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[{"type":"text","text":"Sometimes the intrusive thoughts win...."}]

Driving 6 28 26

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

<title>Today In Driving: Sunday, June 28, 2026 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Sometimes the intrusive thoughts win....

Today In Driving: Sunday, June 28, 2026

 Sometimes the intrusive thoughts win....

Heinz mark

Mark Heinz

Wildlife

A wildlife rescue hospital on the fringe of the Denver metro area’s urban sprawl is accustomed to taking on tough cases. A young red fox with a severely broken leg is among the latest.

Rocky Mountain Wildlife Alliance’s critter hospital in Sedalia, Colorado, has taken in 627 patients so far this year, founder and executive director Emily Davenport told Cowboy State Daily.

This spring, the center treated a bald eagle 

, after eating a carcass with bullet fragments in it.

June and July are typically the busiest time of year, with roughly 200 animals per month arriving. Roughly one-third have suffered injuries from vehicle collisions or some other sort of physical trauma, she said.

The young fox (or kit) was likely born in April and was brought in June 6, Davenport said. The kit is believed to have been struck by a vehicle at a remote county road intersection near the small prairie town of Elbert, Colorado.  

At the hospital, he joined a coyote pup recovering from head trauma after being hit by a vehicle, a red-tailed hawk that suffered bone fractures in a vehicle strike, and many others.

“We’ve had 110 different species in this year. That’s a 26% increase in the number of species over last year,” Davenport said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Little Fella, Big Surgery"}]

Davenport runs the center with the philosophy of returning wildlife to the wild whenever possible. She likes to give every animal a chance, even against long odds.

The fox kit was such a case. He had severe bone fractures in his right front leg.

An orthopedic surgeon was brought in to realign the bones and install a metal plate to keep them in place. The center raided enough money through donations to pay for the surgery.

“The surgery went well and there were no issues. He was standing on the leg the day after the surgery,” Davenport said.

“We take on some of the more difficult cases, where other shelters might euthanize (the injured animals,” she added.

But she sees it as a matter of doing right by wildlife.

Some might argue for “nature taking its course” with injured animals, and Davenport understands that, when the circumstances are natural.

“I’m a big believer that it’s not nature taking its course if an animal is hit by a car or bird flies into a window. That’s human-caused,” she said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"‘A Pretty Good Plan’"}]

The plan is to keep the little fox at the center until late August or early September, helping it to learn how to hunt and then turn it back loose in the wild, Davenport said.

Biologist Robert Crabtree told Cowboy State Daily he thinks the fox has good chances of survival.

“It it’s a pretty good plan. The fox should be fine, as long as it’s learned to hunt on its own,” said Crabtree, the founder, chief scientist and president of the Yellowstone Ecological Research Center in Bozeman, Montana.

Canines such as wolves are on the “social end of the spectrum” and are raised into supportive packs, he said.

Foxes are on the “more solitary end of the canine spectrum, he said.

However, they typically mate for life and “dad is involved” in helping to raise the kits, he said.

Kits typically disperse on their own in September, Crabtree said.

There might be one, usually a female, that still hangs around with the parents.

“There is often a helper, that helps mom at the fox den,” he said.

Retired biologist Franz Camenzind of Jackson also gave the fox kit good chances of returning to the wild on his own.

“If it’s physically all good, it should have a good chance, said Camenzind, who studied coyote behavior in and around the National Elk Refuge near Jackson.

Foxes also adapt fairly well to human development, so long as they can find natural food sources, such as mice, and stay out of trouble, he said.

“If there is a group that’s trying to heal an animal like a fox and put it back into the wild, I would certainly encourage it,” he said.

Davenport said foxes play a vital role in the ecosystem and can be beneficial to humans.

“Not only are they cute to boot, they serve a really important ecosystem function with pest control,” by devouring mice and voles, she said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Urban Sprawl"}]

Davenport doesn’t expect business at the wildlife hospital to slow down anytime soon.

The Denver Metro area is growing, with no end in sight.

“As the human environment expands, we’re seeing more and more conflict with wildlife,” she said.

There are “lots of massive housing developments bringing changes that animals can’t adapt to quickly," she said.

Sedalia is nestled in the foothills of the Rocky Mountain front and has so far escaped the worst of it, and Davenport hopes it stays that way.

"We’re in this amazing little rural pocket surrounded by the Denver metro area,” she said.

Rocky Mountain Wildlife Alliance 685362380 959399060172653 9117888975218967458 n 6 27 26

<title>Urban Sprawl Is Flooding Wildlife Rehab Center With Eagles, Foxes and Coyotes | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Amid Denver's urban sprawl, Rocky Mountain Wildlife Alliance is rescuing a fast-growing number of injured animals. The animal hospital has taken in 627 patients this year with roughly one-third having suffered injuries from vehicle collisions.

Urban Sprawl Is Flooding Wildlife Rehab Center With Eagles, Foxes and Coyotes

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

Renée Jean

Wyoming Life

CHEYENNE — The most prominent words on the Kenefick green Union Pacific caboose FTSX 812, now being restored for the city's 15th Street Railcar Experience, are also the oddest.

“DO NOT HUMP,” they say, in all capital letters.

Train restoration expert Mike Pannell knew the phrase would raise some eyebrows. He even offered to paint it out.

“They decided to keep it,” Pannell said. 

That decision preserved the car’s historic integrity, which made Pannell happy. But he’s also quick to explain what those words actually mean.

“See how it’s lower in the middle there?” he said, pointing to the midsection of the caboose. “So, North Platte has a hump yard, which is a yard with a hump in the middle. They would push boxcars over the hump and let them roll free to guide them into different tracks without using locomotives.”

This caboose, loaded with boxy equipment slung low under its belly, was a bad candidate for that approach.

“You’d have grounded it in the middle,” Pannell said. “So you couldn’t have done that with them.”

The caboose is one of three railcars whose exteriors Pannell is restoring for the 15th Street Railcar experience, which is being installed starting Saturday.

The $5 million project is part of a massive downtown revitalization effort that seeks to not only celebrate Cheyenne’s deep railroad roots, but also create a destination that can attract visitors to West 15th Street.

New lighting, updated crosswalks, and streetscape elements, as well as better traffic flow for pedestrians and vehicles, are also part of the project, which was funded in part with a $618,400 Economic Development Administration grant and 6th Penny funds earmarked for downtown projects.

Not everyone has been sold on the railcar experience, however, and the project has stirred some debate. 

Questions have centered on whether railcars are the best use of limited downtown space and public tax dollars, as well as concerns about lost parking and the fate of long-running attractions such as the Cheyenne Gunslingers.

Roger Barnes, with the Gunslingers, told Cowboy State Daily on Friday the Gunslingers won’t move right away, but will eventually shift performances to the corner of Thomes and West 15th Street.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Strong Tourism Potential"}]

The seed for the 15th Street Railcar project was planted in 2021, when Visit Cheyenne developed a master plan for Laramie County. One of its pillars was creating a new visitor experience, especially around railroad history. 

Former Visit Cheyenne CEO Domenic Bravo, who is now Wyoming Office of Tourism Director, said the idea was simple but powerful.

“The idea was to bring actual rail cars onto 15th Street, so people can see them,” he said. “Because, they can’t really access the rail yard there that Union Pacific manages.”

Visit Cheyenne CEO Jim Walter said he believes the tourism opportunity is strong. 

Railfans are particularly dedicated tourists whose niche passions drive them to stay longer, travel farther, and invest heavily in localized experiences and memorabilia. 

National data from the Mandala Research Group and the U.S. Cultural & Heritage Tourism Marketing Council finds that heritage tourists like railfans tend to spend on average 60% more than other types of leisure travelers. 

Railfans often travel long distances to track down specific locomotives, such as Union Pacific’s Big Boy 4014, or to visit heritage railroad towns like Cheyenne to check out its museums. That Cheyenne has an operating Steam Shop is unique. 

The companions of railfans, who are not always train enthusiasts, tend to spread out to other opportunities like shopping, dining or other attractions.

Walter has seen firsthand just how much people love trains. 

“Every year, we get a large volume of visitors who come to Cheyenne for our railroad history,” he said. “They come for Depot Days and they come at all times of the year to visit the Depot Museum.”

Many times, Walter has found himself talking to visitors at the Depot who are asking him questions about Big Boy, the Steam Shop, and Cheyenne’s railroad history. Some of those are retired railroaders, chasing railroad history across the nation.

“The only reason Cheyenne is where it is, is because of our railroad history,” Walter said. “It wasn’t the most hospitable place to start a civilized settlement. But the railroad needing to cross Sherman Hill … set Cheyenne up to just have this really pivotal and cool role in railroad history.”

Inside Pannell’s Railcar Restoration Shop

Pannell, who is originally from the UK, is among those attracted to Cheyenne because of its railroad history. Now president of the High Plains Railroad Preservation Association, he’s well-known for his train-car restoration projects, which take place on a historic parcel that once housed the 565th Strategic Missile Squadron.

The silo is long enough to fit three train cars on one side and three on the other, with room to walk between. That’s made it the ideal train-restoration workshop for Pannell, who has multiple projects going.

The 15th Street cars have been challenging, he said, and have been a sprint ever since the project began in October.

All three cars were in bad shape when they arrived, Pannell said, after sitting in Union Pacific’s Cheyenne railyard for nearly two decades. They’d been battered by wind and were rusting in some places. Many had also been put to secondary uses at some point in their history, degrading their historic integrity.

“Every window on this entire car is brand new,” he said, pointing at the Pullman SP10041 car. “Brand-new frames and everything, because the original frames had been butchered. And they put plexiglass in and added metal around the insides.”

New, rubber roofs have been put on the Pullman cars, and every non-historic vent and hole stripped out.

The caboose was in the worst shape of the three and took the most time to restore. It had once been part of a train “demolition derby,” Pannell explained. It had been used to brake other trains by letting them slam into it.

“It really got hammered horribly,” he said. “It had been smashed in on both edges repeatedly. It was really quite bent. You couldn’t even get into the thing.”

It took Pannell’s welder hundreds of hours to pull out the smashed and bent steel to save the caboose. New ladders and steps, which were crafted to match the originals, were added, ends were rebuilt, and new sections placed. 

“We couldn’t paint it and leave it looking beaten up like it was,” Pannell said. 

Pannell used authentic colors for each car: Pullman green for SP113 and SP1004, and Kenefick green for the caboose. 

The latter has special meaning. The vivid turquoise green was the color scheme envisioned by John C. Kenefick, Union Pacific president from 1971 to 1986, to identify maintenance cars.

“People have said to us, ‘Why is it green',” Pannell said. “It’s a tribute to all the maintenance crews who never get any recognition.”

A recent visit by a retired maintenance crew chief has vindicated that decision, in Pannell’s mind.

“He came out here and got really emotional when he saw the car,” he said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Coming Home Soon"}]

On Saturday, all three cars will finally come off their “Jenga” towers made of huge railroad ties. Wheels will go back under the cars for their journey to their new home in Cheyenne in the area between the Depot and Bent Avenue. 

Pannell expects the move to take at least three days to get each car carefully set in place on tracks that have been installed for the display.

For now, the cars will be largely exterior display pieces. The interiors were already stripped out when they arrived at Pannell’s operation. But Pannell is thinking about the future, and he’d like to see a hobby shop combined with a cafe or coffee shop catering to railroad enthusiasts.

But there would be challenges to that kind of dream, he added. The cars aren’t ADA compliant, and doing so would require cutting into them in ways that would destroy historic integrity.

Even display activity has value, Bravo said. 

“Every extra 15 minutes is holding a visitor in our state,” he said. “That turns into ‘Well, now let’s go to the restaurant for lunch or dinner,’ or ‘We need to stay an extra night so we can hit all the museums.’”

An extra 30 minutes or so in the downtown area translates to extra cups of coffee or soda, Walter added, and perhaps a sandwich as well.

Cheyenne Restored Train cars 20260624 143304 6 27 26

<title>Inside Cheyenne’s $5 Million Railcar Experience Taking Shape For 15th Street | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Installation began Saturday on Cheyenne’s new 15th Street Railcar Experience, a $5 million downtown project aimed at celebrating the city’s railroad roots. A Union Pacific caboose and two Pullman cars have been restored for the destination.

Inside Cheyenne’s $5 Million Railcar Experience Taking Shape For 15th Street

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.

B&C has awards record books, which are issued every few years, and then the all-time records book.

An antelope’s net score must be 80 inches to qualify for the awards records, and 82 inches for the all-time records.

Hicks’ trophy antelope so far include three awards record bucks and 13 all-time record bucks.

His largest buck so far scored 87 inches net, 88 inches gross. He shot it in Carbon County in 1999.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"‘The Golden Square’"}]

While antelope can be found just about anywhere in Wyoming, the best place to find B&C trophy bucks is in the “golden square” at the heart of the Red Desert country in Carbon, Sweetwater and Natrona counties, Hicks said.

It’s thought that about 90% of a buck’s horn growth takes place during their first three years. Bucks have to be roughly 5 years old before they start to hit true trophy sized, Hicks said.

The peak years for antelope in Wyoming were from about 2000 to 2008, he said. There were several mild winters during that period.

However, a harsh winter during the last year of that streak knocked the herd back, he said.

An absolutely brutal winter hit the heart of Wyoming’s antelope country in 2022-2023. That sent trophy buck numbers plummeting, Hicks said.

The herds are still in recovery mode, and although there aren’t as many bucks that are old enough yet to be huge, “they’re out there,” he said.

Eastman agreed that overall numbers are down. This past mild winter, however, with abundant food for antelope probably contributed to robust horn growth.

Buck antelope shed the black outer sheath of their horns in October and November, and they grow back over the winter, Eastman said.

“The numbers might be down, but I think the quality of the bigger bucks this fall is going to be nuts,” he said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Mass Matters"}]

To the untrained eye, a buck’s trophy quality might be all about the length of the horns, Hicks said.

When it comes to judging horn length in the field, consider that the top of a buck’s ears is about 7 inches, he said.

So, a buck that has as much horn above the tips of his ears as below them might be entering trophy territory, Hicks said.

But those circumference measurements, or mass of the horns, it what really adds up, he said.

That can be devilishly difficult to judge in the field, Hicks added. A quarter-inch at each of the four circumference points on a buck’s horns can add an additional 2 inches to the score.

However, “trying to determine a quarter-inch difference through binoculars at 400 yards is extremely hard,” Hicks said.

“I tell novice hunters to look for a lot of black,” he said. Or in other words, signs of real mass in the horns. “Our antelope in Wyoming tend to have shorter antlers, and more mass."

As are as horn length in Wyoming goes, “16 inches is rare, 17 inches is really rare, and 18 inches is unheard of,” Hicks said.

Extremely mild winters with plentiful feed are what produces world-record setting monster antelope bucks in Arizona and New Mexico, Eastman said.

“There was a movement at one time to recognize them as their own subspecies, because they’re so ridiculously huge,” Eastman said. "Their horns will be 18, maybe 19 inches long, they’re just insane.”

The biggest antelope of all time came from the southwest and was in the neighborhood of 97 or 98 inches, Eastman said.

“As far as I know, no antelope has ever broken 100 inches, but they’ve come close,” he said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Wyoming Antelope Are Tough"}]

Even so, Wyoming’s antelope have bigger bodies than their southwestern counterparts, Eastman said.

“Our bucks are big, horse-headed animals built for the winters," he said.

Wyoming antelope can survive conditions ranging from 50 degrees below zero in the winter, to over 100 degrees at the height of summer, he said.

“Pound-for-pound, they are the toughest animals in North America, in my opinion,” Eastman said.

Hicks said antelope are perhaps his favorite animals. Even when it’s not hunting season, he loves watching them.

“I invented distracted driving,” he said. “I’ve probably spotted 100 or more B&C trophy book-class Wyoming antelope bucks, just alongside the highways.”

Antelope meat gets a bad rap, but Hicks thinks that’s unfair.

The key is to “make a clean kill” and get the meat cooled off as soon as possible.

“If it’s a really hot day, I’ll get the meat off the bone and into a cooler right away,” he said.

When it’s handled correctly, antelope is some of the best wild game there is, Hicks said.

And he still hopes to add to his collection of record-book bucks.

“The good Lord willing, and the Wyoming Game and Fish Department still providing the opportunity, I’m going to hunt antelope until the day that I can’t walk out of the house,” he said.

Larry Hicks Antelope 4 6 27 26

<title>Wyoming Hunting: Larry Hicks Is King Of Trophy Antelope With 16 Record-Book Bucks | Cowboy State Daily</title>

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.

Wyoming Hunting: Larry Hicks Is King Of Trophy Antelope With 16 Record-Book Bucks

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's Feature Reporter, Andrew Rossi.

Andrew Rossi

Around Wyoming

New research indicates that Wyoming’s prehistoric hell pigs had different diets based on their size. The bigger they were, the wider the menu.

Brynn Wooten, a Ph.D. candidate at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, published 

 in Archaeotherium, a prehistoric mammal that’s better known as “the North American Hell Pig.”

“They look similar to pigs, but they’re actually more closely related to whales and hippos,” Wooten told Cowboy State Daily. “They were one of the largest things capable of eating meat in their ecosystem.”

Wooten’s study focused on the teeth of hell pigs, including specimens in the collections of the University of Wyoming’s Geological Museum. She studied the microwear on the tooth surfaces of multiple species to get an idea of what they were biting and crunching.

[{"type":"text","text":"Even she was surprised by the results."}]

“I was shocked,” she said. “We found a really interesting phenomenon that is uncommon in modern mammals. In fact, we actually see the exact opposite. It’s surprising and really interesting.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Hell Pig Person"}]

Hell pigs are an extinct group of large mammals that were widespread in North America, Europe and Asia from 36 to 19 million years ago. The first fossils were found near Fort Laramie in 1850. A food cache fossil is on display at the Wyoming Dinosaur Center in Thermopolis.

These had enormous heads with thick jaws and powerful teeth. If that wasn’t frightening enough, the largest entelodonts could grow to the size of a horse.

Hell pigs weren't quite that big, but it was one of the largest and most successful mammals in North America during the Eocene and Oligocene periods. Its fossils are common in 

, which stretches across the western U.S.

Wooten became enamored with “hell pigs” when she saw their massive skeletons at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science as a child.  Her latest research is the first chapter of her Ph.D. dissertation on hell pigs.

“When I go to conferences, I’ll tell people when and what I’m presenting, and they’ll say, ‘Oh, you’re the hell-pig person,’ and get really excited.”

That excitement stems from the fact that while hell pits and other like creatures are legendary in paleontology, there’s been little research done on them. Wooten’s focus on the paleoecology of hell pigs is, in many ways, the first of its kind.

“Everything else has been inferred by looking at and measuring bones,” she said. “I'm taking a more quantitative approach, and that’s excited a lot of people because we’ll get to learn a little bit more about a truly lost lineage.”

The first fossils of the prehistoric mammal known as the "North American Hell Pig" were found near Fort Laramie, Wyoming in 1850. Scientists say although they look similar to pigs, they are more closely related to whales and hippos.

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