CASPER, Wyo. (AP) — The longest recorded migratory mule deer herd in the world travels about 150 miles from the Red Desert in southwest Wyoming to a place called the Hoback.

Discovered in 2012, the route garnered national attention and inspired countless discussions about its protection. It was an example of something infinitely impressive: the longest mule deer migration trekking unnoticed in Wyoming’s backyard.

Longest until now, anyway.

In 2016, researchers with the University of Wyoming placed 40 collars on deer in the Red Desert and then watched as the animals wandered their way through greener grass.

Most of them stopped in the northwest corner of the state until cooler weather and snow would push them back down to the desert.

Except one deer. Doe number 255 — as named by her GPS — didn’t stop in the gentle valleys of the Hoback. She continued north, climbing up and over the Gros Ventre Range, dropping down into Jackson Hole, walking around Jackson Lake and up and over the foothills of the Tetons, sliding west into Idaho and ultimately landing in the relatively lush region of Island Park, Idaho.

Biologists watched in awe at her progress, wondering where she was headed and if she would come back.

Then her collar died.

She had traveled almost 250 miles, said Matt Kauffman, leader of the Wyoming Migration Initiative and the USGS Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Unit at the University of Wyoming.

“It’s really pretty impressive. For a lot of animal movements, we look at them on the map and think about the elevations, but this would be an all-day trip in a car,” Kauffman said. “In a car you’re moving across paved roads with a combustion engine.”

But without more data, only questions remained: Would she return to her winter range in the Red Desert? Did she connect with another herd in Idaho — a rarity, but a possible option? Was it an isolated incident, or is there a group of deer that follows that same path, blowing the previous longest-migratory herd out of the record books?

For almost two years, Kauffman and other biologists wondered where deer 255 ended up, the Casper Star-Tribune reported .

Her 242-mile path would go down in the record books as a potential anomaly, something they couldn’t explain or use to draw conclusions because of lack of data.

In mid-March, two years after her first capture, crews with Game and Fish and the Migration Initiative began yet another capture of does in the Red Desert.

Kauffman asked the pilot to try and capture any deer with brown collars, ones they’d used in the past.

On March 12, a graduate student on the project realized the serial number on an animal they caught with an old brown collar was deer 255.

She had come back.

“We now know it wasn’t a fluke, she wasn’t dispersing into a different herd,” Kauffman said. “It was her migration.”

And if it is an established route, that means more travel the same one.

Deer 255 has a new collar now. It pings her location every two hours. Last Thursday, she was making her way north through the Red Desert, between Steamboat Mountain and Highway 28.

While researchers were amazed by the doe’s journey – and the likelihood that others travel the same way with her – it also reminds them of what routes have likely been lost already to development. It also tells them what should be done in the future.

“I just hope we’re smarter about when we need to build infrastructure, when we need to build fencing, when we need to extract resources, whatever, that we’re smarter about where that activity happens and what it looks like,” Mark Zornes, wildlife supervisor for the Wyoming Game and Fish Department’s Green River region and a collaborator on the project, said. “We’re spoiled rotten and lucky we have what we have, and we have to be wise in our selection of what we build.”

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Information from: Casper (Wyo.) Star-Tribune, http://www.trib.com

CASPER, Wyoming (AP) — The longest recorded migratory mule deer herd in the world travels about 150 miles from the Red Desert in southwest Wyoming to a place called the Hoback.

Discovered in 2012, the route garnered national attention and inspired countless discussions about its protection. It was an example of something infinitely impressive: the longest mule deer migration trekking unnoticed in Wyoming’s backyard.

Longest until now, anyway.

In 2016, researchers with the University of Wyoming placed 40 collars on deer in the Red Desert and then watched as the animals wandered their way through greener grass.

Most of them stopped in the northwest corner of the state until cooler weather and snow would push them back down to the desert.

Except one deer. Doe number 255 — as named by her GPS — didn’t stop in the gentle valleys of the Hoback. She continued north, climbing up and over the Gros Ventre Range, dropping down into Jackson Hole, walking around Jackson Lake and up and over the foothills of the Tetons, sliding west into Idaho and ultimately landing in the relatively lush region of Island Park, Idaho.

Biologists watched in awe at her progress, wondering where she was headed and if she would come back.

Then her collar died.

She had traveled almost 250 miles, said Matt Kauffman, leader of the Wyoming Migration Initiative and the USGS Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Unit at the University of Wyoming.

“It’s really pretty impressive. For a lot of animal movements, we look at them on the map and think about the elevations, but this would be an all-day trip in a car,” Kauffman said. “In a car you’re moving across paved roads with a combustion engine.”

But without more data, only questions remained: Would she return to her winter range in the Red Desert? Did she connect with another herd in Idaho — a rarity, but a possible option? Was it an isolated incident, or is there a group of deer that follows that same path, blowing the previous longest-migratory herd out of the record books?

For almost two years, Kauffman and other biologists wondered where deer 255 ended up, the Casper Star-Tribune reported.

Her 242-mile path would go down in the record books as a potential anomaly, something they couldn’t explain or use to draw conclusions because of lack of data.

In mid-March, two years after her first capture, crews with Game and Fish and the Migration Initiative began yet another capture of does in the Red Desert.

Kauffman asked the pilot to try and capture any deer with brown collars, ones they’d used in the past.

On March 12, a graduate student on the project realized the serial number on an animal they caught with an old brown collar was deer 255.

She had come back.

“We now know it wasn’t a fluke, she wasn’t dispersing into a different herd,” Kauffman said. “It was her migration.”

And if it is an established route, that means more travel the same one.

Deer 255 has a new collar now. It pings her location every two hours. Last Thursday, she was making her way north through the Red Desert, between Steamboat Mountain and Highway 28.

While researchers were amazed by the doe’s journey — and the likelihood that others travel the same way with her — it also reminds them of what routes have likely been lost already to development. It also tells them what should be done in the future.

“I just hope we’re smarter about when we need to build infrastructure, when we need to build fencing, when we need to extract resources, whatever, that we’re smarter about where that activity happens and what it looks like,” Mark Zornes, wildlife supervisor for the Wyoming Game and Fish Department’s Green River region and a collaborator on the project, said. “We’re spoiled rotten and lucky we have what we have, and we have to be wise in our selection of what we build.”

Montana officials want to limit fishing outfitter use on the Madison River in an effort to reduce crowding and social conflicts between anglers.

Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks released a draft Madison River recreation plan Tuesday that includes capping the number of outfitters, banning commercial guiding on the river’s lowermost stretch and prohibiting commercial guides from certain stretches on certain days.

The plan would not go into effect until 2019. FWP will propose the plan to the Montana Fish and Wildlife Commission next week. Initial approval would open public comment.

FWP said in a news release that data shows recreational use on the Madison is increasing, and that fishing pressure bumps by about 15 percent every two years. Since 2008, commercial outfitter use has increased by 72 percent, FWP said.

The proposal caps the number commercial outfitters at 2017 levels and would restrict use by reach of river. One reach each day would be designated for non-commercial use, meaning guide trips couldn’t use it.

The plan would ban guiding from Greycliff Fishing Access Site to the Madison’s confluence with the Jefferson River, near Three Forks. FWP’s release said that’s meant to preserve the “primitive nature of this unique reach.”

It also seeks to ban boat and float tube use by anglers on the uppermost stretches of the river where they are restricted to wading. In the past, some anglers have used boats to access prime wading spots.

IDAHO FALLS — More than 50 geese fell to the ground dead on Saturday due to lightning.

Jacob Berl, a conservation officer for Idaho Falls Fish and Game, received a report of large numbers of dead geese in a parking lot near the Idaho National Laboratory building in Idaho Falls at approximately 7:30 p.m. Saturday.

When Berl arrived at the scene, he found 51 geese lying dead in a conjoined parking lot. Forty-eight were snow geese and three of them were Ross’s Geese.

That night, a storm had developed between Atomic City and the American Falls Reservoir and strengthened as it moved toward Idaho Falls. A tornado briefly touched the ground three miles southeast of Atomic City with winds of 50 to 60 miles an hour. Minimal damage was reported.

“As the storm moved into the Idaho Falls area, it really started ramping up,” said John Keyes, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Pocatello.

There were multiple reports of hail that was as large as golf balls.

“We saw numerous reports of damage to windows,” Keyes said. “There were reports of siding that was damaged by hail, being driven into it by the strong wind and even vinyl fences. I even saw some pictures of some playground equipment that was damaged by hail falling through the plastic playground equipment.”

Keyes said that this storm wasn’t as destructive as some storms in the past. He also said it wasn’t necessarily an uncommon occurrence.

However, Keyes said the storm did produce “a lot of lightning,” some of which killed the geese in Idaho Falls.

Berl said the geese died within a 100- to 200-yard radius in the parking lot.

“Several of them had ruptured stomachs,” he said. “Their internal organs had ruptured. … So that more than likely happened from the lightning itself or potentially from the impact of the crash. These geese are migrating at several thousand feet in the air, so if they’re falling out of the sky and hitting pavement, you can imagine what that does to a goose’s body.”

Berl also said that any other cause of death besides lightning in this case is unlikely.

“It is common for diseases like influenza or other sorts of bird-borne diseases to cause mass die-offs of birds, but not for them to just fall out of the sky and land within a hundred yards of each other like that,” Berl said.

Though Berl said he couldn’t speak to national trends, he did say that this is a rare occurrence.

Chuck Trost, a retired Idaho State University professor who taught ornithology and animal behavior, said that he had never heard about something like this occurring in his 32-year career.

Trost said that the incident was “bizarre.”

Ryan Andersen, a local man who came under criticism earlier this week for carving his and his wife’s initials into Corona Arch near Moab, Utah, took responsibility for his actions and issued a public apology Thursday.

“At that moment, I foolishly thought I was conveying my love for my wife when, in fact, I was tarnishing the experience for others who also want to enjoy magnificent scenery,” Andersen wrote in a public letter.

Andersen stated plainly that his actions were wrong and that he was sorry for them.

Andersen pledged to pay for restoration work on the arch, which is located on Bureau of Land Management land, and to speak out to ensure that others don’t repeat his mistake. In the future he said he would practice “leave no trace” ethics on public lands.

Andersen is the owner of Andersen Hitches, a local manufacturer and retailer of custom truck hitches, RV equipment and other items. Large numbers of individuals upset with Andersen’s actions have given the company negative reviews online and called for boycotts. Andersen emphasized that none of the company’s employees had anything to do with the incident.

“Neither Andersen Hitches nor its hard-working employees, who are committed to supporting our loyal customers and their own families, had any involvement in my wrongdoing,” Andersen said. “To those dedicated employees, I offer my sincere apology.”

Andersen has set up a website where members of the public can suggest efforts he can do to “make this right.”

BLM spokeswoman Lisa Bryant said Thursday that the case has been transferred to the U.S. Department of Justice.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Interior Department is backing down from a plan to impose steep fee increases at popular national parks in the face of widespread opposition from elected officials and the public.

The plan would nearly triple entrance fees at 17 of the nation’s most popular parks, including the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, Yellowstone and Zion, forcing visitors to pay $70 per vehicle during the peak summer season.

While plans are still being finalized, a spokeswoman for Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said officials have “taken the public’s suggestions seriously and have amended the plan to reflect those” comments.

Zinke announced the fee hike last October, saying it could raise $70 million a year to pay for maintenance projects at the National Park Service. The plan drew immediate resistance from lawmakers and governors of both parties, who said the higher fees could exclude many Americans from enjoying national parks.

Most of the parks affected by the plan are in the West, including Mount Rainier and Olympic parks in Washington state, Rocky Mountain in Colorado and Grand Teton in Wyoming. Acadia National Park in Maine and Shenandoah National Park in Virginia also would be affected.

The park service received more than 109,000 comments on the proposal, most of them opposed, during a two-month comment period that ended in late December.

One commenter told the agency, “If I were considering a trip to one of these parks and suddenly found that the trip would incur an exorbitant entry fee, I would not…repeat NOT take my family on this trip.”

Emily Douce, budget and appropriations director for the National Parks Conservation Association, said she was glad that the Interior Department appears to be listening to the public.

While the group recognizes that fee increases are sometimes necessary, “We were adamantly against the fee proposal that came out,” Douce said. “It was too much, too fast.”

Spokeswoman Heather Swift said Tuesday that Zinke “remains laser-focused on rebuilding our park infrastructure” and addressing an $11 billion maintenance backlog in the parks.

The fee hike, along with a bipartisan bill pending in Congress to create a parks maintenance fund, “will provide a historic investment” in the park system, Swift said.

A bill co-sponsored by Sens. Lamar Alexander, R-Tennessee, Steve Daines, R-Montana, and other lawmakers would use revenue from energy production on federal lands to help reduce the long-standing maintenance backlog at national parks.

The Washington Post first reported Interior’s reconsideration of the fee hike.

Driggs native Tucker Hibbert closed out one of the most successful seasons of his career and took claim to his 11th Professional Snocross Championship at the ISOC National Snocross season finale in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.

In his 18th professional snocross season, Hibbert had a remarkable run, winning 11 of the 17 finals and 27 of his 34 qualifying races. With year-end championship points awarded in both qualifying rounds and finals, he set his season focus on winning every time he was on the track. It was a smart and successful strategy as he secured the championship early with a 108-point margin over second place.

Hibbert and his team — including Alta, Wyoming, resident Garth Kaufman — were honored with two special awards at the year-end banquet. His father and crew chief, Kirk Hibbert, was awarded Mechanic of the Year while Tucker tallied the most votes by snocross fans to take home Fan Favorite Rider.

With another snocross season behind him, the multi-sport athlete will shift his focus to his summer passions — motocross and cross-country mountain bike racing.

Turkey season is upon us. You better be getting prepared. Digging out your decoys and calls and starting to scout tops the list of important items. But don’t forget another big item — picking the right shells.

Years ago, I used leftover 4-shot from pheasant hunting or 2-shot from goose hunting (in the old days when we still shot geese with lead shot). Then I met HEVI-Shot. They’ve turned turkey hunting on its nose.

It used to be 30 and 40 yards was the max you’d shoot at a gobbler. Now 40 yards is a chip shot and 60 yards isn’t impossible. That last 20 yards is huge. How many times in the last few decades have gobblers held up right past 40 yards on you?

In the old days, I never thought about sighting in or patterning a shotgun and I sure never entertained the thought of using a scope or sights. But with the distances that we can shoot now, you need to consider all of the above so let’s discuss these topics today.

Most shotguns come with one or two beads, right? And that works for shooting doves, quail, chukars, etc. But on turkeys, you have to aim at a body part. Here’s why I say this. With bird hunting, you probably use an improved cylinder for quail and a modified choke for doves. For turkeys, you’re not even going to use a full choke but something tighter. This spring I’m using a HEVI-Shot Hevi13 Turkey Choke Tube System.

When you’re using a choke this tight, I don’t want to over exaggerate and say it’s like shooting a rifle, but it almost is. So you’ll need to aim at a body part just like when deer hunting. Let’s say the bulk of your BBs will hit within a 16-inch circle at 40 yards. You would like to have them all hit in his head. But since you have a pattern, if you aim at the head, 50 percent of the BBs will whiz harmlessly over his head. So aim about 6 inches below the top of a gobbler’s head. That way the bulk of the BBs will hit him in the head, neck and heart.

Nowadays there are a number of turkey loads offered on the market which are better than what we used to have, but HEVI-Shot shells are head and shoulders above the others that I’ve tested.

I favor their blend that has 5, 6 and 7 shot. You may wonder why they include 7-shot? Well, the 7-shot gets a dense pattern and the 5s penetrate and kill better. I went out shooting last Friday and got 97 BBs in the kill zone on a turkey target at 40 yards. The main pattern was a little to the left so if I had hit dead center, I would have had 110 BBs. That’s devastating!

So to make sure that it is clear, it’s imperative that you pattern your shotgun so you know where it’s hitting. You wouldn’t get a new rifle, grab a box of ammo and go deer hunting before you sighted it in, would you? It’s just as important to sight in your shotgun for turkey hunting.

You see a lot of sights and scopes advertised for turkey hunters. I don’t have them yet but when you start shooting out to 60 yards., you should get one. I rationalize it away because I’ve shot my shotgun a lot and know where it hits, but I’m sure I’ll make the switch soon.

The easiest way to pattern your shotgun is to make a mark on a big piece of cardboard. Shoot and then determine where the thickest part of the pattern is at and adjust accordingly. Then put up a turkey target and practice until you’re comfortable with where it’s shooting.

As we close, even if you use some good turkey loads, if you don’t know where your shotgun is hitting, you still won’t kill one. Sight it in.

Tom Claycomb lives in Idaho and has outdoors columns in newspapers in Alaska, Idaho, Utah, Nevada, Colorado and Louisiana. He also writes for various outdoors magazines and teaches outdoors seminars at stores like Cabela’s, Sportsman’s Warehouse and Bass Pro Shop.

JACKSON, Wyo. (AP) — A Wyoming wildlife rehabilitation center may consider turning away any storks carrying baby owls that show up for a while.

The Teton Raptor Center in Jackson Hole took in 19 owlets last week from the three separate clutches, broods of young owls, within 24 hours. All the baby owls were from Idaho.

The nonprofit center never housed more than 18 injured, orphaned or ill birds of prey at one time, and it suddenly had 27 raptors on its hands.

“It’s not uncommon to get clutches, but it is uncommon to get three at once,” Teton Raptor Center Rehabilitation Director Meghan Warren said. “This is a record breaker in many ways.”

The rush of baby owls started with a call last Thursday from the Idaho Fish and Game Department, which acquired a six-bird clutch displaced when a hay bale was moved. The next day two more barn owl clutches were recovered in the Idaho Falls area and sent to the center in Wilson.

Staff at the center planned to transplant the owlets into eight or nine other known barn owl nests in the region. For obvious reasons, dumping 19 of the little owls onto one pair of adults isn’t a good option.

“What we’ll do is we’ll put these babies into a few different nests,” Warren told the Jackson Hole News & Guide.

Barn owls are a particularly good species for fostering parentless young because they typically stagger laying eggs and then simultaneously raise young of various sizes. One of the Teton Raptor Center’s current clutches, for instance, includes owlets ranging from 2 ounces to 1 pound, Warren said.

“In not too long, the older ones are going to be starting to fly, and they’re not going to stay in the nest box,” Warren said. “If we can’t find nests, what we’ll do is we’ll raise them here. We’ll give them lots of opportunity to practice hunting on wild mice, but once we let them go, they’re on their own.”

An iconic natural arch near Moab, Utah, was vandalized last week, and photographs widely shared on social media have brought an Idaho Falls family and its business under scrutiny for the incident.

The incident sparked nationwide outrage on social media platforms, where many identified the family based on photographs of the couple posing in front of graffiti etched into Corona Arch.

Pictures of Ryan Andersen, owner of Andersen Hitches, and his wife Jennifer, along with three children whose faces were obscured, posing in front of graffiti scratched into the arch have been shared widely on a host of social media platforms. Sites reviewing Andersen’s company have been slammed with comments accusing the owners of vandalizing the arch and calling for boycotts.

On Thursday, a message from Ryan Andersen appeared on the website https://ryan-andersen.org/. The website features a letter in which Andersen apologized for his actions and expressed embarrassment. 

“While hiking in the Moab area with my family, I drew with a sandstone shard, a heart with my and my wife’s initials and the year above it,” the statement read. “At that moment, I foolishly thought I was conveying my love for my wife when, in fact, I was tarnishing the experience for others who also want to enjoy magnificent scenery. My actions were wrong. I am extremely sorry for my conduct. I acted in the spur of the moment and did not stop to think about what I was doing.”

To read the letter in its entirety, click here. 

Brad Kendrick, a former Ammon real estate developer who said he had purchased trailer hitches from Ryan Andersen in the past, contacted the Post Register about the incident after he saw pictures on social media of the couple posing in front of the vandalism.

“I recognized him the minute I saw his picture,” Kendrick said. “I thought, ‘He can’t just do that to a national monument.’”

(While the Corona Arch has widely been described either as within a national monument or a national park on social media, it is in fact on Bureau of Land Management land.)

The graffiti in question include the lines “18” — likely a reference to the current year — and the initials “R” and “J” with a heart drawn between them. They were scratched into the base of the arch, in an area that features prominently in most nature photographs of the area.

Lisa Bryant, spokeswoman of the Canyon Country District of the Bureau of Land Management confirmed by phone that an incident of vandalism had occurred at Corona Arch, and that the agency is investigating the incident.

“The BLM appreciates people stepping forward to report illegal or unauthorized activities on public lands; because this is an active investigation, no more details about the incident at Corona Arch are available at this time,” Bryant said in a statement.

Federal law makes it a federal Class A misdemeanor to “willfully deface, disturb, remove or destroy any personal property, or structures, or any scientific, cultural, archaeological or historic resource, natural object or area” on public lands. The maximum penalty for such a violation is a $100,000 fine and one year in prison.

“As always, the BLM asks visitors to be good land stewards, to help keep America’s public lands beautiful and strong by practicing responsible recreation and ‘leave no trace’ ethics,” said BLM Moab Field Manager Christina Price.

The Idaho State Journal contributed to this article.