And that statement was true once again for 2022, but for different reasons, a lot of which had nothing much to do with the hunting season itself.
That's because 2022 has been the year of the field of Medicine, or age, or perhaps lifestyle, or whatever, catching up with me.
Well, I'm beginning to sound like a broken record on that, as it was once again quite true.
On big game, I didn't draw anything. So, no antelope tag again.
Indeed, sometime in the fall, in one of the blogs linked in here, an out-of-state hunter posted about the great time he'd had in Wyoming antelope hunting and I nearly posted a crabby linked in post regarding that. If out of staters are getting tags, in staters should be.
I didn't want to insult that person, so I didn't make that post, but I'm still not very happy about it.
I had general deer and elk tags, and I did go out for deer, but no luck. For deer, I did have a very pleasant early winter hunt, if that's what we call this frighteningly warm mid-year season this year, but the only white tails, and that's what it was limited to, that we saw were on private land where I didn't have permission. So, no deer.
Bird wise, the season was good for the most part. Blue Grouse, which are illusive in my experience (a Game Warden who checked me didn't seem to think so) did make an appearance this year, so we did okay, but not great.
Doves were abundant, but I mostly missed shooting at them, which was sort of the story of the year in a lot of ways. I did get a Mongolian Collared Dove for the first time, so was able to appreciate how much larger they are than Mourning Doves.
Sage chickens were also plentiful this year.
Chukars and Huns, which are in my experience very hard to hit, were abundant, but I didn't do well with them as I missed them more than I hit them. I did get in a lot of late season chukar hunting close to town for the first time.
Waterfowl, which we hunted more than anything else, was very abundant.
So, not a self-reliance banner year. . . or was it?
Our lifestyle, our wildlife, our land and our water remain critical to our definition of Wyoming and to our economic future.
Dave Freudenthal, former Governor of Wyoming/
December 3, 2023
Oil field, Grass Creek, Wyo, April 9, 1916
Snippets of news articles from this morning:
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Fifty oil companies representing nearly half of global production pledged to reach near-zero methane emissions and end routine flaring in their operations by 2030, the president of this year’s United Nations climate talks said Saturday, a move environmental groups called a “smokescreen.”
Smokescreen it doesn't seem to be. That's a major commitment. But not as big as this one:
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates -- The United States committed Saturday to the idea of phasing out coal power plants, joining 56 other nations in kicking the coal habit that's a huge factor in global warming.
U.S. Special Envoy John Kerry announced that America was joining the Powering Past Coal Alliance, which means the Biden Administration commits to building no new coal plants and phasing out existing plants. No date was given for when the existing plants would have to go, but other Biden regulatory actions and international commitments already in the works had meant no coal by 2035.
None of this should be a surprise. This is where we've been heading for some time, and it's inevitable. Indeed, I touched on this back in 2017 here:
Not that we'll accept it. We'll do anything but. Our senior Senator in Washington will claim its part of Joe Biden's "radical green agenda", a radical agenda now sought after by the majority of people in the United States, and in the World. He doesn't believe that, but it sells back home. With a Republican Party in the state that was ready to boil Governor Gordon in WD40 for daring to say that Wyoming needed to look at a carbon-neutral future, he doesn't dare say anything else as it would imperil his position. Our junior Senator will likely say nothing at all.
Well, the voices are getting too loud to ignore, and they include people in the oil industry and now even entire nations that depend on petroleum. From the President, to the Pope, to the Governor of the state, the message is getting pretty clear. We're going to have to figure out a post fossil fuel economy here.
Quickly.
But, we'll choose not to. We'll pretend that somehow we can force others to consume the product that we wish to produce, as we've produced it for over a century and a half, and it's our economy.
That, however, isn't the way economies work.
Dear future generations: Please accept our apologies. We were rolling drunk on petroleum.
Kurt Vonnegut
On another topic, the current owners of Remington are closing the doors this week to its Ilion, New York factor. The company had been headquartered there since 1816.
It'd gone through hard times in the past. It nearly went bankrupt after World War One when the United States Government cancelled contracts for M1917 Enfield rifles overnight, leaving them with a large stock of unfinished and partially finished rifles. The Wilson Administration proved to be quite bad at demobilizing.
Remington, while profitable, had the very bad fortune to be bought by the aptly named Cerebus which focused on AR15 production and drove the company under. Our prior thread on it is here:
Cerebus is virtually a symbol of all that is wrong with corporate capitalism. Named for the three-headed dog that mythologically guards the gates of Hades to contain the dead therein, it might well be recalled, at least since Dante included it, that the creature is in Hell and of it.
Remington's history was mostly associated, over its long existence, with hunting rifles. That's what the company was founded on in 1816. It did manufacture military arms on occasion, however. For example, it was a large scale supplier of contract rifles for the Union during the Civil War. It's widely admired by riflemen rolling block rifle had a military variant that was purchased by some states in preference to the Trapdoor Springfield series of rifles, and it was in fact better than the Trapdoor. The rolling block was widely sold overseas as a military rifle.
By and large, however, it never invested heavily in military sales until the Great War, when the British first contracted with it to produce the rifle that had been intended to replace the SMLE, but adapted to .303 British. The P14 was a major British rifle of the war, but its production ceased in 1917 when the US entered the war, and the same rifle was adopted to the .30-06 and used by the U.S. as the M1917 Enfield. Remington's production capacity was so vast that somewhat over half of all U.S. troops in World War One carried that rifle, rather than the M1903, and it continued to be used into World War Two. But the experienced badly burned Remington and nearly left it bankrupt. After that it was extremely reluctant to make military arms, and it only reluctantly took to producing, ironically, M1903s during the Second World War when the government again needed help. No original Remington arms were invented for the war as Remington didn't try to undertake that as a project, although it did make a continual series of changes in the M1903 which resulted in the M1903A3, nearly a new rifle in some ways.
After the war and into the Cold War, Remington didn't bother with military arms. It wasn't a contractor to the M14 like H&R was. It didn't try to enter a rifle into light rifle contests, like Colt did with the AR15 and Winchester did with its M1 Carbine derived competitor. That all changed when Cerebus bought the company in 2007.
Cerebus also bought the AR15 manufacturer Bushmaster, which was highly regarded in that field. By 2012 Remington was making M4 Carbines for the Army. It leaped wholesale into the "America's Rifle" baloney with a hunting variant of the AR15. It reentered the pistol market, which it had not been in since a brief foray after the Civil War, with a version of the M1911 pistol. Cerebus didn't seem to understand what it was that Remington actually made.
Indeed, it was telling that a brilliant move by Remington to introduce a fairly cheap 98 Mauser hunting rifle, the 798, came in 2006, the year before Cerebus bought the company, and it quit offering it in 2008, the year after.
In name, it still exists, but now it's headquartered in Madison, NC. It was the oldest manufacturer in the United States at the time of its bankruptcy, and it died a victim of American capitalism.
Annual agricultural show at the state experimental farm at Presque Isle, Maine. Prizewinning "baby beef", raised by a daughter of a Farm Security Administration client.
I don't know how old this woman is, but given that she's indicated to be the "daughter of a FSA client", my guess is that she's in her late teens. Probably somewhere between 17 and 19..
Looks older, doesn't she?
She certainly looks more mature.
I hate to go down that "everybody was better" in the past road, as it simply isn't true. But a lot about this photograph is really remarkable. A young woman, some would say girl, but she looks too mature for that, is posed with a serious animal. She has a serious look on her face.
She's clean, turned out in a dress, and not bedecked with tattoos. Her hair no doubt isn't green, violet or pink. She undoubtedly isn't having doubts about her gender or fascinated, like so many are today, about her own organs to the extent she basis her identity on satisfying them.
Some things, indeed, truly were a lot better in the past.
So Harriet Hageman has stated that she'd join Insurrection Barbie in a move that brings the nation's perilous attachment to democracy four or five steps closer to the brink.
The sad thing is that Hageman, whom I'm sure when she was younger probably would have found this abhorrent, probably means it now.
What on earth happened?
Make no mistake. Save for the last time it was attempted, every act to actually impeach a US President has been, frankly, stupid and ill-advised. This would be the stupidest.
People advancing such causes will regret it. The lucky ones will regret it in this World. The unlucky ones in the next, when they cannot atone for it here. But account for this we all will, including those who are in the stands watching the circus consume itself with horror.
Vulgar.
Missing Titanic sub crew killed after 'catastrophic implosion'
This is a tragedy. May God rest their souls and may the perpetual light shine upon them.
There's something really wrong with diving on what is, after all, a massive grave. Now the wreckage of this submarine befouls the grave.
I've been to plenty of locations where the dead lay, including battlefields. But there's something about this that is simply intrusive beyond all measure.
Governor Gordon Finalizes USDA Disaster Declaration Request
CHEYENNE, Wyo. – Governor Gordon has submitted his U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) request for a Secretarial disaster designation as indicated in a February 20, 2023, news release.
In his letter to the USDA, Governor Gordon noted that Wyoming’s winter season started early, and the culminating impacts of sustained cold, wind, and snowfall have caused significant distress to the livestock industry across the state. Access to traditional winter grazing resources has become dire, as well, because many ranch, county, and BLM roads are drifting shut and, even when cleared, continue to re-drift because of high winds, the Governor’s letter explained.
The Governor’s Office, in partnership with local, state and federal agencies and impacted ag producers, worked collaboratively to determine losses, the timeframe and the geographic scale of impact. Data obtained through the National Weather Service’s event tracking system reveals that 66.5 percent of the time, from January 1 to February 27, Wyoming was under some combination of Winter Storm Warnings, Blizzard Warnings, Winter Weather Advisories, and High Wind Warnings–far outpacing any other state in the lower 48.
Underscoring the need for federal assistance, Governor Gordon’s letter noted, “State, county, local, and individual resources have been deployed and are being shared between entities for snow removal, but there is too much volume and wind to keep roads open and passable to gain access to livestock.” Additionally, Governor Gordon’s administration has been working closely with our local Farm Service Agency office to identify the areas of greatest impact and corresponding needs of the ag community.
This is good news, but it would have been better news if the Governor had declared an emergency two weeks ago and deployed National Guard engineering equipment at that time to assist in rural snow removal.
My daughter is the real ice fishing aficionado in our family. I had some experience with it as a boy, but oddly enough, my father didn't really engage in much ice fishing. He was a dedicated fisherman, so that's surprising. Indeed, he probably was slightly more of a fisherman than a hunter, and I in contrast I am definitely more of a hunter than a fisherman. I know that his father did both, as we all do, but I don't know how that scale balanced. I've really only heard about my father's father in regard to bird hunting, although I know that he fished the streams as well, like we all do.
Anyhow, back when I was young, in the 70s, I recall ice fishing at Alcova, which I'd be a bit afraid to do today, but it wasn't very often. I also recall people parking their trucks on the ice, which I'd never do today. My father chopped a hole in the ice with a spade, which I don't recall anyone doing since that time.
It was fun.
We have a hand auger. Much better than a spade. And little ice fishing poles, which isn't what my father used.
I didn't make it out last year. I hunted geese until the end of January, not terribly successfully, and it warmed up too much to ice fish.
Not this year.
In fact, today, going out by myself, as my daughter lives in Laramie now, I found myself flagged down going in, after I passed the snow plow. A really nice fellow I know, having called him as a witness on the Reservation, and a city councilman, formally one of my kid's religious education teachers, informed me the road was drifted in. I thanked them and pulled off
The dog wasn't pleased.
The dog believes that he's integral to fishing, and that without him, the endeavor will fail. He's very serious about his hunting occupation, and fishing is of course fish hunting.
I pulled off to let him wee. .. okay and I needed to wee too. After that, in spite of being warned, I drove down the road toward the lake.
Oh man, was it ever drifted in.
I went back down the road and met a fisherman from Douglas near the highway. He was waiting for me for a road report. He'd driven a long ways and had a lot of poles, a true ice fisherman. I gave the road report to him. He decided to try Alcova. I decided to try a different high mountain lake.
And yes, I'm not going to mention it.
Before I left for that one, I received a call from my son's girlfriend. She's a dedicated fly fisherman, a rare quality in a girlfriend and one to be seriously admired. My pickup, which my son is driving, she related, had been rear ended in a Laramie blizzard. I have his truck right now as it's having a complete mechanical breakdown.
Turns out it wasn't bad.
Couldn't make that other high mountain lake either. It was also drifted in.
The bill that may legalize corner cross, SF56, passed:
ORIGINAL SENATE
FILE NO. SF0056
ENROLLED ACT NO. 60, SENATE
SIXTY-SEVENTH LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF WYOMING
2023 GENERAL SESSION
AN ACT relating to game and fish; expanding the prohibition for entering private property without permission for hunting purposes to also prohibit traveling through the private property; and providing for an effective date.
Be It Enacted by the Legislature of the State of Wyoming:
Section 1. W.S. 23‑3‑305(b) is amended to read:
23‑3‑305. Hunting from highway; entering or traveling through private property without permission; penalty; hunting at night without permission prohibited.
(b) No person shall enter upon, travel through or return across the private property of any person to take wildlife, hunt, fish, collect antlers or horns, or trap without the permission of the owner or person in charge of the property. Violation of this subsection constitutes a low misdemeanor punishable as provided in W.S. 23‑6‑202(a)(v). For purposes of this subsection "travel through or return across" requires physically touching or driving on the surface of the private property.
Section 2. This act is effective July 1, 2023.
Mountain lion chasing season was established, which I think was a poor idea.
The gun 'em down trespass bill, which had passed the House, died in the Senate., not making it out of committee.
Speaking against the bill as voices of reason were conservation groups and a rancher, who noted that he had dozens of trespassers per year and though the bill was a bad idea.
The person whose thoughts lead to the introduction of the bill, a person who provides church security in Buffalo, admitted that if somebody was dangerous they already did what was necessary to escort a person out, although that really fits into a different category. It perhaps demonstrates why this bill was unnecessary at best.
Sponsored by: Senator(s) Rothfuss and Gierau and Representative(s) Chestek, Provenza, Sherwood and Yin
A BILL
for
AN ACT relating to crimes and offenses; providing an exception to the offenses of criminal trespass and game and fish trespass regarding incidental contact associated with crossing two (2) adjacent parcels as specified; and providing for an effective date.
Be It Enacted by the Legislature of the State of Wyoming:
Section 1. W.S. 6‑3‑303 by creating a new subsection (d) and 23‑3‑305(b) are amended to read:
6‑3‑303. Criminal trespass; penalties.
(d) For purposes of this section, a person does not commit criminal trespass if the person incidentally passes through the airspace or touches the land or premises of another person while the person is traveling from one (1) parcel of land that the person is authorized to access to another parcel of land that shares a common corner with or is immediately connected to the first parcel and that the person is authorized to access.
23‑3‑305. Hunting from highway; entering enclosed property without permission; penalty; hunting at night without permission prohibited.
(b) No person shall enter upon the private property of any person to hunt, fish, collect antlers or horns, or trap without the permission of the owner or person in charge of the property. Violation of this subsection constitutes a low misdemeanor punishable as provided in W.S. 23‑6‑202(a)(v). For purposes of this subsection, a person does not commit trespass under this subsection if the person incidentally passes through the airspace or touches the land or premises of another person while the person is traveling from one (1) parcel of land that the person is authorized to access to another parcel of land that shares a common corner with or is immediately connected to the first parcel and that the person is authorized to access.
Section 2. This act is effective July 1, 2023.
As is probably obvious, that's a Democratic bill and will likely go nowhere in this legislature.
It would seem that some old wars which seemingly were behind us are not.
Once again, the forces of "property" wish to exclude. . . violently.
And once again, they have the legislature behind them.
We recently posted on this item:
HOUSE BILL NO. HB0126
Trespass-removal of trespasser.
Sponsored by: Representative(s) Crago and Washut and Senator(s) Kinskey and Landen
A BILL
for
AN ACT relating to crimes and offenses; providing for the use of physical force against a trespasser as specified; and providing for an effective date.
Be It Enacted by the Legislature of the State of Wyoming:
Section 1. W.S. 6‑3‑303 by creating new subsections (d) and (e) is amended to read:
(d) A person who is the owner or legal occupant of land or a premises upon which a criminal trespass is occurring, or their agent, is justified in using reasonable and appropriate physical force upon another person when and to the extent that it is reasonably necessary to terminate what the owner, occupant or agent reasonably believes to be the commission of a criminal trespass by the other person in or upon the land or premises.
(e) Section (d) of this section does not supersede or add to the responsibilities applicable to the defense of self or another as provided by law.
Section 2. This act is effective July 1, 2023.
Frankly, as this bill is based on what one “reasonably believes”, basically authorizes murder, or could, and probably will be, read that way.
I know Washut who due to his prior career as a policeman ought to know better. I don't know the remainder of them.
This bill, if passed, will get somebody killed.
Let's start with this. What is criminal trespass?
Well, under Wyoming's law, it's the following:
TITLE 6 - CRIMES AND OFFENSES
CHAPTER 3 - OFFENSES AGAINST PROPERTY
6-3-303. Criminal trespass; penalties.
(a) A person is guilty of criminal trespass if he enters or remains on or in the land or premises of another person, knowing he is not authorized to do so, or after being notified to depart or to not trespass. For purposes of this section, notice is given by:
(i) Personal communication to the person by the owner or occupant, or his agent, or by a peace officer; or
(ii) Posting of signs reasonably likely to come to the attention of intruders.
(b) Criminal trespass is a misdemeanor punishable by imprisonment for not more than six (6) months, a fine of not more than seven hundred fifty dollars ($750.00), or both.
(c) This section does not supersede W.S. 1-21-1003.
So, under Wyoming's law, if a person comes up to you, and says "you are trespassing", and you remain, and you really are trespassing, you are guilty of criminal trespass.
And, under the proposed amendment to the law, this would be added to it:
(d) A person who is the owner or legal occupant of land or a premises upon which a criminal trespass is occurring, or their agent, is justified in using reasonable and appropriate physical force upon another person when and to the extent that it is reasonably necessary to terminate what the owner, occupant or agent reasonably believes to be the commission of a criminal trespass by the other person in or upon the land or premises.
(e) Section (d) of this section does not supersede or add to the responsibilities applicable to the defense of self or another as provided by law.
So the new law would be such that Landowner or Landowner's agent could come up to you and say, "get off", and if they didn't, they could use "reasonable and appropriate physical force" to remove you when they "reasonably believe" that you are criminally trespassing.
Seriously, "reasonably believed"?
What if their reasonable belief was wrong?
Several years ago I was on public lands when a couple of goons for a large Natrona County landowner approached me and informed me that I had to leave as I was trespassing. I had a GPS, and I knew I wasn't.
I was also deer hunting and carrying a rifle and a handgun.
Did the goons believe that I was trespassing? I don't know. It's hard to penetrate the minds of saps who take jobs as regulators. Their belief may have been based on what their employer told them. Mine was based on the United States Geological Survey.
I didn't want to bother with it, and I cleared off.
I frankly wouldn't now. Now, I would have told them to pound sand, particularly as they warned me it was a $10,000 fine is I stayed, which was bullshit.
I got my revenge, I guess, by voting against the guy, a long with a lot of other locals, when he stood for reelection for a local office he was also holding.
But back to the scenario. I'm armed. If they were too, and they believed I was "criminally trespassing", and had invoked the element by telling me I was, could they then draw down on me? Would that be reasonable force, as I was armed?
And if I did, would I have been justified in blowing them away in self defense? I wasn't trespassing, and now I'm in danger of my life.
I probably wouldn't. . . but if I were with my son, wife, or daughter and felt they actually might use the weapons? A scared person resorts to violence quickly, and men protecting their families do as well.
And if that happened, would I be found to have acted in self-defense?
This scenario, if this bill passes, will play out just this way.
Now it'll be incumbent upon anyone going afield to pack heat, least some hired moron tries to drive them off land they believe they have a right to be on. And sooner or later some asshole, probably a landowner on public land, or some out of state landowner's hired flunky, will challenge a fisherman, hunter, or hiker and get gunned down, dying for a moronic belief in the absolute nature of property rights that are, in fact, not absolute, never have been, and never will be.
What about the corner crossing case? Even the Game Warden couldn't tell if it was a trespass or not. The landowner's hired traitor to the state believed it was. Would he have drawn down on them?
Those guys were gentlemen in the whole affair. Most people are. I've known of at least one friend of mine who was confronted in such a fashion and kept a rifle on the jerk confronting him, as he was armed. The armed jerk didn't realize that he was about to meet the business end of a .30-30 if he went too far.
Life preserved by a clam reactant.
Not everyone is calm, and not everyone cares either. Some asshat is going to tell somebody to get off some land, and that person is going to stand their ground. Somebody will probably get killed, and it'll probably be the person yelling "get off my land".
Lots of people now days imagine themselves to be Matt Quigly in the final scene of Quigly Down Under, gunning down the baddy. Some have even taken up carrying all the time so that they can affect the visage of Pistol Pete or maybe Yoesimite Sam. Take our recent wholly unqualified interim Secretary of State, Karl Allred, who packed heat on to the UW campus as he wanted to make a point.
Direct link to WyoFile, "Uinta County committeeman Karl Allred reviews documents at a Wyoming Republican Party Central Committee meeting in Riverton in September 2022. Gov. Mark Gordon appointed Allred as secretary of state. (Mike Koshmrl/WyoFile)"
Mr. Allred, seen packing here complete with a handgun that has an extra magazine, may imagine himself freedom's brave sentinel. but if he had to draw that, let's be honest, he'd be lucky to get it around his gut.
Being fat is no crime, but frankly not one person in fifty knows how to use a handgun in combat, and a lot of those are people who would have the high side of the fight if confronted by a good. Pistol Packing Regulators may imagine that they can draw down on a whole passel of criminal trespasser, but the result is far from certain, particularly if they aren't trespassing.
Think that guy can outdraw and gun down a 20-year-old carrying a .357? I don't think it bloody likely.
And FWIW, there's a whole lot of people now who are packing for self-defense, including a lot of young, agile, men, and women, who actually don't have enormous waste lines to clear, and who the goons aren't going to know are packing.
What the crap has gotten into people?
Wyoming was built on go where you want, when you want. The last time somebody tried to change this, it went badly.
But we're right back at that point once again. Property rights, real or imagined, enforced at the barrel of a gun. Indeed, when we fought that battle before, the legislature was on the wrong side of it then as well.
Moreover, any property, including your very own house, that you own, you are merely renting for, at most, the extraordinary short period of your life. You don't really have a moral right to go around bullying trespassers on the open range or fishing stream. Yes, you can call law enforcement, but do that. That's their job in a civil society.
And let's be honest, if we're returning to that day, equitably, turnabout can be argued to be fair play.
