The nearly 20,000-acre Banner Ranch is located in Natrona and Converse Counties, 10 miles southeast of Casper. The family history of ranching, stewardship, and love of wildlife make them an easy and most deserving selection for this award.

The Banner Ranch has welcomed hunters and anglers for as long as Mike McCleary and Shelly McCleary Trumbull can remember. Their ranch is home to a diversity of wildlife, including pronghorn antelope, mule deer, white-tailed deer, elk, sage grouse, Hungarian partridge, turkey, black bear and mountain lion. Mike and Shelly are always supportive of hunting and believe it is important to maintain healthy wildlife populations. They also understand the goal of hunting and the revenue it brings to the local communities.

During Mike’s early years on the ranch, he can only remember a few elk running around. Today he often enjoys hundreds of elk wintering on Banner Mountain and the surrounding foothills. Banner Ranch continues to support large numbers of wintering elk despite the hardships they cause, especially with fences. Wintering mule deer above the ranch at one time numbered around one to two thousand in the 1970s and early 1980s.

The Banner Ranch has also shown their generosity when they initiated the development of a permanent access easement with the Department allowing fishing access to lower Deer Creek Canyon. This beautiful canyon and pristine stretch of water offers some of the best stream fishing opportunities in all of central Wyoming.