Page 45 - Wyoming's Grizzly Harvest - The Story the State Wants to Bury with the Bears

Wyoming’s Grizzly Harvest does. Would-be small towns provide the most fertile of ground for tales to grow tall. There are no objective local media outlets when it comes to grizzly bears, just FWS and WGFD echo chambers. Upon review, Nesvik’s confidence in Ellsbury does not seem misplaced. “We try to be as transparent as possible and give out all of the information everyone wants,” insisted Tara Hodges, who is burdened with PR for WGFD in Cody, but in this instance, that transparency was a gradual process. A month after the act, the story of 760 changed. Thompson started talking about a deer carcass in Clark that 760 had been attracted to, and how the sub-adult charged a vehicle in what was to be its Indian summer. The deer was hung in a tree within view of the hunter’s home, and the young bear found and claimed it. In bear country there are restrictions on hanging birdfeeders, but WGFD does not seem inclined to impose the same on hunters with their deer, though at its fish hatchery down the road they have seen fit to erect bear warning signs. Thompson’s “the bear charged a vehicle” was derived from the hunter having driven his pick-up at the bear to panic it, and 760’s refusal to retreat from the calorie boon in winter’s approach. With his sentencing behind him and Thanksgiving in front of everybody else, Ellsbury confirmed 45