Moose Droppings

Moose’s Shirt Starts Some Conversations In Moose Wyoming

Jun 06, 2007 @ 11:19 pm by Moose

Little did I know that a hunting shirt from the 2nd annual NCDeer.com Tundra Swan Hunt would launch some conversations in Moose Wyoming. Moose Wyoming is a small town at the gate to Grand Teton National Park and where one of the National Park’s Visitor Center is located. Early in our trip I was in there wearing the T Shirt when a man stopped me and asked me about Tundra Swan Hunting. I had the opportunity to share some of my experiences hunting tundra swan and he proceeded to tell me that he worked with Utah Wildlife and had hunted Tundra Swans himself in Utah. Tundra Swan hunting is only allowed in a small number of states so meeting a fellow hunter is great. Also the fact he worked for wildlife I figured he might be able to clarify something for me because I saw some swan hunting photos at a sporting goods counter but know one there knew what kind of swans they were but “maybe trumpeters”. Well trumpeter swans do frequent this area there is no open season on them because the numbers are still low. Utah actually makes an effort to educate swan hunters on how to tell the difference between the two species so to assure that hunters take tundra’s and not trumpeters. You can take there on line course to help you identify the difference between the two if you’d like here on Utah’s Wildlife Page. Trumpeter Swans are not a specie that frequents North Carolina the other swans we have here are non migratory mute swans.

That was pretty cool to meet him and swap info about each others state. Little did I know that wearing this shirt again towards the end of the trip would spark another great conversation in basically the same place. My wife and I were making our way back south from Yellowstone when we took a break and stopped again in Moose. As I walked into the visitor center one of the Park Rangers on duty said “I bet your from Eastern North Carolina” kind of impressive seeing where the back of my shirt was not visible where it talked about the Tundra Swan Hunt. The only thing he could see was NO OLF on the front of my shirt and he knew exactly what that meant. We had a good conversation about the issue and where it stood at that time it seems the Park Ranger was from Eastern North Carolina and had been home recently seeing all the NO OLF signs on peoples front lawns.

That was cool and an unexpected turn of events that broke some ice and let me have conversations with folks from another part of the country but we shared some common grounds for sure.

Of course today there was some late day developments on the OLF issue when the House of Representatives Military Construction Appropriations Subcommittee stripped the OLF funding from the budget. This is great news and we’ll continue to follow any additional news on this.

More Info & Stories I’ve done on OLF