Jen kocher

Jen Kocher

Heinz mark

Mark Heinz

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's managing editor, Greg Johnson.

Greg Johnson

Jimmy orr

Jimmy Orr

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily reporter, Jackie Dorothy.

Jackie Dorothy

Wildlife

Summer is Wyoming’s season for turning over rocks, poking into holes and walking with a perpetual hunch looking for snakes.

Herpalogists, the zoologists who study amphibians and reptiles, are out scouring the landscape and herping, the term used when they are actively flipping rocks and searching stream beds to find Wyoming's elusive snakes in their native habitats.

Sometimes those finds can be unexpected. The fork-tongued reptiles appear on a trail when least expected. 

Recently, a foot-long “nightcrawler” suddenly moved like a snake and slithered into the rocks, its tail disappearing into the shadows. Rather than a shapeshifter, this was an elusive rubber boa, Wyoming’s tiny constrictor snake that can look like a giant worm at first glance.

These rarely seen creatures are more common in the Cowboy State than most people realize.

“I personally don't feel that any of our snakes in Wyoming are terribly rare,” said Matt Rasmussen, vice president of the 

. “However, a lot of them are very rarely encountered because they spend most of their lives either underground or under rocks.”

Rasmussen said most of the secretive snakes in Wyoming only come out at night or when conditions are right — typically warmer, humid times. The rubber boa, for instance, showed up on a day when it had rained and then the temperatures spiked hot.

Rasmussen helped found the new Herpetological Society two years ago to teach others to herp. He said it’s possible to learn more about our state by flipping rocks and seeing what is beneath.

“That's the great thing with Wyoming,” Rasmussen said. “There is so little known about the herpetofauna — the frogs, lizards, snakes, turtles, etcetera — that live here, and so little known about their distribution.”

He said Wyoming is known for “large charismatic megafauna” such as bison, elk, moose and deer rather than the harder to find animals. As a result, no widespread surveying has been done on smaller non-game species. Wyoming Game and Fish has even asked for community members to help by reporting  rarely seen reptiles and amphibians.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Elusive, Not Rare"}]

While most people think of the more common bullsnake or venomous rattlesnake when discussing reptiles, Rasmussen said Wyoming is home to many harmless snakes.

According to Rasmussen, a few snakes, such as the colorful pale milk snake and rubber boa, could be considered rare in Wyoming. However, he believes they are just harder to find and most people are not aware of them unless they stumble across them.

“There’s the plains black-headed snake, which we really don't know much about their distribution in Wyoming,” Rasmussen said. “They're just not studied and have a limited habitat.”

This tan snake with a black head is small and feeds primarily on centipedes and ant eggs. Rasmussen cautions that when found, rather than kill the strange looking snakes that are harmless, report finding them to Wyoming Game and Fish and leave them in their habitat.

In this way, Rasmussen said, herping can be fun. He encourages people to get into the action.

“There are some other really small fossorial snakes like smooth green snakes, which live along creeks in the mountains and eat caterpillars and spiders,” Rasmussen said. “Then there's the Black Hills red-bellied snake, which is a very small snake that eats slugs, worms and snails primarily.”

People are often surprised that Wyoming is home to such a large variety of snakes. He especially likes to show off a milk snake, which is harmless and eats lizards and even baby rattlesnakes.

“It is a beautiful, almost tropical-looking animal that lives right here,” Rasmussen said. “They are just rarely encountered.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A New Snake & Frog Society"}]

Rasmussen said the new society is trying to educate the community about these fascinating creatures in the Cowboy State that don't get much attention, such as the skink, a short-legged lizard. 

“We're a group of herpetological enthusiasts who would like to spread the word, educate and do outreach about these animals,” he said.

This outreach includes presentations with live animals, field trips and a conference in November. Wyoming’s reptiles and amphibians remain a mystery, Rasmussen encourages reporting sightings on the app 

“Even if you don't know what it is, post a picture because there are tens of thousands of experts who will identify that animal,” Rasmussen said. “That's really important, especially for our herpetofauna in the state.”

He also pointed out that some Wyoming snakes are on the protected list, including the midget faded rattlesnake. They made the list, according to Rasmussen, because people were capturing them and they became popular in among owners who like to keep small venomous snakes as pets.

Rasmussen said awareness is the best protection for Wyoming’s elusive reptiles and he is excited to prove to residents that we don’t have rare snakes, only secretive ones.

Snakes of Wyoming 6 27 26

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

<title>Many Of Wyoming’s Seldom-Seen Snakes Aren’t That Rare, They Just Like To Hide | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Wyoming's bright orange pale milk snake, rubber boa and plains black-headed snake are elusive, but not as rare as most people think — they just like to hide. Most of the state's secretive snakes only come out at night or when conditions are right.

Many Of Wyoming’s Seldom-Seen Snakes Aren’t That Rare, They Just Like To Hide

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

Renée Jean

Business & Tourism

The first time Farmstead Cider went after old apples in Jackson Hole, it was just for the flavor. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"It soon became about the bears. "}]

Every fall as apples drop and ferment in the backyards and ghost orchards of Jackson Hole, grizzlies and black bears do what comes naturally. They follow their noses straight into trouble — calorie-rich fruits that taste oh-so-good when you’re a bear desperate to fatten up for winter. 

The first harvest, though, was all about the homesick wives, Farmstead Cider’s co-owner Orion Bellorado said. They had grown up on the East Coast, where apple harvests are a big deal. 

“We started harvesting the apples in our neighborhood off of peoples’ trees that were kind of derelict,” he said. “And they were tiny, so we pressed a bunch of juice and made some cider out of it.”

The party was great and word soon got around. 

“Someone from the county found out about it and said, ‘Hey, you should really put in for this community grant to start a business,” Bellorado recalled. “‘Because we’ve really been having issues with bears.’”

That was in 2016, and the business has been going ever since, bottling 5,000 to 7,000 gallons of native-yeast cider a year and selling it across Wyoming as well as other states such as Washington and Montana. 

In the process of climbing into backyards and abandoned orchards, Bellorado stumbled onto a bigger realization. Wyoming is curiously — if quietly — rich in apples across the state.

“They are everywhere,” he said. “I mean, Lander was called Apple Town before it was called Lander. It’s full on part of this interesting tidbit of our culture and our history that’s really been left behind.”

That history is being rediscovered thanks to a project called the Wyoming Apple Project. Through it, researchers have been cataloguing a hidden network of heritage and volunteer trees that have somehow survived a century or so of drought and neglect. Researchers say these hardy survivors might point the way to a new kind of apple economy in one of the harshest fruit-growing climates in America.

You wouldn’t know it from today’s landscape of hay bales and cattle, but Wyoming was once thick with apples. Homesteaders brought apple seeds to plant in their new homes, carving out orchards that were just as essential as a root cellar to their survival.

Apples meant sauce, butter, cider, vinegar and livestock feed. They were essential calories, but also comfort — the kind that could be stored up through a long, hard winter.

By the early 1900s, experimental orchards and private growers had tested at least 218 named apple cultivars across Wyoming, including 11 that were Wyoming-bred. 

Among the most ambitious of the early apple pioneers was an experimental fruit farm in Lander, which trialed 175 different cultivars under superintendent John Steinbrecht, who also developed 10 of the 11 Wyoming-bred cultivars. 

Not far away from Steinbrecht was Lander orchardist Ed Young, who planted a prodigious 3,000-some apple trees in 1882 — an act of faith in a place better known for blizzards than fruit blossoms.

At the time, Wyoming was held up as a national example of what’s possible on the frontier. 

“A lot of those early settlers, such as Ed Young, and their success in growing apples was used in news articles back east, to bring hope to people thinking about moving West,” University of Wyoming graduate and plant physiologist Jonathan Magby told Cowboy State Daily. “It helped show them that you can successfully inhabit this remote location of the United States.”

Wyoming’s apples at that time came from everywhere — Minnesota, Wisconsin, New York, Canada and even Russia. Several nurseries were involved in seeing which varieties could stand up to Wyoming’s brutal mix of cold, drought and wind, including 

At one point, at least 70 out-of-state nurseries and 20 in-state nurseries across 11 Wyoming cities were selling apple stock to Wyoming growers.

Then, slowly, the state forgot about its apples.

Wyoming’s agricultural identity shifted solidly toward cattle and general row crops. Many orchards were abandoned. Irrigation ditches shifted. Families moved away or sold off land.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Winters kept coming. "}]

And the apple trees that had been left behind continued growing. They became part of an unintended Darwinist experiment — one where only the fittest would survive. 

What’s left of the apple trees that once dotted Wyoming are now the toughest of the tough. Trees too full of Wyoming grit to give up and die.

Among the most interesting is a gnarled apple tree in Lander. Its limbs curl up to the sun like an insect on its back, and its trunk is so hollowed out, one wouldn’t be surprised to find a hobbit — or some other creature of legend — sleeping inside.

Somehow, though, this ancient tree is still alive, still leafing out, still stubbornly insisting on producing apples, despite a century or so in a place that routinely tries to freeze them to death.

Wyoming is not a state known for hardy trees. It is, after all, among the coldest and driest of states in the Lower 48. And apple trees aren’t known for being especially long-lived, either. Most never see a 100th birthday.

That makes this particular apple tree special. It’s passed a 100-year stress test, one where Wyoming wind and drought are separating the true pioneers from the pretenders.

To Magby, the Lander tree is far more than a curiosity. It’s a symbol of what Wyoming apples once were, as well as what they could be again. 

These survivors could help develop ever more hardy Wyoming stock, making apples a potential new and viable agricultural commodity. Because of that, the tree’s tissue was pulled and grafted onto new stock, so it can keep growing for another 100 years.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Like A CSI Detective"}]

Magby has been searching out all the old heritage apple trees of Wyoming using DNA finger-printing techniques more often associated with crime shows like CSI. 

So far he’s sampled 510 trees at 91 locations in 19 cities, from Lander and Sheridan to Buffalo and Casper, to figure out which trees match known cultivars and which might be lost or forgotten varieties. So far he’s found more than 150 unique genetic fingerprints that don’t match anything in old reference collections. 

Some of those varieties show up in multiple towns, suggesting they are long-lost cultivars that no longer exist anywhere else. hey are a living link to an era when Wyoming was serious apple country.

Two varieties that keep showing up, meanwhile, are Wealthy and Haralson, both bred in Minnesota. They are roughly one-third of all the identified surviving trees in his data set.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"More Than Charming History"}]

Magby doesn’t see Wyoming apples as a charming historical footnote. He believes these survivors are pointing the way to a viable agricultural commodity for the state, one that could lead to more products that are made in Wyoming, such as Farmstead Cider in Jackson Hole. Making products in Wyoming — referred to as value-added products — is a better bang for the buck. It keeps most of the economic value chain in-state.

Apple cider production makes a lot of sense in Wyoming, alongside the growing microbrewery scene, Magby said. People also just enjoy fresh produce that’s been grown in Wyoming, whether that’s an apple or other fruits.

“We take pride in anything that’s been produced in Wyoming,” Magby said. “So I’d love to see someone take a strong stance of producing and backing development of cultivars and revamping testing of grape and pear varieties and other small fruits, just to provide that diversity, not just in fresh food products, but also diversity of economies.”

Bellorado is already living that future at Farmstead Cider, thanks to bear-safety grants that helped launch a business to haul apples out of backyards and ghost orchards. 

Now, instead of attracting trouble, those apples are a useful and delicious product in a growing business. It’s more joy to the human world, all from abandoned, pioneer apple trees.

Apples Ian Mc Gregor co owner of Farmstead Cider Courtesy Photo 6 27 26

<title>Wyoming’s Ghost Apple Orchard Trees Have Been Rediscovered And Are Producing | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Wyoming was once thick with apples. In fact, it was a top apple producer. Now those forgotten apple trees are being rediscovered by small cider houses. "They're everywhere," said one cider house owner. "Lander was called Apple Town before Lander."

Wyoming’s Ghost Apple Orchard Trees Have Been Rediscovered And Are Producing

At historic Fort Bridger, one of the site’s most reliable staffers doesn’t draw a paycheck, take vacations and has been on duty for more than a century.

“We just call him Mac,” Fort Bridger Historical Association board member Holli Beach told Cowboy State Daily. “And we actually have had him photographed. Several times, he’s been caught in pictures, and we have some pretty cool pictures of him.”

Mac is short for John McLaughlin, one of the soldiers who came to Fort Bridger with the Twenty-First Infantry in the spring of 1888. 

He was given the last of the fort’s remaining log officers' quarters, most of which had been sold to the local ranching community and moved off site. After his discharge he stayed in the area, watching over the remaining buildings and the small cemetery.

Eventually, old age forced him to move on to the Old Sailor’s and Soldier’s Home in Hot Springs, South Dakota, where he is buried. 

But he always wanted to be buried in Fort Bridger’s cemetery, and many people feel that after his death Mac’s spirit returned to the Fort and has remained ever since.

“Mac’s pretty famous for locking people inside his house, for whatever reason,” Beach said. “If workers go in there alone, they tend to get locked in and have to call someone to come help them.”

Alarms also have gone off at night, forcing police to respond, Beach said — alarms that later can’t be explained.

“The sheriffs will come in, and we have quite a few funny stories about them coming onto the property and getting scared,” she said. “One of our mannequins was almost shot by one of the sheriffs.” 

Fort Bridger also regularly gets reports from people thinking they have seen or heard a child drowning in the creek, Beach added. 

“There are actually historical reports of that happening,” she said. “And so, people have been really taken aback by such experiences.”

Haunted stories like that might once have been downplayed by a serious historic site. But with “dark tourism” now a $34.2 billion global market — nearly 80% of it in North America, according to analyst firm, Grand View Research — ghosts and paranormal phenomena have become an undeniable selling point.

One doesn’t have to look far from Wyoming for a famous example of the power of haunted tourism. 

Colorado’s Stanley Hotel in Estes Park is a 

favorite vacation spot for many in Wyoming

. It’s also the real-life inspiration for Stephen King’s cult classic novel “The Shining.” 

The hotel was on its last legs when John Cullen 

 and many at the time believed it was headed for a date with a wrecking ball. But it found new life thanks to Cullen’s decision to lean into its spooky history.

Before Cullen, hotel managers feared admitting there were any unusual happenings, especially in the Stephen King suite. They feared ghost stories would drive guests away — like tales of suitcases somehow winding up in the hallway with no logical explanation, or ghostly children laughing and playing on the third floor.

Cullen, though, actively marketed such tales, and turned the hotel’s unexplained phenomena into a year-round theme that now draws nearly 200,000 visitors annually — about half of its overall visitor total.

The move saved the hotel and has created a premier destination in the Rockies that blends luxury with a history that “still walks the halls.”

In more recent times, as haunted tourism’s popularity has grown, the Stanley has doubled down on its horror pedigree. It’s working with Blumhouse Productions on a planned horror-film center and it 

 for the “Frozen Dead Guy Days” festival, after that event outgrew its original site in Nederland. 

Reports like Mac’s pranks and the drowning child have attracted attention from paranormal groups wanting to investigate the Fort, but the site’s board has usually turned them down, fearing such activities could detract from the core mission of preserving and sharing the site’s rich, 19th century history.

This year, though, it’s leaning into a select number of paranormal events in hopes it can help boost its visitation stats, which range from 75,000 to 90,000 annually. The figures feed directly into its funding through state allocations tied to attendance.

“First and foremost, I am a historian, and I run a historic site,” Fort Bridger Superintendent Josh Camp told Cowboy State Daily. 

“But really, we are a state park, and we’re meant to be a good amenity to the people of Wyoming," he said. "That’s a huge part of what we do here. So there’s more than one way to skin a cat, as the saying goes, and I see ghost stories as another way to do just that.”

Camp is a skeptic when it comes to ghost stories in general, but it’s not lost on him that haunted tourism has become enormously popular. He sees it as a new avenue for sharing history with an audience that might not typically turn up at a historic site. 

“When I hear a ghost story talking about someone going through the old Victorian commanding officers quarters and a young girl will have her hair pulled or something like that, for example,” he said. 

“That’s not an uncommon story. Well, that gives me the perfect opportunity to say, ‘Well perhaps this is the spirit of a Victorian lady who has just realized your hair is not done in a way that’s appropriate for a young lady to be in public'.”

Messy buns of today, Camp added, would have been a Victorian nightmare.

“So, for me, it’s an opportunity to talk about the cultures of the time,” he said. “It becomes an interesting way to teach history, particularly to a crowd who doesn’t necessarily usually want to come learn about history.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Not A YouTube Screamer"}]

Fort Bridger’s three-day paranormal experience July 30 through Aug. 1 will be a rare opportunity, investigator Marie Mason told Cowboy State Daily.

Mason bills herself as a real ghost hunter, not a “screaming YouTuber.”

“On television and YouTube, they completely sensationalize these things,” she said. “The public is aware that’s all BS for the most part.”

Her approach is different. Guests themselves will become the investigators, using professional-grade equipment she’s spent years acquiring and in some cases building. 

Her events have drawn hundreds of people in places such as Deadwood, South Dakota, as well as to historic hotels in Wyoming such as the Occidental in Buffalo. 

“These events are great business for the historical locations,” Mason added. “People will come for three days and stay, and now they’re going to buy food, they’re going to spend money … families will literally plan their vacations around paranormal events like this.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Where Tragedy Lingers"}]

To Mason, most hauntings are simply people, or fragments of people, lingering where something powerful happened. And Fort Bridger is a place with no shortage of powerful moments.

For one, it was the last major stop for the Donner Party, a group of 87 American pioneers, before they turned onto the ill-fated Hastings Cutoff, where they became snowbound. Nearly half the group died of starvation, disease and freezing, with survivors eventually resorting to cannibalism.

Mason is in the camp of historians who believes their route had been endorsed by Jim Bridger himself, who she sees as something of a scoundrel.

“(Bridger) got a piece of every guide (map) that was sold,” she said. “And this guy named Hastings, who wrote the guide map, told them it’s a shortcut.”

But Hastings had never actually done the route he was selling at all, Mason said, and it was actually longer than the way they had planned. Hastings’ “shortcut” sent the party into the Sierra Nevada mountains, where they would become synonymous with unspeakable tragedy.

Fort Bridger is also where a teen-aged Calamity Jane landed after losing both parents on the trail. She returned to Fort Bridger with her younger siblings and worked in the “laundry,” a euphemism, Mason said, for prostitution. 

“So 14-year-old Calamity Jane,” Mason said. “If you just think about high school, all of that stuff is so clear to us, right? You can remember the first boy you kissed. It’s a very special time in your life. 

“So, for me, if her spirit lingers anywhere, that’s got to be a place. It’s where something traumatic happened to her.”

This won’t be the first time Fort Bridger has reinvented itself. The 37-acre site was started in the 1840s by Mountain Man Jim Bridger as a trading post for Native Americans. 

The fur trade had collapsed at the time and Bridger needed a new career.

“Many people, especially if you look at early historians, feel like Fort Bridger was built kind of out in the middle of nowhere, which, by today’s standards, would be accurate,” Camp said. “But these guys who’d been trapping in the mountains for decades at this point knew about the Native American trade network gained through here. So they certainly knew what they were doing.”

When Bridger’s plan to trade with Native Americans didn’t pan out, he pivoted to serving pioneers on the Oregon and California trails. 

“That was something they hadn’t necessarily planned on,” Camp said. “But they were, of course, more than happy to take advantage.”

By the time pioneers hit Fort Bridger, they were usually short on supplies but had cash available to buy more. 

“Bridger was more than happy to be selling them goods,” Camp said. “And seeing as they were one of the few places you could stop, and it was a couple hundred miles to the closest competition, they were certainly able to get their own prices and certainly took advantage of that opportunity.”

Using Ghost Stories To Keep History Alive

Highlighting all that rich history in ways that make it accessible to new audiences is the main play Fort Bridger is after.

“We’re not trying to claim there’s a portal to hell,” Beach said, poking a little fun at more sensational ghost-hunting shows. “First and foremost, we’re a historic site. The history is what matters to us.”

For Camp, if a few haunted tales around the campfire can help turn more people onto history, the shift will be more than worthwhile.

“Everyone needs to learn their history,” he said. “That doesn’t mean we all need to learn it the same way.”

If a spooky cry along the creek or an unexplained shadow on an SLS camera is what it takes to draw people through Fort Bridger’s gates and into its complicated, sometimes uncomfortable history, Camp believes the gambit will have been well worth the risk.

Fort Bridger inset Carter family graveyard Visual and Written via Alamy 6 27 26

<title>Ghostly Gold Rush: Fort Bridger Chases Haunted Tourism Dollars | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Haunted tourism isn’t fringe anymore. It’s become a $34 billion-dollar segment of the tourism industry. Fort Bridger is among those leaning into dark tourism this year with its most famous ghost, Mac, and a three-day paranormal experience next month.

Ghostly Gold Rush: Fort Bridger Chases Haunted Tourism Dollars

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.

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.

CSD Staff

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