Episode Details

It's time to take a look at what's happening around Wyoming for Tuesday, December 16th. I'm Mac Watson.

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Strange flying objects over Sweetwater County's Red Desert and Jim Bridger Power Plant are so common now they're "the new normal," the sheriff's office says. But Cowboy State Daily's Clair McFarland reports that no one is giving any answers about what they are.

"They're so frequent that people aren't even reporting them anymore, and they're just the new normal. This is among the most transparent sheriff's offices that we work with, and so they were open with the public about pushing for answers on the federal the state level, trying to figure out what was going on. And they did that in the spokesman's words, they exhausted all those avenues, ended up with nothing. They had to just move on and enforce laws on the ground."

Sweetwater County Sheriff's Office spokesperson Jason Mower tells Cowboy State Daily that December marks 13 months of lighted, drone-like objects congregating, often in coordinated formations, over the Red Desert and power plant, adding that they're too high to shoot down from the ground level.

Read the full story HERE.

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A Wyoming family shares an inside view of their struggles to ranch in pricey Jackson Hole and pass their ranch on to the next generation. Cowboy State Daily's Renee Jean reports that the family's journey and tough decision on the future of their ranch is part of a new eight-part Cowboy Channel documentary that started Sunday.

"They're realizing that if they don't start to build now, they're not going to be able to, you know, if they don't start now, they're either going to have to, either the ranch is going to have to get with the program, or they're going to have to go out in the world and make their fortune and come back, kind of thing. So there was a lot of tension, a lot of different visions. They just laid that all bare, not scripted, no storyboards. It's just the real deal. This is the discussion we had. They brought in a dad. There was so much tension, they had to bring in a third party to kind of mediate for them, to keep it from, you know, really blowing up."

Wealthy people have been trying to buy the Diamond Cross Ranch for a long time. In the 1920s, it was the Rockefellers making the offers. But the family refused to sell.

Read the full story HERE.

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A motion in defense of Weston County Clerk Becky Hadlock filed on Monday says lawmakers, not Hadlock, were the ones who broke the law when issuing a subpoena for her to appear before an investigative committee this fall. Cowboy State Daily's Clair McFarland reports Hadlock has hired attorney Ryan Semerad, who is asking the court to dismiss the case "with prejudice," meaning permanently.

"Hadlock's attorney who is well-known in Wyoming, so he's got chops in Wyoming, first of all. Secondly, he filed a motion Monday in Casper circuit court saying, 'Whoa, these lawmakers vaulted over their statutory authority, and this whole subpoena is void.' The state can respond, and then the court can rule. Another thing the court can do is certify questions to a higher court like the Natrona County District Court and be like, hey, higher court, you want to weigh in here?"

After a legislative committee subpoenaed the Weston County Clerk and she did not appear for its September meeting, the Natrona County District Attorney's Office charged her, on Oct. 24th, with failure to appear for a legislative subpoena.

Read the full story