SUBLETTE COUNTY – Weekend events are marked on the Waterhole #3’s calendar months ahead of time, such as bingo and trivia nights, fundraising benefits and raffles, the annual pig roast and a special July Fourth celebration.
Bill and Brandy Lynn Cowley bought the established bar and grill in Marbleton three years ago and set out to remodel and brighten the roomy space, hire quality staff and tend to loyal customers.
Back in November, Brandy and bartender Amy Busselle flipped through the upcoming 2025 calendar to pencil in traditional celebrations and holidays, Busselle explained this week.
There was a gap after Valentine’s Day – for Feb. 21-23.
Locals had asked Busselle and the Cowleys about hosting a “coyote derby,” a not-so-unusual rural wintertime hunting contest with enough snow on the ground to track adult animals looking to breed. The Song Dog Shootout then took shape with live music and restaurant specials.
In Wyoming, larger “predatory animals” include coyotes, red foxes and gray wolves (outside the Wyoming Game and Fish’s Trophy-Game Management Area in northwest Wyoming). Coyotes in particular are trapped and hunted without a license or a bag limit.
No ‘anniversary’
It never occurred to anyone at the Waterhole #3 that their small-town event in late February would take place almost exactly a year after Daniel hunter Cody Roberts ran over a young wolf, tied it with wire and duct-taped its mouth before it slowly died at a Daniel bar about 25 miles up the highway.
Since then, angry and threatening protestors continually shine a strong spotlight on Sublette County; they consistently troll the Sublette County Sheriff’s Office website and Facebook page.
Hardly any online news – even tragic events – escapes their scathing comments.
It never occurred to Busselle and the Cowleys that this small-town coyote derby might draw the same negative attention.
“This is not a celebration of any one-year anniversary,” Busselle said. “This is nothing the same at all. It has nothing to do with killing wolves. This is entirely legal. This is managing the predators to get the right balance.”
Busselle researched how to have an entirely legal and ethical hunt. A prize for “the smallest coyote” is based on weight, not age, she clarified. Last year’s pups are now adults, she added.
A fur buyer will gut and skin clean-killed coyotes. No “mangled” or bullet-blasted carcasses are allowed. She’s counting on her strict set of rules for hunters to follow and if they don’t, they will be disqualified, “No questions asked.”
Good sportsmanship is essential.
Hunters can use snowmobiles to track coyotes but not to run them over, she said. No predator-zone wolves accepted, either.
Local interest
A couple of months ago, Busselle put up posters around southern Sublette County and neighboring Lincoln County. The response was of general interest. As the weekend approached, Busselle and the Waterhole #3 posted the flyers on Facebook.
Shortly after, Brandy Lynn received an unintelligible phone call from an irate out-of-state man who screamed at her about the event, she related. The man then posted a video trying to connect the Waterhole’s derby to the 2024 Daniel wolf incident.
He referred almost 2,000 video viewers to animal advocate Jonas Black’s page, Show Your Teeth, which is planning a second “Hogs for Hope” motorcycle rally to Daniel this summer. Black’s post was shared 124 times as of last week. Black has been collaborating with Wyoming Wildlife Advocates’ Kristin Combs on a GoFundMe fund drive for $130,000, which was met and exceeded last year.
Last Sunday, people from this country and others began texting and emailing dozens of insults and threats to the Cowleys, Busselle (whose voicemail was filled by Tuesday) and even recently local acoustic musician Sammy Steele (no relation), who contracted to perform Friday night at the Waterhole #3, received at least 50 threats and insults from animal advocates.
Steele had posted his own flyer with his Instagram, TikTok and Q codes. At 10 p.m. Sunday night, he got the first threatening phone call and his Instagram account was so flooded with insults, he soon closed it to comments.
So he and Brandy Lynn talked. They agreed that as a relative newcomer trying to break into the local music scene, he could back out gracefully. “They were crazy; it was totally crazy,” he said of the unexpected deluge of hate.
Black clarified to his followers that Steele was not playing after all and to leave him alone.
Activists also targeted the Waterhole #3 website and Facebook page and Brandy Lynn personally.
“She wasn’t really even very thrilled about having the derby,” Busselle said of her “kind of city girl” friend. “She didn’t want anything to do with the judging, weighing, any of it.”
‘Brazen’
No one hosted a local hunt last year, Busselle said, so coyotes are more “brazen” than usual.
“They usually hang out away from here, out there,” she motioned west toward the Wyoming Range. “We can take just enough so they have don’t have to fight (for food) and they’ll go back there.”
Most local pronghorn and mule deer hunters declined to hunt from the two struggling big-game herds, still recovering from two years of disease and starvation in western Wyoming. As a result, she said, hunters culled fewer coyotes.
This winter, coyotes are encroaching on people’s yards and corrals around Marbleton, Big Piney and settled areas, including Busselle’s home with a 10-week-old puppy to protect. Friends – with chickens and soon baby goats, lambs and calves – also want to protect their pets, kids and livestock from coyotes, foxes and gray wolves in the predator zone, she said.
Busselle said she contacted the Sublette County Predator Management Board and was told (by a board member she wouldn’t name), “This is an appropriate way to address a situation like this.”
The board member offered $200 of $600 prize money set aside annually for three possible coyote hunts, approved unanimously at the board’s December meeting. Busselle and Cowley said they weren’t sure if the board would still offer the prize money “with everything that’s going on now.”
Board president Pete Arambel declined to discuss the matter due to serious illness. Board secretary-treasurer Cat Urbigkit did not respond.
‘Grace’
Protestors will be welcome as long as they don’t inhibit the Water Hole #3’s business, Busselle said. “They are welcome to come. They have the legal right.”
Looking ahead to the weekend, Busselle said that she has asked her local hunter friends to show her “grace” in how they handle themselves.
“I’m really going lean on them now to show me even more grace,” she said.
