Dear editor:
My great grandfather escaped the Dust Bowl in Kansas by coming to Wyoming and getting a job on the rail line that ran from Laramie to Encampment.
My dad grew up in Encampment, hunting with his father and grandfather in the Snowy Range. They did not have money, and when they wanted meat to eat, they hunted deer and elk.
My dad has lots of great stories about hunting growing up, which he has shared with me over the past 30-plus years that he and I have hunted together.
For instance, when my dad was a kid, his family had a giant, gentle mule. When my grandfather shot his first bull elk — they were very rare in those days — he hitched the mule to the dead elk to drag it out of the forest.
But when the normally calm mule started to walk and noticed this giant elk following it, the mule freaked out and took off through the forest so fast my grandfather couldn’t keep up.
He just heard the smashing of trees and branches in the distance until the elk got hung up so bad, the mule couldn’t go any further and my grandfather could catch up.
Hunting in the mountains on public land in Wyoming has been part of my life, my family, my community, and my culture for as long as I can remember.
And now that huge part of me is under threat because Congress — with the full support of Wyoming Senators Barrasso and Lummis and Representative Hageman — is looking to sell our public lands out from under us.
Like many hunters in Wyoming, I had heard about the threat of Congress trying to sell our public lands for a few weeks now, and it concerned me. But it didn’t really hit me until I saw this map, which shows exactly which lands would go up for sale if that part stays in the “Big Beautiful Bill” that Congress is trying to pass right now.
The proposed public land for sale includes land that my family has hunted in Wyoming since we arrived here, four generations ago. The idea that this land is going to be sold off — likely to some rich people from out of state for their vacation homes — makes me beyond mad. I am physically sick.
The land where my family has hunted for generations in the Snowies is not the only land going up for sale that I have a connection to.
I grew up in Rock Springs and often hunted in the Wyoming Range by the Grey’s River, which has some of the premiere hunting in the state. A huge chunk of that is set to be sold off.
And some of the very remote country that I hunt today east of there (not going to get too specific here, for reasons other hunters will understand) is headed for the auction block, as well.
I have heard the excuse from politicians that this land is meant to be sold for housing.
But the places I’m talking about, where my family has chased huge mule deer bucks and tremendous bull elk through treacherous, rugged mountain terrain, is not for housing.
If anything, some millionaire could build a mansion in the valley bottom and have the mountains and their wildlife privately to themselves.
It seems to me that, for most people in Wyoming, it hasn’t really sunk in that this is happening. Public lands are such a huge, fundamental part of many of our lives, it seems simply impossible that they will be taken away.
But it’s happening right now — or, there is a very, very serious threat of it, at least. If Congress passes this bill with the public lands sale part in it, the deal is done.
You probably saw in the news that, recently, there are huge protests in places like Los Angeles where people are burning cars in the streets. That kind of thing is not going to happen in Wyoming.
But if politicians take away public lands that we, as Americans, all own, and that people like me in Wyoming have generations-deep connections to, I worry about what will happen when people with guns and four-wheel-drive trucks head out for hunting season as they always have and show up where they have hunted for years — or, where their family has hunted for a century — only to find locked gates and “No Trespassing” signs on what had always been public land.
It is not too late to stop this, but it is getting close. We, as hunters and Wyomingites and Americans, have to speak up.
Sincerely,
Nate Martin
