MOSCOW, Idaho (AP) — Authorities say a 60-year-old northern Idaho man is recovering after being shot in the buttocks with a .50-caliber muzzleloader rifle by his hunting partner who mistook him for an elk.
The Latah County Sheriff’s Office tells the Moscow-Pullman Daily News that the Moscow man was shot Monday near Deary by a 72-year-old Potlatch man.
Officials say the injured man was transported to a hospital and was in stable condition Tuesday.
Names haven’t been released.
CODY, Wyoming — At the already too-late warning shout of “Bear!” Jon Sheets tilted his head lamp at the darkness and was startled by a charging grizzly a foot away.
Sheets grabbed at the bear’s thick fur with his left hand and swiftly raised the bloody knife he was using to field dress a dead elk.
“His ears were pinned back and he was coming hard,” Sheets said.
In one uppercut motion the Boulder Basin Outfitters guide stabbed the animal in the side with the 7-inch blade, diverting it from his hunter into an attack on him.
The battle was a mismatch between the 5-foot-9, 215-pound man and the 750-pound bear. Right ear nearly ripped off, left elbow crushed, bite and claw marks on his back and shoulders, Sheets briefly passed out during the grizzly mauling.
He thinks so, anyway. Some memories are hazy. Some are vivid, such as the bear’s tooth that broke off in Sheets’ skull and stuck there.
“It felt like an hour,” Sheets said of the attack that probably lasted a few minutes. “I could feel him on the back of my head.”
Sheets, 46, a lifelong hunter, and the middle-aged woman from Georgia who was his client, were bloodied and battered, required rescue and were flown from the Washakie Wilderness mountains on the outskirts of Cody to hospitals for treatment.
The grizzly attack at dusk was the beginning of a long night of fear and worry as the drama played out.
After hours of immediate surgery, a week at the Billings Clinic in Montana, a daily routine of changing bandages, being shelved from work at Summit ESP in Powell for up to two months and limping around his house in bedroom slippers because of a mildly broken leg, Sheets is in fairly good health and spirits.
This Thanksgiving, he had plenty to be thankful for, starting with his life.
“Mostly, I was thinking I wanted to see my wife and son,” Sheets said of Genevieve and Asher, 1 1/2.
Human-bear conflicts
This scenario is every hunter’s nightmare in the Wyoming wild where bears are common and believe every food source belongs to them, especially in fall, and sometimes treat humans as gnats to get at it.
In this year when the Greater Yellowstone grizzly was delisted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service from federal protection under the Endangered Species Act and their management returned to Wyoming, Montana and Idaho, there have been 13 bear-human conflicts in the demographic monitoring area, injuries to four people and seven bears shot.
Numbers vary annually, but 2010 was a high year. There were 16 conflicts, five people injured and one killed, plus 10 bears killed.
The first recorded bear attack death in Wyoming occurred in 1892. Recent Wyoming deaths from bears include a fatality in Yellowstone National Park in 2015 and another in the Bridger-Teton National Forest in 2014.
Game and Fish invests considerable time, energy and money educating the public on being bear aware while recommending carrying bear spray in the backcountry.
Sheets said he was toting a .44 magnum and bear spray, and the hunter was packing bear spray, but the incident flared up in seconds.
“There was no time to do anything, except use what I had in my hand,” Sheets said.
The hunt begins
The hunt began Oct. 25, a women’s-only cow hunt offered by Boulder Basin each fall. There were five women in the party and three guides.
On horseback, the group ascended to a camp of wall tents above 9,000 feet and scouted higher terrain.
Elk remained distant, the only ones seen five miles away. Retreating to camp, riders picked their own trails. Descending 200 yards, Sheets and his hunter spied about 10 elk in a meadow.
At dusk they dismounted, and she dropped it with two shots. They were only two miles above camp. Sheets began quartering the elk.
While Sheets carved, the woman talked, loudly as instructed, making noise to frighten away bears. Sheets was 45 minutes into the job when the devil knocked on the door. Darkness had floated in and the bear appeared like a ghost.
The knife piercing its hide provoked the bear and it swung its head and chomped Sheets’ left arm, biting to the bone. The force of the jaw closing shoved Sheets’ fingers halfway up his arm and broke it in two places, bones poking through the skin.
The bear then sprang at the woman, ripping at her, and returned to Sheets, who was flat on his stomach. Teeth and claws raked him and the bear bounded up and down on his back, using him as a trampoline.
“I could feel him chewing on my ear,” Sheets said.
Then the bear snatched the elk meat, dragging it right over Sheets, and disappeared back into the night.
After the maulings, Sheets and the hunter lay about 30-feet apart. Dazed and his entire body aching from the pummeling, Sheets said he heard the woman call out she was hurt.
They both were. The hunter crawled to the horses because she had a bite weakening one leg. Sheets could stand and walk.
“She thought she was blind,” he said. “She had head lacerations.”
Sheets washed off her blood. She looked him over and said, “You’re pretty messed up.”
They struggled onto their horses. Sheets radioed Boulder Basin boss Carl Sauerwein at camp to report an emergency and began riding on a crisp, clear night, with the Big Dipper bright in the sky and the temperature below freezing.
Sauerwein and another from camp mounted up within five minutes, knowing only fragments of what happened.
“It was scary,” said Sauerwein, who has operated the company for 11 years and been guiding since 1989. “We lost radio contact. She had dropped the radio. It was pretty unnerving.”
Sheets was riding in front with the hunter trailing slightly.
“She was freaked out,” Sauerwein said. “She had some cuts and said the bear bit her leg and it really hurt.”
In camp the dining table was cleared and the kitchen tent turned into a triage unit.
Sauerwein radioed the Park County Sheriff’s Office, reporting the need for medical help.
Sheets, his good friend, as well as employee, was drenched in blood and Sauerwein was upset at a client being injured in his care for the first time. He was startled to see the bear tooth sticking out of Sheets’ head.
Certain he was going to lose consciousness, Sheets scrawled his wife Gen’s cell phone number on his hand and asked for someone to call her.
Reaching her with the facts and reassuring her evolved into an all-night adventure.
Sauerwein’s call to the sheriff’s department triggered the next phase of the rescue. Two helicopters were dispatched, one flying Sheets to Billings and one taking the hunter to a trauma center in Idaho Falls.
A long night
In Billings, Sheets was swiftly sent into surgery for his torn-apart ear and left arm.
At home in Powell, Gen Sheets had her usual trouble putting Asher to bed. The youngster took a lot of convincing and is a light sleeper. So she turned the ringer off on her phone and then fell asleep next to him.
When Gen Sheets woke and looked at her phone at 1:14 a.m. she saw she had 51 missed calls and 30-something texts.
“I thought, ‘What the heck?’” she said.
Many messages simply said, “Pick up.”
She spotted a contact from Sauerwein saying, “There’s been an accident and Jon’s being life-flighted to Billings.”
Gen is just as avid a hunter as Jon, who bagged his first elk at 13 after hunting prairie dogs as a youth. She shot 27 pheasants in one season when in advanced pregnancy. On their living room walls hang two bear skins. Jon shot one near Haines, Alaska, where they used to live and she shot the other, larger one, on Admiralty Island, Alaska.
She knows hunting is a sport where things can go awry and did not panic even if the message was troubling. She might have if Jon had not been dissuaded from sending a photo of his Vincent-Van-Gogh-damaged ear along with the “Love you” note she found in the message mix.
Thinking Jon had probably been wounded by an errant gunshot, Gen telephoned the Billings emergency room.
“I understand you have my husband there,” she said. “The nurse said, ‘He’s a real hero. He stabbed a bear and saved a lady.’”
But Jon could not get on the phone. He was in surgery, a short one, she was told.
“I started packing and it was 3 o’clock in the morning and they hadn’t called me,” she said.
She woke Asher for the 95-mile drive to Billings. He stayed awake all the way to Laurel, just outside of Billings.
Gen pulled up to the hospital at 4:30 a.m. and was told Jon was still in surgery. She was frightened something had gone wrong. Around 6 a.m., after five hours of surgery, she was called by a nurse who said Jon was awake and she could come to Billings.
“I’m in the parking lot,” Gen said.
When she and Asher entered the hospital room, the first thing Jon said was, “We won. We got the first elk in camp.”
Although she considers her husband goofy anyway, she thought that was probably the drugs talking.
Search for the bear
When bear-human conflicts erupt, a Game and Fish protocol kicks in.
Cody regional wildlife supervisor Dan Smith was notified of the incident by the sheriff’s office the next morning and drove to Billings to interview Sheets.
“Within reason, we are going to go where they are,” Smith said, though it is unusual to travel out of state.
Smith sent two others from the department to the site. Sauerwein also returned to the area to retrieve belongings of Sheets and the hunter.
“We try to do that as soon as possible,” Smith said of scoping the location, “to try to determine what happened.”
The scan of the site turned up no sign of the bear or the elk carcass.
“We were unable to take any action,” Smith said.
DNA was taken from Sheets’ knife, but with no other reports of a bear acting aggressively in that area, this one is free for now.
Moving on
The bear attack is not going to scare Sheets indoors.
He has a noticeable scar on the back of his head, parting his red hair, a magnificent surgically repaired looks-normal ear, and an uncounted number of stitches and staples in his body. But he seemed most irritated about the bear tooth disappearing and being unable to deer hunt this month. He wanted a disabled exemption to hunt from the road, but his doctor would not provide a note, insisting he rest.
Since Sheets had to pause conversation because fluid was leaking out of his left arm, requiring more gauze be applied, the doctor cannot be accused of being an alarmist.
If Wyoming ever conducts a bear hunting season Sheets hopes this experience helps get him a license.
“When we get bear hunting, I’d like to get some preference points from this,” Sheets said.
Sheets heard the hunter will make a complete recovery, but for weeks did not get a response from telephone and text messages of concern. Then last Saturday she texted she will communicate after the holidays.
This ordeal does not have a finish line for Sheets. He faces regular checkups and more surgery is planned.
During the mauling, Sheets thought of “surviving the moment and then surviving the hour.”
Jon Sheets was unlucky to be attacked, but he knows he is lucky to be alive.
The Idaho Department of Fish and Game is seeking public comments on proposed changes to the 2018 and 2019 upland game, turkey and furbearer seasons.
Proposed changes to seasons include:
Season proposals are available for review and comment on the Fish and Game website at idfg.idaho.gov/comment.
Interested individuals may also provide their comments by attending one of several open house meetings where they can view the proposals and speak directly with local biologists. Open house meetings currently scheduled include:
If a meeting is not listed in your area, visit the nearest Fish and Game office where copies of the proposed seasons and comment forms are available. Written comments may also be mailed to 2018 & 2019 Upland Game Comments, P.O. Box 25, Boise ID 83707.
Comments can be submitted though Dec. 13.
All comments received will be summarized and presented to the Idaho Fish and Game Commission for consideration before seasons are set at the Jan. 16 meeting in Boise.
Jennifer Jackson is the Regional Conservation Educator for the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, Southeast Region.
BLACKFOOT — The Idaho Department of Fish and Game has issued a salvage order for Jensen’s Grove Park pond in Blackfoot.
In a news release issued by the agency, Fish and Game officials were notified by the city of Blackfoot that water filling the pond at Jensen Grove Park has been shut off. The fish that are still in the pond will not survive once water levels become too low.
Therefore, the salvage order for Jensen Grove Park pond will become effective through Jan. 1.
According to Fish and Game, during the salvage order timeline at Jensen Grove Park pond:
Anybody with questions regarding the salvage order are asked to contact Idaho Fish and Game in Pocatello at 208-232-4703.
I have a grandson who has a pretty good job in Williston, North Dakota. He is currently in training to become the manager of a store his company is opening in a town not too far from Williston and his parents.
My grandson loves the Rocky Mountain Northwest, and from time to time, just has to come back to Idaho to visit for a week or so.
The last time he visited us, I invited him to accompany me to the shooting range while I sighted in my .30-06 and .300 Weatherby magnum. I also offered to take an AR-15, which he enjoys shooting. So after he decided what handguns and rifles he wanted to shoot, we loaded them in the truck and headed for the shooting range off of 2 1/2 Mile Road just east of Chubbuck.
We took over two shooting stations next to each other on the 350-yard range and spent about a half hour shooting before I had several groups with the .30-06 and .300 Weatherby that I felt pretty good about.
My grandson was just finishing up shooting the AR-15, so I asked him if he would like to shoot the .30-06 and the .300 Weatherby now that I had them sighted in. He shot the .30-06, but refused to go anywhere near the Weatherby. He said it was too loud, even though he had ear protection, and it kicked too hard.
I wasn’t too surprised at his answer. He went shooting with me a lot when he was growing up in Pocatello and always refused my efforts to teach him how to shoot the .300 Weatherby without having the recoil hurt him.
The basics of shooting a rifle properly are pretty much the same regardless of the caliber. The problem lies in the fact that up to a certain point, one can stray from the basics a little without suffering sore shoulders and cheek bones because of recoil.
Most American shooters become a little uncomfortable with the recoil of more than 18 to 20 foot-pounds of energy coming back at them and lifting the barrel up and forcing the comb of the stock into their faces. The .30-06 has recoil energy of 18 to 20 foot-pounds.The .300 Weatherby Magnum has close to 37 to 38 foot-pounds of recoil energy, almost twice that of the .30-06.
I was 16 years old the first time I fired a .300 Weatherby and it was a real jolt, mostly to my cheekbone. However, like a true cowboy who was used to taking hard hits, I simply said, “Wow, I gotta get me one of these.” My father responded, “Not until you can buy it yourself and we review the basics of proper shooting form.”
I’m still not sure which part of the basics of proper shooting form I forgot that day, but I had a sore shoulder, a bruised face and a headache after the shot. Because of what hurt, I now have a pretty good idea what I did wrong and I have reviewed the proper shooting form. The next time I fired a .300 Weatherby Magnum, there was no hard hit to the shoulder and my face was just fine.
If you are going to shoot the .300 Winchester Magnum, the .300 Weatherby Magnum, the .338 Winchester Magnum, the .340 Weatherby Magnum or the .375 H&H Magnum, you really need to stick to the proper form. Place the butt of the rifle firm against your shoulder so the butt is anchored and has nowhere to go during firing. Keep your head high as you look at the sights or through the telescopic sight, so that the upward and backward recoil doesn’t catch your cheekbone, and use the sling on your supporting arm to minimize the upward rise of the barrel and comb of the stock.
If you are going to shoot rifles in the .375 Weatherby to .460 Weatherby class, which includes old African favorites like the Nitro Express calibers and the Rigby calibers, and the Jefferys, the same basic shooting form should be used, but prepare yourself to take a hit or at least a really hard shove, even with perfect shooting form. These calibers produce 70 to over 120 foot-pounds of recoil energy.
There really isn’t a good reason to shoot most of the popular African calibers while hunting in North America, the .375 H&H Magnum being a notable exception. Most of them are designed as dangerous big-game stoppers at 100 yards or less, have poor ballistic performance at the distances deer and elk are often encountered and they are unnecessarily wicked recoiling rifles.
Still, if you are like me, you just have to try one out if the opportunity presents itself. Besides, you don’t have to do it again if you feel like you were just in a head-on collision and decide once is enough.
Smokey Merkley was raised in Idaho and has been hunting since he was 10 years old. He was a member of the faculty of Texas A&M University for 25 years. There he taught orienteering, marksmanship, self-defense, fencing, scuba diving and boxing. He was among the first DPS-certified Texas Concealed Handgun Instructors. He can be contacted at mokeydo41245@hotmail.com.
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — President Donald Trump earlier this year ordered U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to conduct an unprecedented review of 27 monuments established by former presidents over more than two decades on lands and waters revered for their natural beauty and historical significance.
Trump announced Monday that he will shrink two Utah monuments, but he has not revealed his decision on the others yet. He launched the review after calling the land protections by Democratic former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton federal overreach.
Zinke recommended reducing four large monuments in the U.S. West and modifying rules at six others, according to a memo leaked this fall. He also has said he’s recommending the creation of three new monuments.
He didn’t suggest eliminating any monuments, despite urging by some Republicans in Utah and elsewhere.
Here’s a breakdown of Zinke’s recommendations:
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MONUMENTS TO BE DOWNSIZED
Trump said he will shrink the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments spanning millions of acres in Utah in line with Zinke’s recommendation.
Zinke also advised trimming Gold Butte in Nevada and Cascade Siskiyou in Oregon, but the president didn’t announce a final decision on those monuments Monday.
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NO DOWNSIZING, BUT RULE CHANGES
Zinke proposed more access for people and industry and other changes at six monuments:
— Katahdin Woods and Waters, Maine: Allow trees to be cut on parts of the monument and ensure that “traditional uses” like snowmobiling and hunting are taken into account in a management plan.
— Northeast Canyons and Seamounts, Maine: Allow commercial fishing in the first marine monument in the Atlantic Ocean.
— Pacific Remote Islands, Pacific Ocean: Allow commercial fishing within the marine monument that covers nearly 87,000 square miles (225,330 square kilometers) near Hawaii.
— Rose Atoll, Pacific Ocean: Allow commercial fishing in the 13,500-square-mile (34,965-square-kilometer) marine monument around the Rose Atoll in American Samoa, a U.S territory.
— Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks, New Mexico: Conduct assessment of border-safety risks, prioritize public access and request congressional authority to give tribes co-management.
— Rio Grande Del Norte, New Mexico: — Prioritize public access, request congressional authority to give tribes co-management, and get more funding to protect cultural and historical objects.
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STAYING INTACT
During his travels to visit some of the monuments under review, Zinke said these six monuments would remain untouched: Upper Missouri River Breaks in Montana; Sand to Snow in California; Grand Canyon-Parashant in Arizona; Craters of the Moon in Idaho; Hanford Reach in Washington; and Canyons of the Ancients in Colorado.
Zinke has been silent on the other 11 monuments under review, from Giant Sequoia in California to the Marianas Trench southwest of Guam, but they are presumed to remain intact.
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NEW MONUMENTS
Zinke also recommended Trump create three monuments, including one in his home state of Montana:
— Badger-Two Medicine in an area within the Lewis and Clark National Forest in northwest Montana.
— Medgar Evers’ home in Jackson, Mississippi, where the first field secretary for the NAACP was assassinated on June 12, 1963. Evers organized boycotts over segregation during the civil rights movement.
— Camp Nelson near Nicholasville, Kentucky, which was established in 1863 as a 700-bed Union Army hospital, supply depot and recruiting center for African-American troops in the state.
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — President Donald Trump on Monday took the rare step of scaling back two sprawling national monuments in Utah, declaring that “public lands will once again be for public use” in a move cheered by Republican leaders who lobbied him to undo protections they considered overly broad.
The decision marks the first time in a half century that a president has undone these types of land protections. Tribal and environmental groups oppose the decision and are expected to go to court in a bid to stop Trump and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke.
Trump made the plan official during a speech at the State Capitol, where he signed proclamations to shrink the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments. Both monuments encompass millions of acres of land.
State officials said the protections were overly broad and closed off the area to energy development and other access.
Environmental and tribal groups say the designations are needed to protect important archaeological and cultural resources, especially the more than 1.3 million-acre (2,030-square-mile) Bears Ears site featuring thousands of Native American artifacts, including ancient cliff dwellings and petroglyphs.
Trump argued that the people of Utah know best how to care for their land.
“Some people think that the natural resources of Utah should be controlled by a small handful of very distant bureaucrats located in Washington,” Trump said. “And guess what? They’re wrong.”
Roughly 3,000 demonstrators lined up near the State Capitol to protest Trump’s announcement. Some held signs that said, “Keep your tiny hands off our public lands,” and they chanted, “Lock him up!” A smaller group gathered in support, including some who said they favor potential drilling or mining there that could create jobs. Bears Ears has no oil or gas, Zinke told reporters, though there is coal in Grand Staircase-Escalante.
“Your timeless bond with the outdoors should not be replaced with the whims of regulators thousands and thousands of miles away,” Trump said. “I’ve come to Utah to take a very historic action to reverse federal overreach and restore the rights of this land to your citizens.”
Bears Ears, created last December by President Barack Obama, will be reduced by about 85 percent, to 201,876 acres (315 square miles).
Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, designated in 1996 by President Bill Clinton, will be reduced from nearly 1.9 million acres (nearly 3,000 square miles) to 1,003,863 acres (1,569 square miles).
Both were among a group of 27 monuments that Trump ordered Zinke to review this year.
Zinke accompanied Trump aboard Air Force One, as did Utah’s Republican U.S. senators, Orrin Hatch and Mike Lee. Hatch and other Utah Republican leaders pushed Trump to launch the review, saying the monuments designated by the former Democratic presidents locked up too much federal land.
Trump framed the decision as returning power to the state, saying, “You know and love this land the best and you know the best how to take care of your land.” He said the decision would “give back your voice.”
“Public lands will once again be for public use,” Trump said to cheers.
Hatch, who introduced Trump, said that when “you talk, this president listens” and that Trump promised to help him with “federal overreach.”
Patagonia President and CEO Rose Marcario said the outdoor-apparel company will join an expected court fight against the monument reduction, which she described as the “largest elimination of protected land in American history.”
No president has tried to eliminate a monument, but some have reduced or redrawn the boundaries on 18 occasions, according to the National Park Service. The most recent instance came in 1963, when President John F. Kennedy slightly downsized Bandelier National Monument in New Mexico.
Trump’s move against Bears Ears, covering lands considered sacred to tribes that long pushed for protections, marks his latest affront to Native Americans.
Trump overrode tribal objections to approve the Dakota Access and Keystone XL oil pipelines, and he used a recent White House event honoring Navajo Code Talkers to take a political jab at Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat he has nicknamed “Pocahontas” for her claim to have Native American heritage.
Trump signed an executive order in April directing Zinke to review the protections. Trump is able to upend the protections under the 1906 Antiquities Act, which gives presidents broad authority to declare federal lands as monuments and restrict their use.
Zinke has also recommended to Trump that Nevada’s Gold Butte and Oregon’s Cascade-Siskiyou monuments be reduced in size, though details remain unclear. The former Montana congressman’s plan would allow logging at a newly designated monument in Maine and more grazing, hunting and fishing at two sites in New Mexico.
Democrats and environmentalists have opposed the changes, accusing Trump and Zinke of engaging in a secretive process aimed at helping industry groups that have donated to Republican political campaigns.
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Superville reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Brady McCombs and Michelle L. Price in Salt Lake City contributed to this report.
INKOM — A changing of the guard will take place at Pebble Creek Ski Area in Inkom next year.
On March 23, 2018, Mary Reichman, Pebble Creek’s current general manager, will step down from the post she has held for 30 years and completely hand over the reins to Mike Dixon. Reichman will stay on at Pebble Creek this winter season to ensure there is a smooth transition.
Dixon, a lifelong Pocatello resident who owns Best Towing, has been a ski bum at Pebble Creek since he was a child. He has been shadowing Reichman since last ski season to prepare for his new role as Pebble Creek’s boss.
“I really enjoy being up on this mountain,” he said. “It’s a second home to a lot of people and I really want to take good care of it and make sure everybody can enjoy it for years to come.”
While Dixon takes on the new job at Pebble Creek, his brother will run and operate Best Towing.
Dixon’s ascension to become Pebble Creek’s new general manager represents another step in the change of leadership at the ski area over the past year and a half.
After being owned by a small group of investors since the 1980s, Pebble Creek was purchased in 2016 by Shay Butler, an internet celebrity who was raised in Pocatello and is better known as Shay Carl by his online fans.
Dixon said there are numerous long-term plans for the ski resort in the works. For one, Pebble Creek’s management wants to expand its revenue stream in the summer months, with a focus on booking more weddings and outdoor concerts at the Inkom ski resort. Pebble Creek already holds the Idaho Wildflower and Music Festival every June.
Management also wants to create more opportunities for hiking and biking with new trails on the mountain. They are also looking to expand Pebble Creek’s parking lot and widen the Outback Trail.
But some of these long-term projects are quite a few years off. Because the land where Pebble Creek is situated is leased from the U.S. Forest Service, the resort’s management is currently assembling a master development plan for the federal agency to help get these future projects off the ground.
“Once we get that done, we’ll know a little more what direction we are headed,” Dixon said.
With new leadership and a new winter season on the horizon, Dixon said it’s going to be mostly business as usual for both Pebble Creek’s employees and their guests this coming season.
The school and Boy Scout programs will continue to be a focal point in the resort’s operations. Pebble Creek’s popular winter events — including the annual Freestyle Rally, the Stacy Smith Race for Kids, the Telemark Festival, the Dummy Jump and the Montucky Pond Skim — will continue as usual.
Concerts will still be held every Sunday evening in the lodge’s bar, and on Jan. 9, Jan. 16, Jan. 23 and Jan. 30, Barrie’s Ski and Sports will sponsor free skiing nights.
But that doesn’t mean the regulars at Pebble Creek won’t notice the multiple improvements, upgrades and new events coming to the resort this season.
For one, the Skyline Lift was almost completely overhauled this past summer. With a new motor, skiers and snowboarders can expect a smoother and faster ride to the top of the mountain.
“It’s virtually brand-new,” Dixon said.
There have also been extensive improvements to the beginner-level Aspen area. Everything in the Aspen area has been widened so first-time skiers and snowboarders have more elbow room. More lights for nighttime skiing have been added and another run has been built. In honor of Reichman, this new trail has been dubbed “Mary’s Way.”
On March 3, the Rocky Mountain States HillClimb Association will host a sanctioned snowmobile hillclimb at the ski resort. Later in the summer, another 3-D Archery Shoot will be held on the mountain.
Though many ski resorts in Idaho have opened for the season, the tentative opening day at Pebble Creek is scheduled for Dec. 16, but that all depends on how much snow falls during the next few weeks.
For Dixon and the local ski bums, opening day can’t come soon enough.
“We’re super-prepared, and having those lift improvements and everything in place, we’re going to have a good season and we’re going to have a lot of happy guests,” Dixon said.
BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — Grizzly bear numbers in and around Yellowstone National Park are holding relatively steady, according to figures released Thursday, as state wildlife officials begin discussions on whether to hold the first public hunts for the animals in decades.
There are an estimated 718 bears in the Yellowstone region that includes portions of Wyoming, Montana and Idaho, according to the leader of the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team.
That’s up slightly from last year’s tally of 695 bruins, but is not considered a significant increase because of uncertainties around the estimates, said study team leader Frank van Manen with the U.S. Geological Survey.
“The population has been at a pretty stable level since the early 2000s,” van Manen said. “If that number had been lower by 15 or 20 bears, I would have said the same thing.”
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in July removed protections for Yellowstone grizzlies that had been in place since 1975, turning over management of the animals to the three states.
Hunting is part of the states’ grizzly management strategy. But details have yet to be worked out and state officials have consistently said any hunts would be limited to a small number of bears so as not to endanger the overall population.
“None of the states at this point in time are actively planning for hunts, but they are beginning dialogues with various members of the public about what that would look like” said Gregg Losinksi with Idaho Fish and Game.
Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks spokesman Greg Lemon said Montana officials are focused on building public trust on grizzly management. There are no active discussions about future hunts in the state, Lemon said.
Even without hunts bears have been dying at a steady rate. More than 50 were killed in each of the past three years due to conflicts with hunters, highway accidents and management removals of bears that preyed on livestock.
“More than 150 bears dying in the last three years because of run-ins with hunters and cars and cows is just too many,” said Beth Kampschror with the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, a conservation group. “We’re asking the states and agencies to do more to keep people safe and bears alive.”
Other wildlife advocates and American Indian tribes have sued to restore federal protections.
The tribes say killing grizzlies violates the spiritual beliefs of their members. Wildlife advocates argue that hunting could reverse the species’ hard-fought recovery from near extermination in the last century.
The National Rifle Association and Safari Club International, a hunting group, have asked the judge overseeing most of the lawsuits for permission to intervene in the cases. They want to make sure their members have a chance to hunt grizzlies.
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Follow Matthew Brown on Twitter at www.twitter.com/matthewbrownap .
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump will announce plans next week to shrink two sprawling Utah national monuments by nearly two-thirds, an action that environmentalists and tribal leaders called illegal and another affront to Native Americans.
Trump has already offended Native Americans by overriding tribal objections to approve the Dakota Access and Keystone XL oil pipelines and using a White House event honoring Navajo Code Talkers to take a political jab at a Democratic senator he has nicknamed “Pocahontas.”
Leaked documents obtained by The Associated Press show that Trump plans to shrink Bears Ears National Monument by nearly 85 percent and reduce Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument by almost half. The plan would cut the total amount of land in the state’s red rock country protected under monument status from more than 3.2 million acres to about 1.2 million acres.
The proposals prompted an outcry from environmental groups, tribal leaders and others who say Trump’s actions threaten important archaeological and cultural resources, especially Bears Ears, a more than 1.3 million-acre site in southeastern Utah that features thousands of Native American artifacts, including ancient cliff dwellings and petroglyphs.
Trump has told Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch and other Utah officials that he will follow the recommendation of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to shrink both monuments, but the White House and Zinke’s office have not offered details about how they’d redraw the monument boundaries.
Trump is traveling to Utah on Monday and is expected to announce details about his plan to shrink the two monuments, the first and the largest monuments targeted for reduction by Trump after a review of monuments nationwide launched earlier this year.
The proposed changes would be the most significant reductions by any president to monument designations made under the 1906 Antiquities Act, which gives the president wide authority to protect federal sites considered historic or geographically or culturally significant.
Trump ordered Zinke to review 27 monuments created in the past two decades, with Bears Ears the top priority. Trump called some monument designations by his Democratic predecessors a “massive federal land grab” that “should never have happened.”
President Barack Obama created the Bears Ears monument last year after tribal leaders and environmental groups clamored for protection of land considered sacred by Native Americans.
Grand Staircase-Escalante was created by President Bill Clinton in 1996.
The Washington Post first reported on the documents, which include proclamations that will split up both monuments into several smaller ones that will be renamed. The plan would cut the overall size of Bears Ears from 1.35 million acres to 201,397 acres and Grand Staircase-Escalante from nearly 1.9 million acres to 997,490 acres.
A spokeswoman for the Interior Department said the newspaper “has very old, outdated and inaccurate information.”
The spokeswoman, Heather Swift, declined to offer any other details.
Utah’s Republican leaders, including Hatch, have said the monuments declared by Obama and Clinton unnecessarily locked up too much land and asked Trump to shrink or rescind them.
Hatch said in a statement Thursday that “details of the president’s announcement are his and his alone to share,” but added: “I appreciate his willingness to listen to my advice and even more importantly, to give the people of Utah a voice in this process.”
Trump’s action, “following Secretary Zinke’s fair, thorough and inclusive review, will represent a balanced solution and a win for everyone on all sides of this issue,” Hatch said.
Natalie Landreth, an attorney for the Native American Rights Fund, said her group has already drafted a lawsuit to challenge Trump’s action, which she called unprecedented and illegal.
“He will not be able to bask in one day of applause at the Salt Lake City airport” before being sued, she said.
Randi Spivak, public lands program director at the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group, called Trump’s actions a disgrace. “He wants to turn public lands over to corporations to mine, frack, bulldoze and clear-cut until there’s nothing left,” she said.