his error until, after a terrific wrestling match, he had ridden the wild bear home.

For 30 years, Wyoming’s politicians had a “never-failing source of entertainment”, according to the June 8, 1930, Casper Tribune as “The Bear” shared his bear stories that grew with each telling. Beginning in 1904, McClellan served Big Horn County as first a

 representative and then was elected for the majority of his career as 

In another story, according to authors of the “Ten Sleep, The Area and The People,” McClellan related how he came upon two grizzlies and roped one. While holding the first silvertip, McClellan was then able to shoot the other.

In a story from 1885, McClellan shared that he was with his friend, Billie 

when they killed seven grizzlies in less than an hour at the head of Otter Creek. 

As a result of these bear stories, McClellan was a popular storyteller who found an appreciative audience wherever he went. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Heart As Big As a Washtub"}]

McClellan was described as one of the most colorful men in Wyoming by his friend and neighbor Paul Frison. In a tribute written Oct. 19, 1934, for the Wyoming State Tribune, Frison said McClellan had a powerful physique, dynamic personality, and was dominating yet lovable.

Ten Sleep historians said McClellan was born in Simcoe, Ontario, Canada, Oct. 18, 1862. He was a toddler when his family migrated to Kansas. By his early teens, McClellan headed to Texas to work with an outfit trailing cattle to Wyoming Territory.

He ended up in Lance Creek with the drive, then stayed in the Fort Laramie region until 1881, when the copper excitement at Hartville caught his attention. After a stint with mining, McClellan went to Pass Creek, Montana, and contracted to supply wild meat to Fort Custer for three years. 

He hunted bear, buffalo and elk in the Big Horn Mountains with a Crow Indian companion, according to Frison. By 1886, Bear George was breaking horses for future Wyoming Gov. W. A. Richards (1895–1899) on the Red Bank Ranch and continued to hunt, especially bears.  

[{"type":"text","text":"McClellan earned a reputation as “the ideal type of westerner.”"}]

“Bear George has a heart as big as a wash tub and as sympathetic as a woman’s when anyone’s in trouble,” a columnist wrote in the Wyoming Tribune, 

1, 1908. “He is straightforward and absolutely square, plain and outspoken, yet as firm as a rock when his mind’s made up.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Pet Bear"}]

McClellan shared some of his stories in his own words and said that in the fall of 1885, he adopted two cubs when he first began hunting bear in the Big Horn Mountains. He had killed an old sow and took the cubs to camp.

“When they got to be about a year old I had a set to with one of them, and he came out dead,” McClellan said. “When it was reduced to just one bear, he was a good deal more tractable, and better to get along with.”

By the time the bear was 2 years old, McClellan said he could ride him to hunt bear. One evening when he was riding, the silvertip got uneasy. McClellan slid off and his bear took off after another bear.

“When I got to the top of the hill, here was my bear, foregathered with a couple other big old silvertips out on a big sagebrush flat,” McClellan said. “It was getting late and I wanted to hurry as much as possible and I shot the two bears as soon as I possibly could.”

By the time McClellan skinned the two bears, it was quite late. He said he went to put the hides on his bear to take them to camp, but his pet was absolutely unmanageable. McClellan wrestled his bear into obedience and put the hides on him.

[{"type":"text","text":" However, he had another row when they got into camp."}]

“There was no such thing as doing anything with him, and we just had another set-to and by the time I got him into the mind of going in to camp I was nearly worn out,” McClellan said.

McClellan remembered how he had hit his bear with a Dutch oven lid during a “set-to” and busted off part of his bear’s tooth.  

“I got to thinking about the way the bear had got so blame mean,” McClellan said. “I just went up to him and raised his lip and looked.”

McClellan was startled to see that this bear had a perfect set of teeth. It was then he realized he had shot his pet bear and rode back to camp on a wild bear.  

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Wyoming Reputation"}]

Gov. Richards oldest daughter, Alice, shared in a 1948 Annals of Wyoming article that Bear George was self-educated.

“He kept a well-stocked library and always traveled with an extra packhorse loaded with books,” Richards said. “He read all the classic literature and, with his quick mind and wonderful memory, achieved a remarkable vocabulary.”

This education gave McClellan the right words to express himself. Richards said he was famous across the country for his gift of storytelling.

“Being a great bear hunter, many of his stories were bear-hunting tales, which is how the B in his name came to stand for Bear,” Richards said.

Richards also said McClellan’s years as a hunter had made him the best shot in the region. This skill came in handy when Harvey Ray, a former cowboy for her family, had turned to rustling and stole horses from the ranch. McClellan took off after Ray and his gang early in the morning.

“When George got out in the badlands on Harvey’s trail, Harvey saw him coming as fast as he could ride, his gun in hand,” Richards said. “When Harvey saw him, he turned to his gang and said, ‘Here comes the Bear. Let’s get out of here.’ They left the horses and fled.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Modern Ride"}]

After an early career of riding bears, it was only appropriate that McClellan would be first in the Big Horn County to own an automobile. He had an old Stanley Steamer and quickly gained a reputation as a dangerous driver.

 "Mr. Bonnie” recounted, according to the “Ten Sleep” book, how all McClellan’s friends avoided riding with McClellan as much as possible because he was so reckless.  

“The roads at the time were narrow, winding and exceedingly rough, not made for such a vehicle,” Bonnie said. “Half the time it would be jolting out over the

, cutting corners, straightening out the curves.”

Bonnie recalled riding with McClellan to the Red Ranch and being bounced around while trying to hold on for “dear life.”

“We tore over the rocks and ruts at what seemed breakneck speed to our horse and buggy-accustomed rate of travel, though probably not over 25 or 30 miles an hour,” Bonnie said.

George “Bear” McClellan’s colorful life of riding the fastest rides came to an end Oct. 18, 1934.

“His campfires now are cold,” Frison wrote of McClellan. “They no longer radiate that warmth, nor glow, but in the memory of his fellow men he will live. He has carved his niche in the hearts of the people.”

Big Horn County George Mc Clellan inset 6 27 26

<title>Wyoming History: State Sen. George ‘Bear’ McClellan Claimed He Rode Grizzlies | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Wyoming state Sen. George B. McClellan, who served in the Legislature from 1904-1934, was a source of "non-stop entertainment" according to media reports. He said the "B" in his middle name stood for bear because he trained grizzlies and rode them like a horse.

Wyoming History: State Sen. George ‘Bear’ McClellan Claimed He Rode Grizzlies

At historic Fort Bridger, one of the site’s most reliable staffers doesn’t draw a paycheck, take vacations and has been on duty for more than a century.

“We just call him Mac,” Fort Bridger Historical Association board member Holli Beach told Cowboy State Daily. “And we actually have had him photographed. Several times, he’s been caught in pictures, and we have some pretty cool pictures of him.”

Mac is short for John McLaughlin, one of the soldiers who came to Fort Bridger with the Twenty-First Infantry in the spring of 1888. 

He was given the last of the fort’s remaining log officers' quarters, most of which had been sold to the local ranching community and moved off site. After his discharge he stayed in the area, watching over the remaining buildings and the small cemetery.

Eventually, old age forced him to move on to the Old Sailor’s and Soldier’s Home in Hot Springs, South Dakota, where he is buried. 

But he always wanted to be buried in Fort Bridger’s cemetery, and many people feel that after his death Mac’s spirit returned to the Fort and has remained ever since.

“Mac’s pretty famous for locking people inside his house, for whatever reason,” Beach said. “If workers go in there alone, they tend to get locked in and have to call someone to come help them.”

Alarms also have gone off at night, forcing police to respond, Beach said — alarms that later can’t be explained.

“The sheriffs will come in, and we have quite a few funny stories about them coming onto the property and getting scared,” she said. “One of our mannequins was almost shot by one of the sheriffs.” 

Fort Bridger also regularly gets reports from people thinking they have seen or heard a child drowning in the creek, Beach added. 

“There are actually historical reports of that happening,” she said. “And so, people have been really taken aback by such experiences.”

Haunted stories like that might once have been downplayed by a serious historic site. But with “dark tourism” now a $34.2 billion global market — nearly 80% of it in North America, according to analyst firm, Grand View Research — ghosts and paranormal phenomena have become an undeniable selling point.

One doesn’t have to look far from Wyoming for a famous example of the power of haunted tourism. 

Colorado’s Stanley Hotel in Estes Park is a 

favorite vacation spot for many in Wyoming

. It’s also the real-life inspiration for Stephen King’s cult classic novel “The Shining.” 

The hotel was on its last legs when John Cullen 

 and many at the time believed it was headed for a date with a wrecking ball. But it found new life thanks to Cullen’s decision to lean into its spooky history.

Before Cullen, hotel managers feared admitting there were any unusual happenings, especially in the Stephen King suite. They feared ghost stories would drive guests away — like tales of suitcases somehow winding up in the hallway with no logical explanation, or ghostly children laughing and playing on the third floor.

Cullen, though, actively marketed such tales, and turned the hotel’s unexplained phenomena into a year-round theme that now draws nearly 200,000 visitors annually — about half of its overall visitor total.

The move saved the hotel and has created a premier destination in the Rockies that blends luxury with a history that “still walks the halls.”

In more recent times, as haunted tourism’s popularity has grown, the Stanley has doubled down on its horror pedigree. It’s working with Blumhouse Productions on a planned horror-film center and it 

 for the “Frozen Dead Guy Days” festival, after that event outgrew its original site in Nederland. 

Reports like Mac’s pranks and the drowning child have attracted attention from paranormal groups wanting to investigate the Fort, but the site’s board has usually turned them down, fearing such activities could detract from the core mission of preserving and sharing the site’s rich, 19th century history.

This year, though, it’s leaning into a select number of paranormal events in hopes it can help boost its visitation stats, which range from 75,000 to 90,000 annually. The figures feed directly into its funding through state allocations tied to attendance.

“First and foremost, I am a historian, and I run a historic site,” Fort Bridger Superintendent Josh Camp told Cowboy State Daily. 

“But really, we are a state park, and we’re meant to be a good amenity to the people of Wyoming," he said. "That’s a huge part of what we do here. So there’s more than one way to skin a cat, as the saying goes, and I see ghost stories as another way to do just that.”

Camp is a skeptic when it comes to ghost stories in general, but it’s not lost on him that haunted tourism has become enormously popular. He sees it as a new avenue for sharing history with an audience that might not typically turn up at a historic site. 

“When I hear a ghost story talking about someone going through the old Victorian commanding officers quarters and a young girl will have her hair pulled or something like that, for example,” he said. 

“That’s not an uncommon story. Well, that gives me the perfect opportunity to say, ‘Well perhaps this is the spirit of a Victorian lady who has just realized your hair is not done in a way that’s appropriate for a young lady to be in public'.”

Messy buns of today, Camp added, would have been a Victorian nightmare.

“So, for me, it’s an opportunity to talk about the cultures of the time,” he said. “It becomes an interesting way to teach history, particularly to a crowd who doesn’t necessarily usually want to come learn about history.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Not A YouTube Screamer"}]

Fort Bridger’s three-day paranormal experience July 30 through Aug. 1 will be a rare opportunity, investigator Marie Mason told Cowboy State Daily.

Mason bills herself as a real ghost hunter, not a “screaming YouTuber.”

“On television and YouTube, they completely sensationalize these things,” she said. “The public is aware that’s all BS for the most part.”

Her approach is different. Guests themselves will become the investigators, using professional-grade equipment she’s spent years acquiring and in some cases building. 

Her events have drawn hundreds of people in places such as Deadwood, South Dakota, as well as to historic hotels in Wyoming such as the Occidental in Buffalo. 

“These events are great business for the historical locations,” Mason added. “People will come for three days and stay, and now they’re going to buy food, they’re going to spend money … families will literally plan their vacations around paranormal events like this.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Where Tragedy Lingers"}]

To Mason, most hauntings are simply people, or fragments of people, lingering where something powerful happened. And Fort Bridger is a place with no shortage of powerful moments.

For one, it was the last major stop for the Donner Party, a group of 87 American pioneers, before they turned onto the ill-fated Hastings Cutoff, where they became snowbound. Nearly half the group died of starvation, disease and freezing, with survivors eventually resorting to cannibalism.

Mason is in the camp of historians who believes their route had been endorsed by Jim Bridger himself, who she sees as something of a scoundrel.

“(Bridger) got a piece of every guide (map) that was sold,” she said. “And this guy named Hastings, who wrote the guide map, told them it’s a shortcut.”

But Hastings had never actually done the route he was selling at all, Mason said, and it was actually longer than the way they had planned. Hastings’ “shortcut” sent the party into the Sierra Nevada mountains, where they would become synonymous with unspeakable tragedy.

Fort Bridger is also where a teen-aged Calamity Jane landed after losing both parents on the trail. She returned to Fort Bridger with her younger siblings and worked in the “laundry,” a euphemism, Mason said, for prostitution. 

“So 14-year-old Calamity Jane,” Mason said. “If you just think about high school, all of that stuff is so clear to us, right? You can remember the first boy you kissed. It’s a very special time in your life. 

“So, for me, if her spirit lingers anywhere, that’s got to be a place. It’s where something traumatic happened to her.”

This won’t be the first time Fort Bridger has reinvented itself. The 37-acre site was started in the 1840s by Mountain Man Jim Bridger as a trading post for Native Americans. 

The fur trade had collapsed at the time and Bridger needed a new career.

“Many people, especially if you look at early historians, feel like Fort Bridger was built kind of out in the middle of nowhere, which, by today’s standards, would be accurate,” Camp said. “But these guys who’d been trapping in the mountains for decades at this point knew about the Native American trade network gained through here. So they certainly knew what they were doing.”

When Bridger’s plan to trade with Native Americans didn’t pan out, he pivoted to serving pioneers on the Oregon and California trails. 

“That was something they hadn’t necessarily planned on,” Camp said. “But they were, of course, more than happy to take advantage.”

By the time pioneers hit Fort Bridger, they were usually short on supplies but had cash available to buy more. 

“Bridger was more than happy to be selling them goods,” Camp said. “And seeing as they were one of the few places you could stop, and it was a couple hundred miles to the closest competition, they were certainly able to get their own prices and certainly took advantage of that opportunity.”

Using Ghost Stories To Keep History Alive

Highlighting all that rich history in ways that make it accessible to new audiences is the main play Fort Bridger is after.

“We’re not trying to claim there’s a portal to hell,” Beach said, poking a little fun at more sensational ghost-hunting shows. “First and foremost, we’re a historic site. The history is what matters to us.”

For Camp, if a few haunted tales around the campfire can help turn more people onto history, the shift will be more than worthwhile.

“Everyone needs to learn their history,” he said. “That doesn’t mean we all need to learn it the same way.”

If a spooky cry along the creek or an unexplained shadow on an SLS camera is what it takes to draw people through Fort Bridger’s gates and into its complicated, sometimes uncomfortable history, Camp believes the gambit will have been well worth the risk.

Fort Bridger inset Carter family graveyard Visual and Written via Alamy 6 27 26

<title>Ghostly Gold Rush: Fort Bridger Chases Haunted Tourism Dollars | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Haunted tourism isn’t fringe anymore. It’s become a $34 billion-dollar segment of the tourism industry. Fort Bridger is among those leaning into dark tourism this year with its most famous ghost, Mac, and a three-day paranormal experience next month.

Ghostly Gold Rush: Fort Bridger Chases Haunted Tourism Dollars

Heinz mark

Mark Heinz

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.

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.

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