Landowner of the Year

The Morris family’s dedication to the stewardship of the land, their passion for wildlife and wild places, as well as their compelling desire to introduce others into the outdoors makes them a deserving selection for Landowner of the Year. Mountain Springs Ranch, which has been placed under a Conservation Easement
during their ownership, sits within the designated Sublette Mule Deer Migration Corridor, providing important transitional habitat for deer migrating between their winter and summer ranges.

During the initial start-up of the Sublette County Invasives Taskforce, Mountain Springs Ranch was one of the first landowners to sign-up and allow for the treatment of the invasive annual cheatgrass. Additionally, DeWitt approached the department several years ago about converting fences on the property to wildlife-friendly standards.

The Ranch is also home to the organization Camp GROW. The Green River Outreach for Wilderness (GROW) Foundation is a non-profit organization founded in 2009 with a goal to introduce others to wild places. The primary focus is to offer children and young adults the opportunity to discover nature through activities such as camping, rock climbing, shooting sports and horseback riding. Mountain Springs Ranch borders the Scab Creek elk feedground and the family has been active in assisting with hunting access, especially for veterans and youth during the late antlerless elk seasons.

In 1939, the Wyoming Game and Fish Commission acquired 1,335 acres of land south of Beulah, WY in an area known as Sand Creek, with assistance from the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service. The primary purpose of the acquisition was, and still is, to provide a public fishing and hunting area. From 1942 through 1978, a series of land sales were performed to consolidate the area to those lands directly surrounding Sand Creek; the result was 1.75 miles of stream with 284 acres of creek bottomlands for public fishing and hunting.

In 1989, the Ox Yoke Ranch entered into a lease agreement with the Wyoming Game and Fish Commission to allow unlimited public fishing access on an additional three miles of Sand Creek below the Sand Creek WHMA on their ranch in exchange for cattle grazing rights during the month of December each year on the Sand Creek WHMA. Throughout the previous 76 years, the Sand Creek WHMA, and for 33 years, the Ox Yoke Ranch easement has developed and grown with continually increasing public recreation use. The area has long been a favorite of local and visiting outdoor enthusiasts seeking a quality, accessible recreation experience within minutes of the towns of Beulah, Sundance and Spearfish.

Carl Asbell and his wife Kim are Fremont County landowners who have a passion for wildlife and wildlife conservation.  In 2018, the Asbell’s donated a conservation easement to the Wyo-ming Game and Fish Commission on their 396 acre property along the Lander Front. The land provides high value ungulate habitat, including crucial winter range for mule deer, elk, and summer range for mule deer. The property also has high value habitat for up-land bird species including chuckar and Hungarian partridge. These easements restrict any future develop-ment, including relinquish-ing all future residential development rights. 

Carl was also a key player in the initial development of The WYldlife Fund led by Wyoming Game and Fish Commissioner Mike Schmid.  This foundation benefits wildlife and wild-life habitat and is yet another example of Mr. Asbell’s dedication to the resource. 

Carl Asbell is a Fremont County small business owner who has continually shown his dedication by supporting local Lander and Riverton wildlife fundraising events, such as Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, Muley Fanatic Foundation and the Wyoming Outdoor Weekend and Expo.  Carl is also the current president of the Water for Wildlife Foundation in Lander which has contribut-ed millions of dollars toward wildlife habitat projects.   

Multiple landowners are partners in Belle Butte Grazing, which consists of private and otherwise inaccessible public lands enrolled in Game and Fish’s Access Yes program and is known as the Bear River Divide Hunter Management Area. 

This HMA is the largest and most utilized in the state, and averages about 1,500 deer hunters a year. In the fall of 2020 more than 2,500 permission slips were issued to hunters for a variety of species. Mule deer, elk, pronghorn, moose, mountain lion, sage grouse, waterfowl, small game and several nongame species are found on the properties. Thousands of mule deer migrate onto Belle Butte and adjoining BLM land from the Wyoming Range. Belle Butte has supported Game and Fish’s antler hunting regulations in the area and its Wyoming Range Mule Deer Project .

Cattle on Belle Butte are sustainable grazed, and a full-time employee monitors water to spread grazing pressure evenly and prevent stream bank erosion on public and private lands.

A cow/calf cattle operation where Willow Creek meets the Wind River east of Crowheart. The Buline Ranch is home to mule deer, white-tailed deer, mountain lion, elk, moose, black and grizzly bears, pronghorn, wolves, waterfowl and many other nongame species.

The Bulines are active land stewards by making improvements on their deeded ranch and leased public land pastures that benefit wildlife. Those improvements include fence modifications, water storage improvements and riparian protection. The Bulines also helped reconstruct fences that were damaged during the Lava Mountain Fire on the Shoshone National Forest in 2016.

The family allows access to private land for hunting of deer, elk, geese and pronghorn. It donates money from landowner coupons from each hunter to the Wyoming Animal Damage Management Board. The Bulines continually work with Game and Fish and others to promote good land management practices, resolve wildlife conflicts and enhance relationships.

  

Located about 13 miles northwest of Encampment and adjacent to the Medicine Bow-Routt National Forest. The Taylors have improved the property for wildlife since they purchased the ranch in 2011. Peter Taylor is involved with the Platte Valley Mule Deer Initiative and Platte Valley Habitat Partnership processes, and has approached Game and Fish about working together on habitat improvement projects. The family is a part of cheatgrass treatments in the Upper Spring Creek drainage, and have allowed Game and Fish to conduct several mixed mountain shrub mowing in critical deer and elk habitat, and participated in conifer encroachment removal in important aspen communities on the ranch.

Peter Taylor is an avid sportsman and conservationist, and has alerted Game and Fish personnel to law enforcement issues on and around the ranch.

The Double Four Ranch headquarters lies within the majestic North Laramie River Canyon and is operated by Wayne Larson and Brandon Munn. The ranch, which encompasses more than 45,000 deeded acres, has played an integral part in wildlife con-servation since 1957, when it was first purchased. Through droughts, floods and major wildfires, the Double Four Ranch has managed to persevere through the hardest of conditions and al-ways makes sure wildlife remains an important part of their long-term management goals. 

The ranch has been instrumental in helping numerous bighorn sheep hunters secure access to Pine and Split Rock Mountains, as they make their once in a lifetime hunt a reality. Since 2015, the ranch has enrolled 9,140 acres of access for antlerless elk harvest in Hunt Area 7.   This work for public access has been vital to the Department in our long-range goal of reducing this herd towards the population objective.  

The ranch has been very active in assisting the Laramie Region’s fisheries biologists to monitor and as-sess water quality conditions after the 2017 Arapahoe wild fire, to determine suitability for re-stocking. They have also be instrumental in the recovery of the Hornyhead Chub (nongame fish species) by allowing the Department to transplant this important native fish from the Laramie River back 
into the North Laramie River. 

The Double JR Ranch consists of parcels along the banks of Prairie Dog Creek east of Sheridan and near the head of the Middle Fork of Crazy Woman Creek in Johnson County.

Wildlife and habitat are flourishing under the Ruebs stewardship. They operate a conservative grazing system for livestock, and the ranch has numerous sloped wetland which are becoming harder to find in the Bighorn Mountains due to grazing pressure. The family has worked with Game and Fish to improve riparian habitat on their stretch of the Middle Fork of Crazy Woman Creek, and also to improve aspen stands on the property by removing encroaching conifers.

The Ruebs also have made contributions to furthering education of natural resource management to others in the area.

Located 8 miles southeast of Glenrock, the Wyoming Office of State Lands and Investments purchased the ranch in 2006, developed a long-term management plan in 2007 and in 2008 awarded a farm and ranch management lease to the Lankisters, who have collaborated with Game and Fish on habitat projects, wildlife management and hunting access the past 14 years.

The Duncan Ranch features many habitat types and a variety of wildlife species. A hunter management area was established in 2006. The ranch also provides habitat for protected species such as bald and golden eagles and peregrine falcons. It also provides good fishing for brown and rainbow trout. The Lankisters' grazing management and irrigation improvements have benefitted wildlife and habitat. 

The Eagle Ridge Ranch is located in Natrona County just a few miles west of Casper and sits along the North Platte River with scenic views of Casper Mountain. Stacey’s father, Dr. Oliver Scott, moved to Casper in 1948 and became the first board-certified pediatrician in Wyoming. A short eight years later, he bought the Eagle Ridge Ranch.  

In 1980, Dr. Scott placed all of the deed-ed land on the ranch at that time into a conservation ease-ment with The Nature Conservancy. The 8,400-acre easement was the largest conservation easement in Wyoming at that time.   
The Eagle Ridge Ranch provides important seasonal and year-round habitats for a broad diversity of wildlife. Riparian areas along the North Platte River and Little Red Creek are home to large cottonwood galleries and vitally important riparian vegeta-tion.  Irrigated meadows not only provide important hay for his agricultural operation, but also are host to substantial numbers of pronghorn, mule deer, white-tailed deer, and turkeys.   

Stacey is a conservationist at his very core. After spending 17 years in Alaska as a state auditor who audited major oil compa-nies, Stacey returned to Wyoming in 1996 to run the Eagle Ridge Ranch.  His father, Dr. Scott, who founded the Wyoming Audu-bon Society and started the Casper Christmas Bird Count in 1949, also passed on a love of birds to his sons. Stacey is a lifelong member of the Wyoming Audubon Society (now known as the Murie Audubon Society), and remains very active within the or-ganization.  

Located in Lonetree, the Hickey Ranch has been in operation since 1874.  Through the generations of the family that have worked the ranch, they have always strived toward creating the most wildlife friendly landscape they can on their own deeded property and the public lands they lease.  Jack Hickey was the recipient of the Landowner of The Year Award in 2005.  In 2018, Jack  passed away at the age of 89 and left his life’s work to be carried on by his children and grandchildren.  The family has con-tinued to carry on Jack’s legacy of being a steward for the land and providing a home for wildlife on their property.          

The Hickey Family has property enrolled in Walk in Areas through the Access Yes program.  This program allows deer, elk, moose and antelope hunting opportunity on a section of their land surrounded by Bureau of Land Management Land and State land.  Whether it is hunters looking for a moose, elk, or Sandhill cranes, the Hickey family welcomes them as if they were family.  By al-lowing access through their property, a  large amount of public land is opened to hunters that would be difficult to access other-wise.  The amount of public access the Hickey Family allows is among the largest of any ranch in Wyoming. 

The High Lonesome Ranch includes over 12,000 continuous acres of valuable sagebrush steppe, aspen hills, alluvial streams and willow dominated riparian habitat.  The ranch includes im-portant habitat for a number of wildlife species including moose, mule deer, antelope and sage grouse to name a few.  The property borders valuable habitat for wildlife species on US Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management lands and provides important migratory and stopover habitat through essential movement corridors for both terrestrial and aquatic wildlife.  Many of the streams on the property support abundant popula-tions of Colorado River Cutthroat Trout including South Cottonwood Creek, one of the longest continuous segments of stream designated as a Conservation Population in the state.   

The Finley’s value their role in the community and have contrib-uted to building and maintaining the character of the region.  They actively participate in several non-profit, charitable organi-zations and have offered their property for access and fundraising efforts.  Several “Hunting with Heroes” participants have enjoyed hunting opportunities provided by the High Lonesome Ranch and the local non-profit “Fishing for the Fight” has enjoyed exclusive fishing access to South Cottonwood Creek to help raise money for locals in need of critical health care.   

The Finley’s are dedicated to maintaining the quality of wildlife and habitat on the High Lonesome Ranch and the long-term con-servation of cutthroat trout and other sensitive wildlife.  They have been a willing partner on a number of valuable efforts to benefit wildlife in the region and have played an integral role in many Department programs.