It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming for Wednesday, December 10th. I’m Mac Watson.
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Roping and riding a terrorized cow moose and then dragging it gave cowboys on a Uinta County ranch enough of a thrill to capture the event on video. Cowboy State Daily’s Dale Killingbeck reports that now those videos are being used to charge the trio with felony violations for cruelty to animals.
“There is video that came up because of an investigation later, like a year or two later, by the Wyoming Game and Fish. And this video shows these cowboys lassoing the moose, and one of them riding it and spurring it. And then on another date, this was back in May 2021 on another date, another of the three has his Lariat around it and is pulling the moose while the other cowboy videos it…Wyoming, Game and Fish is saying that these violations, there's a felony involved in against all three of these people…they're facing up to two years in prison and a $10,000 fine.”
Justin Martin, of Evanston, the registered agent for M Arrow Ranch, Range H. Martin of Evanston and Kylan W. Platt of Malad City, Idaho, have all been ordered to appear on Jan. 15, 2026, to face charges. The men faces a variety of charges, including accessory before the fact to felony cruelty to animals, accessory before or after the fact to wanton taking of a big game animal, and felony cruelty to animals, among others.
Read the full story HERE.
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Winds as high as 105 mph were recorded on Tuesday, and most of I-80 and I-25 were closed to high-profile vehicles because of gusting winds. Cowboy State Daily’s Andrew Rossi reports that meteorologists say it's a result of cold air trading places with warm air, and there’s more ahead.
“We had a surge of cold air from the Arctic sweep over Wyoming during the weekend, and now there's a warm surge of air sweeping in from the Pacific. That's why Don Day, Cowboy State Daily meteorologist, calls these 50/50 days. If you have a day in winter that's 50 degrees, you have 50 mile per hour winds, because that's what happens when the warm and cold air masses are trading places. It gets super windy in Wyoming because of the winds aloft and the strong jet stream.”
Wind gusts as high as 105 mph were recorded on the Chief Joseph Highway, north of Cody. Mount Coffin, one of the windiest spots in Wyoming, experienced wind gusts up to 86 mph.
Read the full story HERE.
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During a tour of the Idaho National Lab on Monday, U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright described Wyoming as a “tremendous energy state.” Cowboy State Daily’s David Madison reports that the Energy Secretary also urged support for nuclear fuel manufacturing.
“When asked specifically about where Wyoming fit into all this, we talked about BWXT. BWXT has work going on out at the Idaho lab. They're providing fuel for a couple of projects, and they have this proposal in Gillette…his advice to Wyoming is, ‘Get in the fuel manufacturing business. Welcome BWXT to your state.’ He said that he's done work in Gillette himself and hopes to see that that project goes forward.”
Energy Secretary Chris Wright toured the Idaho National Lab Monday with INL Director John Wagner, U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) and Idaho Gov. Brad Little.
Read the full story HERE.
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I’ll be back with more news from Cowboy State Daily, after this….
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The future of Cheyenne’s Outlaw Saloon, Wyoming’s largest bar, is settled. Cowboy State Daily’s Renee Jean reports that The Maury and Bonnie Brown Foundation purchased the building and will turn it into a rec center.
“Cheyenne, the capital city of Wyoming, does not have a community rec center. There are much smaller communities that have rec centers in Wyoming, but the capital of the state does not have one, and this will finally put a bow on that…I'm told that the facility will be state of the art. It's going to include an indoor walking track, which is something Cheyenne also lacks…t's going to have an aquatic center, multiple volleyball and basketball courts, daycare, pretty much everything that the YMCA used to have when it was open.”
Peaches Tyrrell, who's overseeing the project, tells Cowboy State Daily that it will be a "YMCA on steroids."
Read the full story HERE.
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An overloaded semi-truck with 23 violations backed into a Laramie County Sheriff’s Office patrol car Monday during a traffic stop. Cowboy State Daily’s Dale Killingbeck reports that Sheriff Brian Kozak said the truck had numerous safety violations and was driven by an undocumented Nicaraguan man who was arrested.
“This truck that had 23 violations. His deputy deputies pulled it over in Burns Wyoming at five in the morning on Monday, and it had three flat tires. The brake light didn't work. The taillight didn't work, and when the deputy pulled up behind it, pulled it over, he's walking up to the cab, the truck rolls backwards into his patrol vehicle and smashes the front of the patrol vehicle. The truck had faulty brakes as well. Turns out that the driver and his passenger could not speak English. They were both undocumented aliens, one from Nicaragua, one from Mexico, both of them being turned over to ICE.”
Sheriff Kozak says the growing number of illegal drivers and trucks on the road made him decide to post a Facebook video about the incident.
Read the full story HERE.
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Archaeologists are searching for a person who stole a human skull from an 1,700-year-old burial site in Utah. Cowboy State Daily’s Andrew Rossi reports that officials call the act “grave robbing” and “disgusting.”
“If they do end up finding this person, they're going to face a bevy of charges. Most of these archeological sites are protected by state or federal law. But the interesting thing is that the way that the Utah authorities found out about this is that the person who did it posted a photo of themselves with it of themselves with the skull on Facebook, so they actually have a picture of the perpetrator, although they haven't been able to identify them yet. That, in and of itself, is a Class B misdemeanor. You can't share photos of human remains online, so even just the photo that got them implicated is going to be worthy of a misdemeanor charge, let alone the fact that they stole human remains from a protected archeological site. That's, as many Wyoming and Utah archeologists put it, it's disgusting, and they can't fathom why anybody would have the temptation.”
The Utah School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration is offering a $3,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the individual who stole a human skull from a protected archaeological site near Kanab, Utah.
Read the full story HERE.
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Someone who bought a Cowboy Draw ticket at the Daniel Junction Foodmart in Sublette County is $2.2 million dollars richer. But as Cowboy State Daily’s Jimmy Orr reminds us, we may never know who the winner is.
“Who knows who it is? No one knows they sold 200 of those tickets for the cowboy draw, and so somebody's richer, but again, we'll never know we, we may never know who it is, because Wyoming is one of those states where you can remain anonymous. So congratulations to that person. As one person posted on Facebook. We'd like to be your new best friend, and all of us at Cowboy State Daily would like to be their best friend.”
The winning ticket was pulled on Monday and is worth $2,277,420 in the Cowboy Draw game.
Read the full story HERE.
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And that’s today’s news. Get your free digital subscription to Wyoming's only statewide newspaper by hitting the Daily Newsletter button on Cowboy State Daily Dot Com - and you can watch this newscast every day by clicking Subscribe on our YouTube channel, or listen to us on your favorite podcast app. Thanks for watching - I’m Mac Watson, for Cowboy State Daily.
