Anti-Wolf Hunt Advocates Place $10K Bounty on Hunters 💵

I’m currently at the “it’s Thursday already?” phase of the workweek and am unsure as to whether or not that is a good thing as of yet.

With that in mind, let’s all take a minute to grab a coffee or whiskey (no judgement) and get this Thursday morning dispatch out the door.

Here's what's worth reading about today:

NOT A GOOD APPROACH
THE MOLLIE’S WOLF PACK LEFT YELLOWSTONE AND NOW THERE’S A $10K BOUNTY ON HUNTERS

It was earlier this spring when news broke of one of the planet’s most famous wolf packs wandering, for the first time, outside of their protected boundaries. The story got personal when biologists revealed that Yellowstone’s oldest wolf pack ended up in Wyoming’s Wolf Hunt Area 1, making them a potential target for the upcoming 2026 wolf hunting season.

What has since followed is nothing short of an eruption of emotion, mainly from the wolf advocacy groups who have since decided that management is now personal…

💪 Impaled by His Own Trekking Pole, Billings Nurse Walks 10 Miles to Safety. A Billings nurse by the name of David Cifaldi was climbing Montana’s Granite Peak with two friends last week when he slipped on loose rock near 11,800 feet. As he fell, one of his trekking poles drove clean through the side of his torso, exiting out his back. Drawing on his medical training as a wound-care nurse, Cifaldi quickly assessed that the pole had missed vital organs, noticed that he wasn’t bleeding heavily, and that he could still breathe and move. The group activated a satellite emergency device but decided against waiting for a helicopter rescue.

Instead, Cifaldi hiked roughly 10 miles back to the trailhead over six and a half hours with the pole still lodged through his body, navigating boulder fields, snow, and steep terrain. He even asked one of his friends to walk ahead near popular sections of the trail to warn families so children wouldn’t see the injury. Once off the mountain, he was driven to a hospital in Billings, where surgeons removed the pole. Cifaldi is recovering at home, all while knowing that a few centimeters in either direction could have made the outcome far worse.

🙌 Mule Deer Foundation Lands $350K Grant from Bass Pro Shops and Cabela’s. The Mule Deer Foundation has received a $350,000 grant from the Bass Pro Shops and Cabela’s Outdoor Fund to expand habitat work across key mule deer range. Building on a decade-long partnership, the funding will help MDF leverage additional match dollars (at ratios up to 6:1) from state and federal partners, amplifying the impact on the ground.

The work will focus on grassland and shrubland habitats in the Great Plains states and southern Idaho, areas hit hard by invasive grasses, wildfire, and fencing. MDF aims to improve or restore roughly 20,000 acres of habitat and convert 25–30 miles of fencing to wildlife-friendly designs. The projects are expected to benefit not only mule deer but also pronghorn, sage-grouse, upland birds, and other species that rely on the same landscapes.

🤨 Bear Caught Eating Another Bear in Steamboat Springs. Colorado Parks and Wildlife responded to an unusual call in Steamboat Springs on Wednesday after witnesses reported a bear feeding on the carcass of another bear near a business on Anglers Drive. Officer Kyle Bond said that while bears are opportunistic omnivores and will scavenge other bears on rare occasions, he had never seen it happen inside town limits during his 10 years on the job.

By the time officers arrived, the living bear had moved into nearby trees and brush. Attempts to tranquilize it failed when the animal bolted down the rocks toward Fish Creek and the Yampa River. Wildlife staff later removed the dead bear to eliminate the food source and are still unaware of the cause of the first bear’s death.

🐕‍🦺 Experience life from the unique POV of a Karelian Bear Dog. These dogs work with the good folks over at the Nevada Department of Wildlife to haze bears out of areas and help condition them to become more weary of human beings.

A tired dog is a happy dog…

🐒 Congo Cryptid Safari: The Congo Basin covers 1.5 million square miles of the least-documented jungle on earth. Until the 1870s, it was labeled on maps simply “Unexplored Region.” Even 150 years later, we aren’t doing much better. Modern exploration of the region remains nearly impossible. Various waterfalls make the river unnavigable by boat, and the cliffs and gorges make portaging impossible.

The evidence that we understand little of the region is astounding. Scientists seem to find a new type of fish with every hook cast into the water, and they managed to document 742 new species of plants and animals from 2013-2023, among which were monkeys, birds, orchids, and crocodiles. Still, there remains one creature that no one has been able to officially document: the Mokele-mbembe. Read the full story.

🦁 Baron Bror von Blixen: Farmer, Charmer, PH & Adventurer: They started on the Congo, at the former slaving hub, Stanleyville, in a steel boat bought from a Belgian trader. Its three-ton capacity belied its small size. Cramped quarters cooked the crew under sun’s fire in the wake of torrential rain. Three weeks on, by way of the Ubangi, The Vagrant reached the border of French Equatorial Africa. A long, trackless portage lay ahead. Fifty miles of bush and boulders, ascents and escarpments throttled the trek. Greater distance through scrub and savanna exhausted the men before they launched again on the Shari.

Short miles upstream, impact with a submerged log jarred the load to one side. Water rushed over a gunwale. The boat sank, taking gear, provisions, guns—all that mattered but their very lives.  Read the full story.

🪾 The Ghost of Dillon Mews : Some places I won’t bother to name have struck a serious wave of fear into me after certain events transpired, but that’s not the norm. Only two have ever given the impression that they would eat me if given the opportunity. One such place is the woods surrounding the banks of a river in the Temagami wilderness, and the other is a provincial park in south-central Ontario.

The former has a nasty habit of making people disappear over the decades, but it’s absolutely scenic, holds some incredible trout fishing, and is a backcountry paddler’s wet dream. The latter is, as far as anyone can tell, nothing but a tract of relatively untouched Canadian Shield with its own protective designation. A person can still hunt grouse there or catch their limit of bluegills if they’re willing to canoe into it. Yet, its forests hold more mystery than anything else within easy driving distance.

In 2007, those woods swallowed a 20-year-old outdoorsman and never spit him out. It became one of the wildest conspiracies this writer has ever heard. Read the full story.

Oh, and one more thing…