Wyoming

Wyoming Crow Hunters Can Blast All They Want, But Nobody Eats The Birds

Published

1 month ago

March 1, 2026

Wyoming Crow Hunters Can Blast All They Want, But Nobody Eats The Birds

Mention of bird hunting might conjure up images of hunters and their dogs huddling in freezing duck blinds or pounding the brush in hopes of kicking up pheasants. But crow hunting is a thing in Wyoming too.

“It’s about the sport of it,” Dan Kinneman of Riverton told Cowboy State Daily.

He started crow hunting when he was 14 and is about to turn 85. He’s never tried cooking and eating crows or known anybody who has.

Instead, shooting crows is essentially nuisance bird control, as they’re known to wreak havoc on agricultural crops.

“All the ranchers will let you hunt crows. I’ve never been refused access to hunt crows. They all hate them,” he said.

In Wyoming, crow hunting season runs from Nov. 1 to Feb. 28. No license is required, and there’s no bag limit. Hunters can shoot all the crows they want to.

It’s a ball for hunting dogs too, Kinneman said.

“My yellow Labrador retriever, he doesn’t care whether it’s a crow or duck. In fact, he likes crow hunting more than duck hunting, because there’s more action,” he said.

Crow hunting requires skill, patience and a good set of decoys, an experienced Wyoming hunter said. The upside is, there’s no bag limit, hunters can blast all the crows they want. No one eats them, though.

Don’t Expect It To Be Easy

Kinneman said that in the days of his youth, crow hunting was as simple as driving around and “shooting them out of trees with rifles.”

However, as the number of people and buildings potentially in the paths of bullets grew, such practices fell out of favor. Crow hunting became more regulated.

And it evolved to resemble hunting other birds, such as waterfowl.

Meaning, hunters started setting out decoys, hiding in blinds and using calls to tempt crows to within shotgun range.

Kinneman is no stranger to hunting of all types. He’s taken numerous species of big game in Wyoming and elsewhere. And in July 2005, he shot a prairie dog near Rock Springs from well over a mile away.

He hit the prairie dog from 2,157 yards away. A mile is 1,760 yards.

But bird hunting has always been his favorite.

“It’s my life,” he said.

He has a huge collection of duck, goose and dove decoys. And two tubs full of crow decoys.

The uninitiated might think that going out and blasting crows would be a slam dunk.

That isn’t so, Kinneman said. He likes crow hunting for the challenge of it.

“Hunting crows is hard. They are a lot smarter than ducks and geese,” he said.

Pick Up After Yourself

Even though he doesn’t eat crows, Kinneman said he never just left them littering the ground where he shot them.

“I never let them lay out there. I always picked them up and disposed of the carcasses,” he said.

That’s good ethics and it shows respect for the ranchers, he said.

“Leaving them (dead crows) out there would be no different than just leaving all of your empty shotgun shells out there,” he said.

“You have to pick up after yourself, or the ranchers won’t let you back onto their land,” he added.

Slow Year

At his age, Kinneman isn’t sure how much longer he’ll be able to get out crow hunting. And this year has been a total bust.

“I love doing it. But this year there are no crows,” he said.

The Riverton area is along major crow migration routes.

Picking a good hunting spot is a matter of “finding a flyway” that the crows are on and then setting up a spread of decoys and a blind along the route.

But with an unusually warm winter, the crow flyways have been practically empty, he said.

Migrations Are Off Everywhere

Avid birdwatcher Lucas Fralick of Laramie said that warm, dry conditions much of this winter have knocked bird migrations out of whack.

“I do know that because of the weather, migrations are off all over the place,” he said.

One of his favorite species is the dark-eyed junco, a “small, sparrow-like bird,” he said.

They usually winter in the Laramie area and leave right around March. This year, they were gone by November, he said.

“They’re a cold-weather bird,” he said.

Mark Heinz can be reached at mark@cowboystatedaily.com.

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Wyoming

TV Show Explores Wyoming’s Strangest House

Published

2 hours ago

April 14, 2026

Press Room

TV Show Explores Wyoming’s Strangest House

The Amazon Prime show Forbidden Mysteries has an episode on one of the strangest architectural oddities in Wyoming.

Deep in Wyoming’s rugged landscape stands a strange wooden structure that defies explanation. The Smith Mansion was built over decades, yet its true purpose remains an unsolved mystery. (Forbidden Mysteries).

The Smith Mansion, also known as the Smith Family Cabin, is a large, prominent structure with a height of roughly 75 ft in the Wapiti Valley in Wapiti, Wyoming.

You can watch the cut of this episode on YouTube video below

There was nothing traditional about this house. Even the way they lived here. Forget beds and bedrooms. The video above explains.

Each week, Forbidden Mysteries uncovers the hidden truths, dark secrets, and extraordinary stories that history tried to forget. From royal scandals and unsolved murders to secret societies, ancient relics, and mysterious ruins, every episode takes you deeper into the shadows of the past.

The iconic Smith Mansion (or Smith Family Cabin) in Wapiti, Wyoming, is a notable 75-foot-tall, five-story log structure built by Francis Lee Smith between 1971 and 1992.

October 2019 to Zhiru Huang of Mountain Lodging for an undisclosed amount, although it was listed for roughly. It was sold by his daughter to preserve the legacy and stop vandalism.

If you want to drive out and see it for yourself, the Smith Mansion (or Smith Family Cabin) in Wapiti, Wyoming, is situated on the North Fork Highway between Cody and Yellowstone. This uniquely designed, rustic landmark is privately owned but easily viewed from the road.

Sure, you’ll want to go up and explore it for yourself. You’ll want to go inside. But, alas, you can’t. It’s probably not even safe.

The Beautiful Homes Of Sheridan Wyoming

Should you be visiting Sheridan, Wyoming, you MUST drive up the hill, past downtown, to see these wonderful homes.

There is no way to show them all.

So here are some of our favorites.

Gallery Credit: Glenn Woods

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Wyoming

Spring is a good time to view sage-grouse

Published

14 hours ago

April 13, 2026

Press Room

CHEYENNE — With warmer weather and greener landscapes, April is one of the best months of the year to view sage-grouse on their leks in Wyoming.

The sage-grouse is the largest species of grouse in North America. Each spring male sage-grouse performs an elaborate sunrise display on communal breeding grounds known as leks. While sage-grouse require sagebrush landscapes to survive, leks are often located in open areas where the males can be better seen and heard by females.

“The dramatic display makes viewing sage-grouse a popular recreational activity during the spring across much of Wyoming,” said Nyssa Whitford, sage grouse biologist for the Wyoming Game and Fish Department. “This year’s conditions are mostly dry across the state. We may still receive spring storms so be vigilant, watch the weather and pick a string of dry, clear mornings for your lek visit this year.”

To guide your lek outings, Game and Fish launched the Sage-Grouse Lek Viewing Guide to take you to the best publicly-accessible viewing locations across Wyoming. The guide provides directions to each lek location.

Game and Fish urges individuals when viewing to:

Arrive at lek sites at least one hour before sunrise.
Park away from the edge of the lek. Do not drive onto the lek.
Turn off vehicle lights and engine.
Use binoculars and spotting scopes to observe birds.
Stay in your vehicle.
Avoid making loud noises or sudden movements.
Let the birds leave before you do.
Leave pets at home.
Respect private land and do not trespass.
Postpone your visit if roads are muddy.

“Late-April is a good time to visit because most of the breeding is complete, but the males are still actively strutting. The weather is usually better, too,” Whitford said.

Wyoming has a long history of sage-grouse conservation, and was the first state to implement a statewide conservation strategy for the species. Through partnerships with landowners, other state and federal agencies and conservation organizations, Game and Fish has worked to balance land use with conservation efforts and help protect and restore sage-grouse populations throughout the state. For more information on our conservation efforts, please visit our sage-grouse management page.

—WGFD—

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Wyoming

The Punjabi Truck Stop Serving Wyoming’s Best Indian Food

Published

1 day ago

April 13, 2026

Press Room

The Punjabi Truck Stop Serving Wyoming’s Best Indian Food

Inside Akal Travel Center, a 24-hour truck stop on Wyoming’s high plains, the smells of sizzling garlic and earthy curry powder permeate the air. It’s a gray, windy day in late January, and Ediquis Brown has parked his rig at the fuel station off Interstate 80, about 20 miles from downtown Laramie, Wyoming. He walks past aisles stocked with candy bars and kitschy souvenirs to the checkout counter, where he orders without even looking at the faded whiteboard menu. His go-to: tandoori chicken, garlic naan, one mango lassi, and two cups of creamy chai.

Based out of Fort Lauderdale, Brown travels east to west every week in his 18-wheeler, often driving up to 11-hour shifts and eating in his vehicle to stay on schedule. He is one of the dozens of motorists who come to Akal each day for house-made batches of beautifully blistered naan, golden-hued butter chicken, and biryani bejeweled with carrots and peas.

“We attract customers with the cheapest diesel—and the food,” says Gurjot Singh, who has been the truck stop’s manager since 2014, just two years after owners Mintu Pandher and his wife, Amandeep, bought the property. All 10 of their employees relocated to Laramie from the Punjab state of northwest India and now reside in a housing complex behind the gas station.

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