Don Hall is an avid snowmobiler, but instead of heading for the hills each winter in search of deep powder, he takes an older snowmachine to lower elevations nearer the snow line. There’s a reason the Riverton resident prefers the lower zones despite the rocks, fences and sage most riders avoid: That’s where the coyotes are.

“I’d rather run coyotes than go ride mountain snow,” Hall told WyoFile. “It’s that much fun to me.”

Running coyotes, a hobby he picked up about five years ago, is “beyond a challenge,” he said. It’s rough riding. Plus, when the 49-year-old spots an animal, it’s invariably wheeling — running as fast as it possibly can — and looking to cross a fence line and get to the nearest cover.

About two-thirds of the fleeing coyotes escape, according to Hall’s estimation.

Hall runs down the rest.

“I drive up on them and I park them underneath the track and I shoot them in the head,” he said.

For Hall, who’s also an accomplished carp shooter, running over coyotes with snowmobiles is just another form of hunting — little different than running a predator call and shooting lured canines. He concedes there’s an “unfair advantage” and says he doesn’t enjoy the violence and killing. Videos of coyotes being run over “tear me up,” he said. Nevertheless, Hall feels justified partaking in the practice. It is, after all, entirely legal in Wyoming.

“A snowmobile running over a coyote in the snow, I guess that’s brutal,” he said. “But [it’s] nothing compared to what they do when wolves surround an elk and literally tear it down.”

By Hall’s estimation, what’s sometimes called “coyote whacking” is a niche recreational activity in Wyoming, with maybe 100 avid participants. Others contend it’s much more commonplace. In Sublette County, the activity is widespread enough that a resident once made and marketed apparel celebrating a pursuit he branded “chasin’ fur.”

Regardless, relatively few people — especially outside of the Equality State — knew the practice existed. That changed when a western Wyoming man brought a dying wolf into a bar after running it down with a snowmobile this winter. Suddenly, people across the globe demanded to know why the state allowed an activity they considered nothing short of barbaric.

The outrage prompted Wyoming to temporarily halt its tourism marketing and empanel a new legislative group to study the issue. But that anger, observers say, isn’t likely to result in a ban anytime soon.

Passing on prohibitions

Calls to ban recreationally running over Wyoming wildlife with snowmobiles aren’t new.

In 2019, John Fandek, a former ranch manager and longtime contract elk feeder who lives in the small Sublette County community of Cora, wrote in remarks delivered to a legislative committee that running down coyotes and foxes with snowmobiles has “evolved into merely fun-time family recreation” that occurs “every day all winter long in the snow country of Wyoming.”

“The kind of activity described in this statement is not hunting,” he testified. “It is merely despicable, disgusting killing.”

Fandek, who could not be reached, wrote those words the same year that two legislative efforts to criminalize running predators fell flat.

Rep. Mike Yin (D-Jackson) pushed the first bill, which died for lack of a committee assignment. Between sessions that summer, the Wyoming Legislature’s Travel, Recreation, Wildlife and Cultural Resources Committee also declined to pursue statute changes being pushed primarily by Teton County residents.

As it stands, it’s explicitly legal to use motorized vehicles to kill predatory species (wolves in 85% of Wyoming and coyotes, red fox, stray cats, jackrabbits, porcupines, raccoons and striped skunks throughout the state).

The laws governing Wyoming Game and Fish exempt predators from rules that otherwise prohibit harassing, pursuing, hunting, shooting and killing wildlife with aircraft, cars, snowmobiles and other vehicles. Species classified as predators can also be taken by anyone, at any time, by any method without a license.

The regulations allowed for the normalization and eventual popularity of running over animals with snowmobiles, but the controversial practice largely stayed out of the spotlight — an open secret mostly confined to a distinct subculture that bantered on message boards and posted helmet-mounted camera videos online. Many of those videos have since been taken down.

The lack of attention changed last winter, when a Sublette County resident used a snowmobile to take a young wolf captive and show it off in a Daniel bar.

“The f----- ran it over with his snowmobile and injured it so bad it could barely stay conscious,” a Wyoming Game and Fish Department staffer texted the eyewitness who reported the incident.

The saga of the dying wolf kept alive in Sublette County stoked global outrage partly because of the lightness of the punishment: The offender, Cody Roberts, was issued only a $250 ticket, though steeper penalties were available. The incident also introduced people around the world to the Wyoming pastime of running over foxes, coyotes, wolves and other animals with snowmobiles for fun.

Animal rights groups, average folks and even the hunting community united in calls for reform.

Some 70 hunting organizations — including the Wyoming Wildlife Federation and the Cody-based American Bear Foundation — signed onto a joint statement condemning the incident and calling on the Wyoming Legislature to change the law to “define a legal (ethical) means of take” for predatory animals.

“His method of take was using a snowmobile to run it over…,” the groups wrote in the letter. “That is not a method of take. That is not ethical, and that should not be legal.”

The push for a ban reached all the way to Washington, D.C., where activists gathered, fundraised and lobbied congress. Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Texas) even worked on a bill that would have made it a felony to use “a motor vehicle to intentionally drive, chase, run over, kill, or take a wild animal on federal land.” Introduction, however, was delayed after it was vetted with “well-known hunting groups and Second Amendment defenders,” Mountain Journal writer Ted Williams reported. Six weeks after Williams’ story was published, the bill still hasn’t been introduced.

Short of congressional action, federal land managers in Wyoming have told the Jackson Hole News&Guide they lack the jurisdictional authority to prohibit killing wildlife with snowmobiles.

Although the Wyoming Game and Fish Commission was encouraged to change its rules, too, that body likewise lacks the authority to manage predatory animal species which, by law fall under Wyoming Department of Agriculture jurisdiction.

Another run at statute changes

That leaves the decision up to the Wyoming Legislature, which is examining potential changes to the law in direct response to the Sublette County incident. The Travel, Recreation, Wildlife and Cultural Resources Committee — the same committee that passed on snowmobiling-related legislation five years ago — even created a subgroup, the Treatment of Predators Working Group, to take on the task.

It’s a mix of lawmakers and non-elected government and private-sector officials: Along with a handful of legislators, the group includes soon-retiring Wyoming Game and Fish Department Director Brian Nesvik, Wyoming Department of Agriculture Director Doug Miyamoto, a representative from Gov. Mark Gordon’s office, Wyoming Stock Growers Association representative Jim Magagna and Wyoming Wildlife Federation representative Jessi Johnson.

Rep. Liz Storer (D-Jackson), who chairs the committee, believes that the committee’s makeup is “not balanced.” (Storer also serves as president and CEO of the George B. Storer Foundation, which is a financial supporter of WyoFile. The foundation has no role in WyoFile’s editorial content.)

“It doesn’t reflect the public well,” she told WyoFile. “There are no animal activists articulating their concern.”

To rectify the perceived imbalance, Storer proposed to bring in “outside perspectives” that were not represented in the working group. She sought an all-day meeting to examine the treatment of predators “more objectively” and “more holistically.”

“My desire was to … focus on the topic of addressing wanton animal cruelty,” Storer said. “I don’t think we’ve done that and I think the public would probably agree with that, based on what we’ve done to date.”

Ahead of the Treatment of Predators Working Group’s initial June meeting, Gov. Mark Gordon wrote members a letter encouraging “narrow, focused conversations on wanton animal cruelty,” while discouraging them from straying.

“Punish unacceptable behavior and deter acts of animal cruelty without interfering with the ability to manage predators,” Gordon wrote. “My office will monitor the working group and the TRW (Travel Recreation, Wildlife and Cultural Resources) Committee as you work to address inhumane treatment of predators.”

A few weeks after receiving the letter, Storer was informed there was a new agenda — and that non-working group members were no longer invited to present.

TRW Committee Chair Rep. Sandy Newsome (R-Cody), who did not respond to an interview request, added herself to the working group. She sent word of the new agenda in an email, echoing the governor’s guidance:  “… there is a desire to focus on the narrow topic of addressing wanton animal cruelty without interfering with the ability to manage predators,” she wrote.

Livestock-protection tool?

During the June 25 meeting, lawmakers and other members of the committee focused on what occurred after Roberts acquired the wolf. They walked through language that would legally require making an effort to swiftly kill a predator, discussed addressing the predator exemption in the animal cruelty statute, and proposed hiking some fines and penalties. But the group was leery of a bill addressing how Roberts acquired the wolf: by snowmobiling into the animal until it was barely conscious.

Nesvik, the Game and Fish director, said during the meeting that a snowmobiling-over-animal prohibition would be “more thorny” and “more complicated.”

Agricultural interests on the committee discouraged new regulations in that realm. It’s considered a “tool” ranchers use to reduce predator populations, Wyoming Stock Growers Executive Vice President Jim Magagna told WyoFile.

“It’s primarily been used with coyotes, but would be applicable to wolves as well,” Magagna said. “I’ve talked with a number of livestock producers across the state — in particular, sheep producers — who have said that they view it as one of their most effective tools.”

Already, he said, the industry’s arsenal to protect livestock has waned. Magagna cited the Bureau of Land Management’s recent national prohibition on M-44 devices, better known as cyanide bombs, which propel sodium cyanide poison and were typically used on coyotes but sometimes killed pets.

“As we lose some of those tools,” Magagna said, “then [snowmobiling over animals] becomes more important.”

The Wyoming Wildlife Federation’s Johnson worries that pursuing a snowmobiling-over-animal prohibition without agricultural interests on board could sink the working group’s chances of achieving any reform.

“The ability to torture something is a lot more egregious than the ability to chase something down,” Johnson said. “I want to get that win. I want that win solid and signed and inked before we get into a discussion that is going to be harder to have.”

Johnson added a caveat: Wyoming “needs” to have a discussion about rules that allow for recreationally snowmobiling over wildlife. She pointed out that the predator statutes are under the Agriculture Committee, and encouraged outraged activists to engage more tactfully.

“I haven’t seen anybody that wants to push one of these bills have a meaningful sit-down with agriculture that doesn’t involve lobbing bombs,” Johnson said. 

A continued Wyoming

tradition?

The Treatment of Predators Working Group is tentatively scheduled to meet next on Sept. 4 via Zoom. The Legislative Service Office is crafting a bill for the group, but as this story went to press it was not yet publicly available.

If the group decides to leave recreationally snowmobiling over wildlife legal, Storer, the chair, is considering bringing a personal bill.

“I haven’t made a decision about that yet,” she said. “I’ve heard that other people are certainly thinking about that as well.”

In the meantime, Hall and anyone else living in or visiting Wyoming are in the clear to keep on with their winter activity of running down coyotes and other predatory wildlife with snowmachines.

Hall had choice words for Roberts, whose stunt with the wounded wolf drew attention to the snowmobiling-over-animals world that in turn triggered a global outcry for change.

“He slapped the wasp’s nest,” Hall said. “That guy’s a straight-up fool.”

It’s a safe bet that animal rights groups, hunting advocates and the public will be watching to see how Wyoming proceeds. Even now — more than five months after the Sublette County incident —  Storer and other members of the Travel, Recreation, Wildlife and Cultural Resources Committee continue to get emails encouraging reform on a daily basis.

“They’re asking us to outlaw running over any sort of animal with a vehicle,” she said.

That outrage might prove a fair reflection of public sentiment, despite most of the working group’s reservations about change. In April, the Remington Research Group conducted a poll, paid for by the Humane Society of the United States, gauging what Wyoming residents thought about different aspects of the wolf incident.

Of the 540 likely general election voters, some 73% said using snowmobiles to kill predatory species was not acceptable.

WyoFile is an independent nonprofit news organization focused on Wyoming people, places and policy.