I spent six good years in Wyoming.
I had a lot of great times in the Equality State. I discovered the best, easily accessible bird hunting of my life prowling the chukar grounds and the winter fishing on the Shoshone River led me to set aside dry flies and embrace nymphing, though I also loved the winter blue-winged olive hatches.
I have many friends in Wyoming. Good people who recognize the line between right and wrong and do their best to abide.
What I can’t understand is how that state can elect a legislature so backward it seems poised, according to reporting on the WyoFile website, to codify the repugnant practice of running down wolves and coyotes with snow machines.
I’ll never see the wolf issue exactly the way many do in Wyoming (and Montana). I supported reintroduction, after all. Still, I believe hunting was part of the bargain citizens struck when the Feds reintroduced wolves to the Northern Rockies in 1995. And I believe the continued insistence of some in the environmental community to oppose wolf hunting and other forms of management, when the population is clearly recovered, creates the impression the hunting promise was never more than a ruse.
I also believe Wyoming managing wolves like any other predatory species that can be killed on sight in most of the state also undermines faith in the state’s wildlife management agency.
Management of wildlife on federal lands requires western states to consider the wants of citizens in faraway cities. Those folks have a stake in what Westerners do on federal property with publicly owned wildlife. That doesn’t mean the region has to bow to the whims of coastal city dwellers, but they can’t disregard them either.
Especially on an issue like this, in which the city folk are right.
You don’t have to be a Seattle vegan to be disgusted by the cruelty Wyoming has unleashed, torturing animals for fun. This practice has probably been around for some time, but helmet-mounted GoPro cameras are a relatively recent invention, as is spreading yarns of hunting prowess with social media rather than cave paintings, so we’re just learning about it.
I thought Wyoming bottomed out in February when Cody Roberts, of Daniel, Wyoming, ran down a wolf, mortally wounding but not killing it with his snow machine. He then taped its mouth shut and forced it to suffer in a bar for hours before he put the wolf out of its misery.
Roberts’ punishment was a $250 slap on the wrist.
When I read that the Wyoming legislature was going to take up the issue, I assumed it was to close the loophole that allowed such cruelty to go essentially unpunished. Instead, the legislature seems ready to make torturing wolves with snow machines legal, so long as you kill the disabled animal quickly and not haul it off to a bar to demonstrate to your buddies the small size of your sense of decency.
In a particularly craven act, the Wyoming Stock Growers Association announced that snow machine torture seems like good predator management, and killed that effort. Now fair-chase hunters and wildlife officials will be stained by Stock Grower cruelty and profits.
The need to manage wildlife is never an excuse for bloodlust and the despicable impulse to torture animals. I’m a hunter and I’ve killed a fair share of animals over the years, but I use an appropriate weapon, a firearm, designed to kill quickly, not maim.
In Wyoming, however, maiming and torturing may soon be standard operating procedure, with the legislature’s blessing. Understand, this isn’t about managing wildlife or predator control. There are better ways to do that. This is about a mental disorder that makes people enjoy torturing wildlife, and a Stock Growers Association and a legislature prepared to say, “Cruelty? Yeah, we’re down with that.”
Time to change the nickname to the Depravity State.