Daily Cartoon

Sized cartoon 1 9 25

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

<title>Daily Cartoon: Thursday, January 9, 2025 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Daily Cartoon: Thursday, January 9, 2025

Julie Mankin

Crime & Courts

A Wyoming barrel racer was stunned to learn that the 17-year-old girl accused of stabbing three horses during a major rodeo event in Las Vegas over the weekend was the same rider who tried to borrow one of her horses.

“About a month ago, I got a message from a girl asking if I had a horse she could run,” said Lora Nichols of Pavillion. “I said no, and she kept asking about each of my specific horses. 

“This weekend I looked to see if it was the same girl they arrested. It was! It makes my skin crawl to realize she was stalking my horses, too. It could have been me just as easily.”

Nichols, who has earned more than $400,000 competing on the half-brother brother of one of the stabbed horses, said she’s especially horrified by the attack.

Along with Nichols, Wyoming’s rodeo community is shocked and appalled by the Tonya Harding-like violent rampage that left the three barrel racing horses stabbed multiple times.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"What Happened"}]

Las Vegas police report that the 17-year-old barrel racer was arrested in connection the attack on the horses of competitors.

The girl is accused of stabbing each of the horses multiple times inside their stalls during 

the NBHA Professional’s Choice Vegas Super Show at the South Point Equestrian Center.

The attack came just hours after one of the horses — a 6-year-old gelding named Saaul Good — had carried 20-year-old Hailey Krahenbuhl to a first-place paycheck of $1,805. 

The horse, which Krahenbuhl calls “Sully,” has shattered arena records this season and racked up $238,388 in earnings in less than four years competing. 

“Sully was stabbed multiple times last night,” Krahenbuhl posted to her Facebook page on Saturday. “I have no words. He is stitched up and in recovery.” 

The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department reports that officers received a report at around 2:07 a.m. Saturday that a horse had been injured inside a South Point barn. 

When officers arrived, they learned three horses had been “intentionally injured with a sharp object” believed to be a knife, police say.

Veterinarians reportedly cleaned and sutured deep blade lacerations to Sully’s flank and shoulder. 

Another competitor named Keira Weisbart confirmed on social media that her horse, Rocket, was stabbed three times and had other “stab attempts around his body.” 

That horse was reportedly treated and released at the scene.

A third stabbed horse, however, underwent emergency surgery to repair muscle tissue damage. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Detail’s Ordeal"}]

Southern California barrel racer Arielle Phillips owns that third horse, a mare she calls Detail was stabbed multiple times.

, Phillips described the arrested teen as “a crazy obsessed stalker who has been following me on social media for a long time, obsessing over Detail, obsessing over meeting me.”

Phillips said she’d arrived back at the South Point barn to find the suspect hosing off Detail’s wounds.

“Cameras verified her entering our stalls,” wrote Phillips. “I can’t even put into words the pain I feel for my mare and for Hailey’s Sully.”

She said the attack has also affected her horse.

“Detail is traumatized,” Phillips wrote. “Every time she runs away from the approach of my hand, I burst into tears. This is my best friend. An innocent sweet horse was brutally tortured for no reason.”

While all three horses are expected to recover, they are sidelined for the near future and aren’t able to compete.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Champion Lineage"}]

Krahenbuhl, the daughter of a Las Vegas landscaper who grew up about 15 minutes from The Strip, had plans to hit the rodeo road with Sully — whose sire Winner’s Version has produced earners of more than $7 million — and make an NFR run in 2027. 

“We were a match from the beginning and my dreams became reality, all thanks to him,” she wrote prior to the attack from Globe Life Field during the $3 million American Rodeo. 

 to help with at veterinary for all three of the horses.

Nichols said she knows those other girls and is heartbroken for them and their horses.

“I’ve competed alongside Hailey a lot, and she’s an amazing human being,” said Nichols. “I think of the raw emotion and just the blood, sweat and tears she’s put in ­— you know, how hard she’s worked to get there. 

“When I heard it was her horse, I was just sick to my stomach.”

According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, detectives located the suspect at a nearby hotel and took her into custody.

“She was transported to Clark County Juvenile Hall, where she was booked on 12 counts of willful or malicious killing, maiming or torturing of an animal and three counts of felony malicious destruction of private property over $5,000,” investigators told KTLA 5 Morning News.

Because of her age, official law enforcement sources have not identified the suspected publicly.

Veteran barrel racers have over the years heard rare rumors of winning horses being poisoned, but a brazen rash of stabbings is a first. 

Nichols said the incident makes her think of a made-for-TV movie in which the stalker ends up booked for murder. 

She’s also grateful the suspect wasn’t targeting the girls themselves.

“I just think we’re sheltered from that so much in our world,” added barrel racer and Gillette College rodeo coach racer Casey Rae Sellers. “The youth in our industry are pretty dang good kids. This is so out-of-character for the Western industry.”

Horses stabbed Krahenbuhl and Sully at The American 6 1 26

<title>Wyoming Barrel Racer Says She Was Approached By Alleged Horse-Stabber | Cowboy State Daily</title>

A Wyoming barrel racer was stunned to learn that the teen girl accused of stabbing three horses in Las Vegas over the weekend tried to borrow one of her horses last month. “It makes my skin crawl to realize she was stalking my horses, too,” she said.

Wyoming Barrel Racer Says She Was Approached By Alleged Horse-Stabber

Jen kocher

Jen Kocher

Public Safety

Bill Dohse was somewhere north of Billings, Montana, when he got the call Sunday that the body had been found.

As he always does while enroute to a search and rescue mission, Dohse pulled his pickup over on the side of the highway and stepped into the makeshift command center attached to his back bumper to start fielding phone calls.

While he wasn’t at the site of the search yet, his team was already busy coordinating where those on the ground should search for Brown’s body, leading to Sunday's sad conclusion.

He had been on his way to Oroville, Washington, to join the search for 42-year-old Matt Brown, former reality television star of Discovery Chanel’s “Alaskan Bush People.”

Brown had been missing since May 27, when he had reportedly taken his own life on the edge of the Okanogan River before being swiftly swept downstream in remote north-central Washington state near the Canadian border.

Dohse got word from search and rescue volunteer Chay Moore, who was on site at the river, when they discovered Brown’s body in the swift rapids.

The emotional gravity of that moment would catch up to all of them later, Dohse said.

At that time, it was all business. They had to notify the Okanogan Sheriff’s Office and safely recover the body as they waited for authorities to arrive.

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

Brown’s brother Noah was also on site when Matt Brown’s body was pulled from the water, and he identified him for authorities.

Another brother, Bear, who was not at the scene, took to social media early Sunday to share the sad news with fans.

 posted Sunday that it appeared that Matt had taken his own life.

"I would have never suspected he would have hurt himself, honestly,” Bear said. “He struggled for a long time, as I've mentioned.

“And I was so worried he was going to end up, you know, like, OD'd or something like that.”

Matt Brown was the oldest of Billy and Ami Brown’s seven children and starred alongside his family in the reality television series, which followed their attempts to survive in the remote Alaskan wilderness, 

The show ran for 14 seasons over the course of eight years before ending in 2022.

[{"type":"text","text":"Matt Brown stepped down in 2019 amid struggles with addiction."}]

After leaving television, Matt Brown turned to YouTube, documenting his life, recovery, and personal reflections across more than 1,000 videos.

[{"type":"text","text":"He amassed more than 65,000 subscribers and nearly 8 million views."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"No Official Cause"}]

The Okanogan County Sheriff’s Office put out a statement on May 31 confirming that Brown had been found.

The office further stated that the cause and manner of death is under investigation by the Okanogan County Coroner.

According to earlier statements from the sheriff, a witness reported seeing a man seated in the river’s shallows on May 27.

The witness looked away, then heard a loud noise. When looking back, the man was floating face-down in the current. A firearm was later recovered near the spot.

The search for Brown went on for three days and included a boat, two Jet Skis and a drone, according to a statement from the sheriff’s office, but those efforts hampered due to severe weather that led to dangerous search conditions with high water levels, swift currents and low visibility.

His body was ultimately found by volunteers searches who had been dispatched by Dohse and his team.

He and Eric Butt formed the Organized Search and Rescue (OSAR), a volunteer nonprofit that partners with search and rescue and K-9 teams from all over the country, including the United Cajun Navy, Sparks SAR, Team Texas K-9, and Sentinel Overwatch and others, which all coordinated on the search for Brown.

Both Dohse and Butt also run their own nonprofits.

Dohse, a former Fremont County Deputy Sheriff and Wyoming Highway Patrol trooper, heads up Find-911, a Cody-based search and rescue group founded in 2015 that specializes in finding missing people and pets.

Along with K-9 teams, Dohse uses specialized drones with advanced imaging software called Sixth Sense that he developed with the help of Amazon and Denver-based Clouse 303.

He’s been involved in several searches in Wyoming, including the 

search for missing 22-year-old hiker Austin King

, who vanished after summitting Eagle Peak in Yellowstone National Park in September 2024.

helped lead local efforts to find 50-year-old David Kelsey

, who went missing in late January and was found dead more than a week later in nearby Beck Lake.

Butt is chief executive officer at California-based nonprofit 

, which provides advanced medical care and technical rescues for wildland fire fighters and federal agencies.

They formed the collaboration two years ago with the goal of building a national coalition to help deploy specialized search and rescue groups that can quickly deploy in situations such as this one to help law enforcement.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Perfect Scenario"}]

Searches like this one perfectly fit their mission because of the remote location with limited search and rescue assets and resources.

“It’s in our wheelhouse,” Butt said. “This was why I was eager to jump on this case.”

Butt had his plane ticket bought and was just hours from heading to the airport to fly to Washington when news came that Brown had been found.

Forget that it was his birthday and that he was in the middle of celebrating with his family.

This is what they are compelled to do, he said. They don’t mind dropping everything to assist in these searches.

Dohse, meanwhile, pulled over in Montana to aid in the operation as all the partners communicated over chat and phone during Brown’s recovery.

He spends a lot of time on the side of the road and stops when needed to mobilize his group’s resources.

In fact, two days earlier, he’d been on his way to Thermopolis to aid in the search for a missing woman who was later found safe when word that Brown had been swept down the river.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Inside Track"}]

Dohse knew friends of the Brown family from other rescue efforts, which is how he initially got involved.

They decided to jump on this case because they had confirmation and eye-witnesses who saw Brown go into the river and knew he could be found.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"He also knew who to call."}]

Dohse set up his portable incident command trailer and spent about six hours on the phone and computer mobilizing assets and downloading CalTopo maps of the river and region and coordinating with all their search and rescue members.

Butt said that Dohse was able to determine where on the river he thought Brown’s body might be based on currents and sand bars, which helped searchers find him.

This is the whole point of OSAR, Dohse said, which is to form working collaborations to find specialized and trusted assets who can get there quickly and with the skillsets needed for that particular situation.

“We want to bridge that gap between private and government entities,” Butt said. “We want to work real closely with law enforcement, so that they don’t feel like we’re going to come in and steal their thunder.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"‘It’s Super Sad’"}]

In this case, they got lucky because they had a skilled search and rescue professional, Moore, who lives about an hour and a half from the area and was able to get there quickly.

Dohse made it clear that this is very much a group effort and couldn’t be done without everyone stepping in to do their part.

Not all searches end in a recovery, Butt noted, so this is the rare case where it’s cause for celebration despite the reality of the end goal mission.

Dohse admitted that the emotional aspect of finding Brown is tough, particularly when it comes to communicating with his brothers and family who are understandably devastated by their loss.

“It’s super sad,” Dohse said, admitting he gets emotional thinking of the impact on the family.

Still, it’s the wins that keep them going and the knowledge that they were able to bring a loved one home.

Matt Brown find 911 6 1 26

<title>Cody-Based Search And Rescue Team Helps Find Body Of ‘Alaskan Bush People’ Star | Cowboy State Daily</title>

A Cody-based search and rescue team helped coordinate the search for the body of “Alaskan Bush People” star Matt Brown. Brown’s body was found Sunday after he went missing four days earlier after allegedly shooting himself along a Washington state river.

Cody-Based Search And Rescue Team Helps Find Body Of ‘Alaskan Bush People’ Star

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's general assignment reporter, Clair McFarland.

Clair McFarland

Government & Politics

Politics

Update: A poll recipient told Cowboy State Daily on Monday that the "information" phase of the Chuck Gray poll leveled disparaging, inflammatory comments against candidates Steve Friess and Reid Rasner. Cowboy State Daily also 

In the first significant poll of Wyoming’s primary election season, Secretary of State Chuck Gray leads a crowded GOP U.S. House race with 21% support.

Casper businessman Reid Rasner is second at 14%, Teton County philanthropist Steve Friess at 10%, former Superintendent of Public Instruction Jillian Balow at 8%, and state Senate President Bo Biteman at 7%, according to a poll memo Gray sent to Cowboy State Daily.

The poll also shows 33% of those surveyed are “hard undecided.”

Fabrizio, Lee & Associates, a survey and research firm that ran polls for President Donald Trump’s campaigns,

 compiled the poll of 400 Wyoming Republican voters from May 13-16.

Casper-based veteran Kevin Christensen followed at 5%, with Moran rancher Frank Chapman at 1% and David Giralt at less than 1%.

The poll lists former state Rep. John Romero-Martinez at less than 1%, but Romero-Martinez did not register to run for the seat by Friday’s 5 p.m. deadline. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"But What ‘Information’?"}]

The pollster’s methodology says the survey 

 gave voters “information” about Gray, Rasner and Friess. 

Gray told Cowboy State Daily on Monday that the “information” included “different points on our records” but upon inquiry, he did not list those points by publication time.  

 jumped to 48% over “hard undecided” at 22%, with Rasner and Friess falling to 3% and 6% respectively.

Balow, whose record was apparently not included in the “information” discussion with each voter, rose to second place in the post-information survey at 8%.

“Chuck Gray is currently best positioned to win this race,” the pollster’s memo asserts.

Half the survey recipients were male, half were female, and 90% were white, says the poll memo.

“This race is about focusing on the truth — my track record of advancing the America First, conservative priorities of the people of Wyoming and my record of getting those priorities to the finish line,” wrote Gray in a statement. 

“I do not back down, even in the face of false attacks from insiders and the radical Left. That is what the people of Wyoming want, and that is why we are in a strong  lead,” he added.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Kinda Early"}]

Rob Wallace, a longtime Wyoming politico, cast skepticism on a poll conducted so early in the race.

The filing period for candidates ended Friday, and the primary election is Aug. 18.

Wallace served as assistant secretary to the U.S. 

nterior during the first Trump administration and years prior worked multiple political campaigns as an advisor for the late U.S. Sen. Malcolm Wallop. 

He also ran for Congress in 1994 and finished second in a crowded primary to Rep. Barbara Cubin.

“Polling this early in the campaign is like endorsements,” he said. “It’s good to have favorable information, but the real part of the race isn’t going to get going until probably after the Fourth of July.”

Wallace also hesitated to attach significance to the poll since the “information" the Fabrizio team gave voters is unknown.

“Without really understanding all the pieces of the poll, it’s hard to give a complete assessment of what it means,” he said.

Now that the filing period has ended, the other nine candidates in 

 are going to burst into public view as much as they can, Wallace said.

Between the poll and the filing deadline, two more candidates registered: Keith Goodenough and Richard Dodson.

[{"type":"text","text":"That puts the primary race at 10 contenders."}]

Whoever wins that race will have to face the Democratic candidate, plus the Libertarian nominee Shawn Johnson, who gained momentum when his party selected him unanimously at its Sunday convention.

“There are a couple reasons for putting a favorable poll out” at this phase, said Wallace. One reason could be to dissuade others from running; and another could be to reassure one’s base and supporters.

“It’s like a good-news story for the people you want to attract,” he added.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Hey, Trump"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"The big unknown, said Wallace, is what Trump will do."}]

The president has endorsed Megan Degenfelder for governor over her GOP opponents.

[{"type":"text","text":"He has not endorsed anyone in the crowded U.S. House primary race."}]

Friess, Rasner, Gray, Balow, and Biteman all have dispatched messaging indicating alignment with Trump.

Rasner and Gray tout themselves as MAGA-style candidates. Biteman has for years had a collaborative relationship with the president. And Friess reportedly helped Trump formulate executive orders ahead of his 2017 inauguration.

Christensen is a strong outlier there: he condemned the president’s April social media post of an AI-generated image depicting Trump as a Jesus-like figure, healing an ailing man while others circle him in gestures of prayer.

A Trump endorsement, said Wallace, “could be a game-changer if he decides to do it. And maybe he won’t — maybe he won’t endorse anybody.”

Chuck Gray 6 1 26

<title>Chuck Gray Leads U.S. House Poll With 21%, Followed By Rasner And Friess | Cowboy State Daily</title>

In the first significant poll of Wyoming’s primary election season, Secretary of State Chuck Gray leads a crowded GOP U.S. House race with 21% support. Casper businessman Reid Rasner is second at 14%, and Teton County's Steve Friess is third at 10%.

Chuck Gray Leads U.S. House Poll With 21%, Followed By Rasner And Friess

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily reporter, Jackie Dorothy.

Jackie Dorothy

Wyoming Life

Around Wyoming

John “Josh” Deane was 16 years old when he left his home in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, for the Wild West in 1872, lured there by the adventures he had read about in the 10-cent novels of his day. 

Instead of the excitement he dreamed of, the teenager found life a struggle just to survive.

Deane eventually took a job for $75 a month driving freight, a profession known as "bull whacking." 

By 1876, Deane was 20 years old and landed an opportunity that he considered an advancement in life. 

He was hired as a government dispatch carrier at the princely sum of $125 a month. 

In 1928, Deane told his story to a biographer about he carried one especially important dispatch, related in his own words in the book “The Mayor of Meeteetse.” 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Rumors Of A Fight"}]

Deane had arrived at Fort Brown in the middle of June 1876 and was told by Col. Julius Mason to remain a few days. 

Mason had just arrived himself from Fort Riley, Kansas, and was concerned because there were rumors of a fight with the Indians in the Rosebud country. 

“A little later, he decided to send me to the camp of Custer and Reno and told me to select an Indian to accompany me,” Deane said. “I picked Niogen Doget, a Shoshone, and we started out on the morning of June 24, with our saddle horses and one pack horse.”

The two men had orders to reach their destination as quickly as possible, so they traveled fast and light. 

Crossing Cottonwood Creek, they made our way up the slope of the Owl Creek Range. 

On the summit of the mountains, Deane described pausing to look down for the first time into the Big Horn Basin which would one day be his future home. 

“From my point of vantage, I could see the Big Horn River and could trace its course for many miles, by the line of cottonwood timber along its banks,” Deane said. “Not a human being, nor a sign of human habitation, was visible in all the valley.”

As Deane and Niogen Doget took in the view, they were unaware of the danger that Custer, Reno and the others would be facing the next day along the Little Bighorn River.

Deane said that the Pryor Mountains were dimly visible, and the Big Horn Range, with snow-capped Cloud’s Peak, rising in its midst, was easily discerned. 

Only a few miles beyond the smooth northern slope of the range on which they stood, the men could see the peculiar, brick-red, conical hills of the hot springs region, in which the town of Thermopolis would later spring up. 

They descended the northern slope of the mountains, passing close to the spot where Col. Torrey’s Embar Ranch would soon to be situated, the same ranch that Butch Cassidy and others of the Hole-in-the-Wall gang would be working on in the 1890s. 

He forged unnamed creeks and swam rivers in his haste to reach the camps. 

As the two men traveled with the dispatch from Fort Brown on June 25 and 26, they were completely unaware that the Battle of the Little Bighorn, known as the Battle of the Greasy Grass by the Lakota Sioux, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho tribes, was being fought. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Reno Sick in Tent"}]

On June 27, Deane said that he and Niogen Doget reached the head of what is now called Reno Creek. 

They followed down a long bench, hunting the camp of Custer and Reno. 

“As we drew near the camp, which was on the bank of the Little Big Horn River, I could see dead horses and other traces of a fight,” Deane said years later in 1928. “Sergeant Ned Bowling, whose widow is still living in Lander, Wyoming, greeted me and pointed out Reno’s tent.”

Deane said he hurried over to the tent but was surprised when Reno’s orderly would not let him inside. 

Deane was told that Reno was ill and unable to receive dispatches. 

“I was sent to the second in command to whom I handed over the small locked pouch, used by the government for secret messages, and the sealed envelope containing the key,” Deane said. “As he tore open the envelope, I remarked that I would look around a little and return later.”

John “Josh” Deane came West looking for adventure — and got more than he bargained for when he took a job as a military dispatch rider. It was 150 years ago that he found himself carrying the first message about Custer’s last stand to Wyoming’s Fort Brown.  

Daily Cartoon: Thursday, January 9, 2025

More in Daily Cartoon

Daily Cartoon 1: Tuesday, June 2, 2026

Daily Cartoon 2: Tuesday, June 2, 2026

Daily Cartoon 1: Monday, June 1, 2026

Daily Cartoon 2: Monday, June 1, 2026

Most read