An angular, trembling, gravely injured wolf pup with a light gray coat–a wolf who could barely move. The wolf was now muzzled and had two collars strapped around its neck, a tracking collar and a shock collar. Roberts pulled the wolf around on a leash, showing off his mangled catch to the 30 or so patrons in the Green River Bar, many of them apparently his relatives.
Image: Timber wolf by Jeffrey St. Clair
There are many ways to kill a wolf in America. But most of them are
mundane and prosaic. They’re not likely to bring you acclaim and
notoriety. Few will hear about your feat if you simply gun down a
wolf from a helicopter, kill a wolf with an M-44 cyanide bomb, pour
gas into a wolf den filled with pups and strike a match, put out a
contract on a wolf with a hired killer from the government, track
down a wolf with a drone and shoot it with a long-range rifle and
telescopic scope, inject rat poison in an elk carcass and wait for
wolves (and whoever else) to feed on it and die an agonizing death,
run one over with your cybertruck or, like the current Governor of
Montana, catch a wolf in a trap and then after it has struggled to
free itself for a few painful days heroically shoot it.
But if you want to get your name in the papers and your drunken face
on cable TV, you’ve got to be more creative. You can’t just be a
routine sadist anymore, you’ve got to go the extra mile. You’ve got
to bring your wolf torture to the people. Consider this: since
wolves lost their protection under the Endangered Species Act more
than 1,000 wolves are killed in the US each year, either by hunters,
poachers or government wolf killers. They’re killed quietly,
remorselessly, anonymously. Hardly anyone notices.
A Wyoming hombre named Cody Roberts set out to change all that.
Roberts runs a trucking company in Daniel, Wyoming, a small town in
the Green River valley southeast of Jackson. He’s a grown man who
likes to post photos of himself on Facebook with animals that he’s
killed: pheasants, elk, deer and a mountain lion. But merely posing
with slaughtered wildlife didn’t get him that much acclaim. Then one
day in late February, Roberts was out on his snowmobile, when he
spotted a wolf, hit the throttle and began to chase it. All in good
fun, you know. Ultimately, Roberts caught up with the terrified,
exhausted animal and ran over it–twice, for good measure. He could
have run over it a third time and no one would have given a damn.
Like 85 percent of Wyoming, this section of the Green River Valley,
cleaving between the Gros Ventre and Wind River Mountains, is a
predator kill zone, which means you can kill pretty much any wolf
you see, however you want to kill it and nobody will pay much
attention, certainly not the government or CNN. Chasing down a wolf
with your snowmobile and running over it repeatedly is a perfectly
legal thing to do in Wyoming. Some even call it sport.
Then Roberts got the idea that would make him famous. Rather than
put the injured wolf out of its misery (or, god forbid, find a vet
to treat its wounds), why not take it back to town and show off his
captive in society? So Roberts duct-taped the wolf’s mouth shut and
hauled it all the way home to Daniel, population 158, where he took
selfies of himself and his prize. In one photo, the grinning Roberts
is holding a beer, as he squats next to the distressed animal, which
biologists later estimated was little more than a pup, probably only
nine months old. But in Wyoming, even pups are fair game. You can
shoot them, trap them, cudgel them, poison them, burn them, and use
them as jumps for your snowmobile. Nothing wrong with any of that,
legally speaking.
Cody Roberts with his victim...
Here’s where Roberts crossed the line that made his name. That
evening, Cody took his prize to the oldest building in town, the
Green River Bar. Ever a prankster, he walked into the saloon
announcing that he’d found a “lost cattle dog.” The bartender, who
knew something was up, said, “Cody, you better not bring in a
fucking lion!”
It wasn’t a lion (this time, anyway). It was an angular, trembling,
gravely injured wolf pup with a light gray coat–a wolf that could
barely move. The wolf was now muzzled and had two collars strapped
around its neck, a tracking collar and a shock collar. Roberts
pulled the wolf around on a leash, showing off his mangled catch to
the 30 or so patrons in the Green River Bar, many of them apparently
his relatives. After a couple of hours of drinking and boasting,
Roberts dragged the wolf out of this venerable establishment and
shot it. Shot it dead. (Though to give you an idea of what the
Wyoming Fish and Game officials think of wolves, their write-up on
the incident referred to the leashed and shock-collared wolf pup
Roberts shot behind the saloon as being “harvested.”)
An angular, trembling, gravely injured wolf pup with a light
gray coat–a wolf who could barely move. The wolf was now muzzled and
had two collars strapped around its neck, a tracking collar and a
shock collar...
Word of this inspiring spectacle soon spread, ultimately reaching
the offices of Wyoming’s Game and Fish Department. An investigation
was launched. Not into the wolf’s torture and death, which from the
state of Wyoming’s point of view was a thing to be desired, but into
how the wolf went social, how it got into town, into a bar, spending
hours with humans without killing or even biting anyone, some of the
patrons even petting and sympathizing with this wild canid of
legendary ferocity. This was the line that must not be crossed. This
was the act that must be punished. So Roberts was given a citation
for the offense of illegally possessing warm-blooded wildlife. He
was fined all of $250, a penalty Roberts gladly paid. One local told
WyoFile that Roberts has “been going around town telling people it
was worth it. $250? That’s a round for the bar.”
It’s the price of fame…or infamy. The two are pretty much inseparable in American society these days.