It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming for Monday, October 5th. I’m Mac Watson.
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A 16-year-old Diamondville boy died Thursday in a firearm-related hunting accident. One day earlier, his grandfather survived a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Cowboy State Daily’s Emma Jane Jackson reports Ashely Stiles suffered two family tragedies in 48 hours.
“I spoke to the mom, Ashley Stiles, and she said that this is the second tragedy that her family has been through in two days. The day before, her son was killed in the hunting accident. Her father survived a self-inflicted gunshot wound, but she said that he has many surgeries and a long road ahead of him. I also spoke to a longtime family friend, Dani Whittaker, who launched a Facebook group after Austin's death to fundraise for his burial and anything else the family needs.”
The Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office released a statement saying, “The accident investigation is ongoing and there will be no further information released at this time.”
Read the full story HERE.
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Landowners across Wyoming and the West say they are encountering a new breed of "entitled trespassers" who think gates and No Trespassing signs don't apply to them. Cowboy State Daily’s Kate Meadows reports that one rancher says people believe if they have a good reason for being there, they have a right to be there.
“One Montana rancher named Shawn Bilquist literally took matters into his own hands when he found a trespasser on his property. He moved hay bales around the vehicle that was not supposed to be there and left it there. So it's the message of, ‘dude, figure this out.’ When that trespasser returned to his vehicle, he was visibly upset. Billquist said and wanted to pick a fight. These trespassers are just entitled. They seem to run the gamut, age-wise, from you know the Millennials to the older hunters who, frankly, you know don't always know how to use their GPS system.”
Wyoming law generally makes it criminal trespass to enter or remain on another person's land knowing you aren't authorized to do so, or after being told to leave.
And when it comes to hunting, fishing, trapping or collecting antlers, state law specifically prohibits entering, traveling through or returning across private property without permission.
Read the full story HERE.
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Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland was on assignment Saturday as she went down to Denver to run a 31-mile race called the Loco Strikes Back Taco Bell 50K.
The ultramarathon requires runners to eat menu items from 10 different Taco Bell locations during the run and Clair tells us how she did.
“The Taco Bell 50K Ultra Marathon is a race in which runners have to eat at Taco Bell 10 times within 31 miles. There's milestones like you have to have consumed the Chalupa Supreme or Crunchwrap Supreme by Taco Bell number four, and either a Burrito Supreme or Nachos Bell Grande by Taco Bell number eight. If you throw up, you are disqualified. And so I went down to run it and was doing great until somewhere around mile 14-15, and then that Chalupa started barking. I did end up disqualified, but it was, to be honest, a beautiful run around Denver.”
Before the Chalupa did her in, Clair says she had been to five Taco Bells and ate four tacos, including two soft tacos, one Chalupa Supreme, and one bag of Cinnamon Twists.
Read the full story HERE.
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Wyoming gravediggers battle 5 feet of frost, 20-below funerals and the occasional coffin that isn't where it's supposed to be. Cowboy State Daily’s Kolby Fedore spoke with one gravedigger who says, this job isn't for everybody.
“Loni Wilson has been working at the Green Hill Cemetery in Laramie for about 12 years. She got her degree in graphic design, but it turns out she would rather dig graves. But the hardest part of her job is in the winter when she needs to dig a hole and the ground is frozen four or five feet deep. So they actually put a defroster over the spot and they have to leave it sometimes overnight to thaw the ground so that they can go in with an excavator and dig the hole. And then she takes a 12 foot long shovel and makes sure that the corners and the edges are perfect.”
Wilson tells Cowboy State Daily that the busiest part of her job is the grass. “It never stops growing.”
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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Turning a 1,500-pound cow into a freezer full of steaks, roasts and hamburgers is more complicated than it might sound. But Cowboy State Daily’s Kate Meadows reports if you're fed up with pricey grocery-store beef, here's what you can expect if you go straight to a Wyoming ranch.
“You don't just go to someone and say, ‘I want a cow,’ and the rancher says, ‘Okay, I'll have it for you tomorrow.’ There's a whole process in raising the cow and feeding it what the consumer wants it to be fed, and then the butchering and the processing, and up to the preparation of the cuts, and then the selling. This is not the route to go if you're just looking to save a buck. This is the way you go if you are able to support local ranchers and want to know where your meat comes from.”
Before ordering an entire beef, however, there is one piece of equipment every aspiring direct-from-the-ranch shopper ought to own. A very large freezer. In other words, the little freezer over the refrigerator probably isn't going to cut it.
Read the full story HERE.
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DNA taken from five fingerprint cards nearly a half-century old finally solved the murder of 16-year-old Corina Contreraz, who was killed in Billings, Montana, in 1978. Cowboy State Daily’s Jen Kocher reports new technology made it possible to solve this old cold case.
“They had five separate fingerprint booking cards to deal with. Suzanne Ryan, who extracted the DNA, was able to do that on the first card. What's exciting here also is they had nothing to go on to get his DNA because he had died in 1990. He was cremated. They were able to use forensic genetic genealogy to pinpoint the killer down to Angelo Stall Smith, so they had that going. So they were, you know, fairly confident that he was the murderer. However, to definitively tie it and say yes, he's definitely the one, they needed something substantive, which was the DNA.”
Angelo James Stallsmith, a man with a long criminal history, was arrested numerous times, mostly for thefts, but there was no indication he had ever committed a violent crime.
Read the full story HERE.
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The Oregon Trail has been called the nation's longest graveyard. Cowboy State Daily’s Renee Jean reports that cadaver dogs are helping Wyoming historians search for Oregon Trail graves that time, weather, and development have nearly erased.
“The guys I talked to about this said the dogs can actually find places where human bodies were buried, even if the bones are gone, because those compounds have leached into the soil. It's not that they necessarily have these dogs out there randomly looking for grave sites. It's one more piece of evidence in the chain of evidence to kind of lock down. and then those are marked with GPS coordinates. They're not making it publicly available online or anything where the general public could go and maybe loot some of these sites, for example. But they are available to like land developers, archeologists, and people who have a good reason to want to know about them.”
Some people who perished along the Oregon Trail, looking for a better life, were buried with care, marked with a tree, and sweetbriar or boards cut from wagons or piles of stones and inscriptions. But many of those markers did not survive.
Read the full story HERE.
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A notorious bull elk in Estes Park known as Smash rammed a Colorado reporter's car recently as part of his autumn-rut ritual of chasing golf carts and vehicles. Outdoors Reporter Mark Heinz reports that one wildlife biologist says that bull elk are “perpetually angry” this time of year.
“There's been a viral video of him taking out the windows on somebody's car, and then I talked to a reporter from the Fort Collins newspaper. who you know he goes to Estes Park every year to kind of get a cool little feature about the elk and what they're doing and the bugling and you know great breathtaking photos and videos. And he was trying to get a video of Smash through the passenger window of his car, and sure enough, Smash charged his car and slammed into it, but he said luckily all he got was some scratches on his car.”
Despite all his shenanigans and the body shop bills he’s doubtlessly racked up, Smash is safe from any consequences. Colorado Parks and Wildlife has no plans to remove him, Kara Van Hoose, CPW's northeast region spokeswoman, tells Cowboy State Daily.
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.
