It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming for Monday, September 28th. I’m Mac Watson.
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Major League Baseball’s idea of building a baseball park in Grand Teton National Park will backfire, local residents said Sunday. Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports that MLB has approached the Trump administration about hosting a game in the national park but locals say the idea is “abhorrent.”
“Senator Mike Gierau was the person that called the Major League Baseball idea abhorrence, saying baseball and national parks should not mix. The Washington Post had reported that it was MLB's idea, but administration officials were scouting Grand Teton National Park, and that one of the sites that they were looking at was less than pristine. Already, it was already a disturbed area. Rob Wallace, former Assistant Secretary of the Interior, said that they're probably not going to get through all the legal hurdles that are in place to protect national parks.”
State Sen. Mike Gierau, of Jackson, tells Cowboy State Daily that he confirmed the administration’s visit with a park official. Gierau said he is an ardent fan of both national parks and baseball, but added, “When it comes to epically bad marketing ideas in the American experience, I put it next to New Coke.”
Read the full story HERE.
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When a mountain lion attacked his dog, Adam Borkhus of Cody kicked it in the face and the lion turned on him. Outdoors Reporter Mark Hein reports that Borkhus says he didn’t feel safe using a firearm or bear spray. So he did the next best thing which resulted in a 20-second ground battle — and excruciating rabies shots later.
“He's not a small guy. He described himself as six three and somewhere around 320 pounds. him and Diesel were headed up to South Fork, so he stopped and and let Diesel out of the jeep, you know, so Diesel could you know do his thing, and he said he he heard his dog starting to yelp, and then so so we went around the front of his jeep and and found a mountain lion on top of it. He didn't feel safe using either the gun or the bear spray, so he just walked over and kicked the mountain line in the face, and it came at him. And he said it hit him in the chest and knocked me on my ass.”
Wyoming Game and Fish investigated the encounter and in a release said, “Based on the investigation, this is most likely a case of a surprise encounter with a mountain lion that led to aggressive-defensive behavior by the mountain lion.”
Read the full story HERE.
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Pardoned mechanic Matt Geouge has built a device that blocks vehicles from spying on their drivers, because in 2018 his fiancée realized investigators were following her. Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports that now he is bracing for steep opposition from manufacturers as he unveils his new product.
“Now that he's kind of leaving the diesel delete world behind, which burned him so hard, his new venture is to invent a device that stops your car from tracking you, spying on you. He said that the distinctive feature of this device is that it has an on-off switch. Let's say you're having a private business conversation, or you just don't feel like being tracked and your data shared that day. You can flip it off.”
Geouge had started a small-time diesel operation in his mother’s garage in Hendersonville, North Carolina, his senior year of high school. As emissions systems on diesel trucks grew more constraining throughout the early 2000s, Geouge started writing “delete” software tunes that let trucks disobey the systems and regain their horsepower.
Read the full story HERE.
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Wyoming Highway Patrol’s new chief Col. KC Ramsey will inherit 47 trooper vacancies, dispatch openings, and an overtime crunch. Cowboy State Daily’s Kolby Fedore reports that the new chief says his main priority is the number 208 – referring to the agency’s authorized trooper force.
“Ramsey took over as the active colonel and administrator last week, but he is officially beginning as the new chief October 1st. He is inheriting a huge budget shortfall and staffing problem, but it coincides with a biennial budget reset. Ramsey knows that he needs to fill these vacancies quickly. right now they have 40% of their dispatch missing and 43 trooper vacancies. So a big part of recruitment is going to be increased pay, as well as a $2,000 starting bonus.”
Ramsey tells Cowboy State Daily the biggest trooper shortages are in Casper and Gillette in District 2, and Rock Springs and Evanston in District 3.
Read the full story HERE.
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I’ll have more news from Cowboy State Daily right after this.
Cowboy State Daily News continues now….
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A 1,551-pound pumpkin led the way in getting dropped from a 200-foot crane in Worland on Saturday afternoon to the delight of a cheering crowd. Cowboy State Daily’s Andrew Rossi reports that more than five tons of pumpkins exploded at the annual Wyoming Pumpkin Drop.
“You have to admire the mindset of people who bring their pumpkins to the Wyoming state way off and pumpkins drop because in the morning they're bringing their best pumpkins up the scale. They might reach personal best – four, five-hundred pounds. The largest one this year was 1,551 pounds. So these great achievements, you spend months cultivating these seeds and these plants to get the best possible pumpkin you can, and then an hour later they're watching it go 200 feet in the air and drop onto dryers and swimming pools or a giant University of Hawaii logo, and they they're gleeful about it. They pull the cord to drop their pumpkins, and that's just the atmosphere that's cultivated at the weigh off. You show your best work, and then you watch your best work plummet and then blow up in the smithereens.”
Hundreds of people were at the Washakie County Fairgrounds on Saturday, enjoying food trucks and inflatable bounce houses when the weigh-off got underway.
Read the full story HERE.
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The wildlife world is grieving the loss of Yellowstone photographer Sylvia Borgonovo who captured some of the most famous images of Yellowstone's oldest known living wolf. Cowboy State Daily’s Mark Heinz reports that she was a stalwart advocate for wolves, grizzlies, and other wildlife.
“She was completely self-taught as a photographer. She just started doing it and then reading whatever she could find, and just got really good at it over the years, so of course that's a sad loss for everybody. She'll be known for those images of 1090F. She was definitely one of one of the photographers of Grizzly 399, and then also she'll be known for her wildlife advocacy. ”
Sylvia died Sept. 15 after a brief battle with small-cell lung cancer in a non-smoker that had metastasized into her spine. She was 65 and would have turned 66 on Oct. 7.
Read the full story HERE.
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After 14 months without a buyer, a Bondurant ranch played a high-stakes game of real estate poker by putting the property up for a no-reserve auction. Cowboy State Daily’s Renee Jean reports the resulting panic prompted a buyer to make a preemptive $15 million offer the ranch couldn’t refuse.
“It's not too common to auction properties in Jackson Hole, you just have so many wealthy property owners there who you know they don't have to be in a hurry to have a fire sale, right? This property's been listed for 14 months. The buyer wants to move on. So he got an auction, and in 36 days, he has an offer that he finds acceptable. It's a lot of money that they're trading around there, and so they kind of take their time.”
Mario Vargas, CEO of DeCaro Auctions International, says it’s unusual to auction luxury property in Jackson Hole, but it’s even rarer to sell such properties before the bidding has even begun. Buyers don’t want to pay too much for a property. Sellers want to avoid low-ball offers.
Read the full story HERE.
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Crazy Horse Memorial, about 40 miles from the Wyoming border, is larger than Mount Rushmore and after nearly 80 years of blasting, drilling, carving and hauling untold tons of granite off a Black Hills mountainside, still isn’t finished. Cowboy State Daily’s Kate Meadows reports it's definitely worth a visit.
“Polish carver Korchak Zilkowski was the original carver of the monument. He and his wife Ruth had 10 children, and one their grandchild, their grandson Caleb Zilkowski, is the head carver today. Now the methods that he uses are quite a bit different than the methods that his grandfather used back in the 1940s, 1950s. Whitney Rencountre is the executive director of the Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation, and he told me you can think of the monument in thirds, and so if you divide it into thirds. You know, we finish this 1/3, the kind of where the horse's head is, and that part of the horse's body. That could take another 10 to 15 years.”
The Crazy Horse Monument is larger than most people expect. The carving itself is larger than nearby Mount Rushmore, with the American Indian’s head outsizing the 60-foot-tall heads of its presidential neighbors.
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.
