Jackson Hole Underground

It’s prime hunting season in Wyoming, and Air Force Two was parked at Jackson Hole Airport over the weekend. Uh, oh.

His excellency the vice president jetted back to Jackson on Friday afternoon and was gone by Sunday evening. The terror alert was raised to blaze orange.

Only a short stroll from the veep’s residence at Teton Pines, Osama bin Laden sipped cocktails Saturday night during the Q restaurant’s Halloween party.

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Were you freaked out by those photos of a mountain lion purportedly taken in Rafter J?

The Wyoming Game and Fish Department is hosting a free workshop from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. Tuesday at Snow King Resort, titled “Staying Safe in Bear, Lion and Wolf Country.”

Among the tips Game and Fish will share are mountain lion and bear feeding habits, where you’d expect to find those animals (not on your back porch in Rafter J) and what to do if you have an encounter.

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A Game and Fish officer counts the ungulates. Photo by Mark Gocke

Apparently, elk are getting along just fine despite the presence of wolves in northwest Wyoming. Wildlife managers recently counted 11,790 elk in the Jackson herd, 60 fewer than last year. In addition, the ratio of 25 calves per 100 cows is just about on par with the historical average.

The Jackson herd is Wyoming’s largest and lives in close proximity to a multitude of wolf packs in Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks and the Teton and Gros Ventre wilderness areas.

Will these latest scientific figures stop state lawmakers and the governor from claiming that wolves are “savaging” wildlife? Probably not. But at least we know claims that the National Elk Refuge has been starving elk are pure fiction.

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Should wolves in northwest Wyoming be running for cover or digging a deep den?

With the predators in the Legislature loading machine guns and gassing up the helicopters, a war of eradication is brewing, and Canis lupus is squarely in the crosshairs.

Lawmakers in Cheyenne, and the governor, appear content to continue digging in their heels in hopes of forcing the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to compromise and allow more liberal killing of wolves, once the species is delisted. So far Fish and Wildlife has resisted bending on any measure that could lead to the wolves’ near-extinction.

But a recent appointment that received scant media attention locally may help stack the deck in the state’s favor.

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Tiger, tiger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night …
In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?

— William Blake, “The Tiger”

With all this talk of cougars in recent days, I figured I ought to see one in the wild.

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