And then there was the situation last year in Casper. There was 

 a bear marauding through Casper. The bear became a nice thing for 

 the ' press to play with, and since we were monitoring the bear's 

 actj»ities, trying to keep it out of the school yards, it became a big 

 joke, a very big joke. Until "URBAN BEAR SHOT DEAD BY GAME 

 AND FISH." We should have left it alone. We shouldn't have shot the 

 bear. There were a lot of problems here, but the press started 

 playing with it. I wonder how they would have played with it if the 

 bear had killed someone on the playground? Then it would have been 

 "GAME AND FISH RESPONSIBLE FOR BEAR MAULING CHILD ON 

 PLAYGROUND." But instead it went this way. But it sold a hell of a 

 lot more newspapers like this. 



I've got copies of all of this if any of you would like to see it. 

 "Only on rare occasions do park employees resort to killing bothersome 

 bears." I wonder what the Craigheads think of that? How many 

 grizzly bears have been killed in Yelllowstone Park by the Park 

 Service? Nobody knows. They were lucky. It's remote enough, they 

 don't have the press there. "The animal made it's last stadn for 

 freedom." And you can always count on the word of a bystander. 



Okay. On to another topic. I get a lot of calls from the press, 

 bunches of them. When does elk season start? When does it end? 

 When does antelope season start and when does it end? Like Montana, 

 Wyoming is divided into many areas. If we release that information and 

 say that there is one area that opens on a particular day, they're very 

 likely to say that antelope hunting in Wyoming, statewide, opens on 

 that particular day. So we don't release that type of information. We 

 sent every newspaper in the state all the information, and if they have 

 time they can sit down and make a news release out of it. 



"THE DEADLINES FOR ELK AND DEER PERMITS HAVE ALREADY 

 PASSED FOR NONRESIDENTS." How do you think the residents of 

 Wyoming, when they read this in the Casper Star Tribune, felt when 

 they read they couldn't buy deer and elk licenses? Do you have any 

 idea how many telephone calls we started getting after this was put 

 out? 



And then the greatest thing of all is when you get the telephone 

 call from your best state newspaper and they say "Hey, can you give 

 us the skinny on this feeding of wildlife." In case you didn't know it, 

 the Wyoming Game and Fish indulges in a practice of feeding wildlife in 

 many areas. And, you ask "Is this off the record?" "You bet," they 

 say. "We're not going to print any of it. We just want a background 

 so we can move our stories in that particular direction 

 . . .da. . .da. . .da. . -da. . .da." So you spill your guts out to them. You 

 tell them what's really wrong with the system. What's right with the 

 system. You tell'em everything. And the next day it's on the front 

 page of the biggest newspaper in the state, the Casper Star Tribune, 

 along with a drawing. Some of you might not be able to see that. It's 

 titled "Jackson Hole Elk Feeding Program Ridiculed." Well in Jackson 

 there's some very well-meaning individuals, instead of throwing out 

 garbage, they feed it to the deer. But they like to do it beside the 



