Tickets are on sale for the 2022 Wyoming Outdoor Hall of Fame. Delayed for two years, the rescheduled event will honor 2020 inductees Helen Roylance, Richard Guenzel and Duaine Hagen. The induction ceremony will take place Wednesday, March 23, in Cody at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West.
The Hall of Fame honors individuals, both living and posthumously, who have made significant, lasting, lifetime contributions to the conservation of Wyoming’s outdoor heritage. The Wyoming Outdoor Hall of Fame was established in 2004 by Gov. Dave Freudenthal to celebrate individuals who have shown leadership and vision related to conserving wildlife, habitat or hunting and fishing heritage. Roylance, Guenzel and Hagen will join 63 past honorees.
Helen Roylance of Cheyenne is a trailblazer for women and the outdoors in Wyoming. Roylance was the first woman to hold the position of hunter and outdoor skills coordinator for the Game and Fish in 1995. Roylance established the Game and Fish’s Becoming an Outdoors-Woman program in 1996 where more than 1,000 women have participated to date. She also set up the first online hunter education course in the state.
Richard Guenzel of Laramie is a retired Game and Fish biologist who worked with the department for 27 years. He, in collaboration with Dr. Bruce Johnson of Game and Fish, Dr. Fred Lindzey of the Wyoming Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit and Mr. Fred Reed of Western Air Research helped develop and implement an aerial line transect technique to more accurately estimate pronghorn populations. Guenzel was the first biologist in Wyoming to capture a pronghorn using a net gun from a helicopter. He also helped develop systems to record data from aerial operations and advised researchers on adapting distance sampling to aerial surveys around the world with species ranging from African elephants, marsh deer, free-ranging horses and burrows and near-shore pelagic fisheries. His work on pronghorn has been acknowledged with many awards, including induction into the Pronghorn Hall of Fame in 2010.
Duaine Hagen of Meeteetse is an accomplished horseman who has been outfitting and running guest ranches for hunters and anglers in Wyoming for 40 years. Hagen has guided hundreds of hunters and anglers over the years, as well as being active in the Outdoor Dream Foundation for kids dealing with illnesses, and the Wounded Warrior Project for veterans and active military duty members. He was appointed by the governor in 1993 to the Wyoming Board of Outfitters, and remained on it through 2003. Also in 1993, Hagen won the Game and Fish’s Wildlife Stewardship Award.
The first Game and Fish Youth Conservationist of the Year, Isabelle Burky, will also be recognized at the Hall of Fame banquet. The award acknowledges a Wyoming youth who has shown enthusiasm and leadership in the outdoors and conservation. Burky is from Worland and currently attends Northwest College in Powell. She has worked in Yellowstone, Grand Teton and Glacier national parks where she’s constructed trails, monitored wildlife, repaired historic cabins and helped control noxious weeds. Her favorite outdoor activity is hunting, and intends to pursue a degree in wildlife biology.
Tickets are available for the Outdoor Hall of Fame online; individual tickets and tables are available.
