Gov. Matt Mead likes to stop by our coffee group, the Fox News All-Stars, when he gets to Lander.

During the annual One Shot Antelope Hunt festivities, he showed up on a Friday morning.

He used to brag that he knew how to play our coffee game but after losing a few times, he now sits quietly and takes his punishment.

This time, though, he was greeted a little differently then from some earlier visits.

Retired insurance agent Ben Freedman walked into the room fairly late in a our gathering and said loudly: “Welcome back, a**hole!” 

Mead perked up and we all did.  What the heck?

Actually, Freedman had not seen the governor sitting there and was referring to his long-time buddy Tony McRae, who had gotten there a little earlier.  Tony had just gotten out of the hospital and that expression was Freedman’s term of endearment to welcome him back to the group.

After a moment of tension and a funny look on the governor’s face, the place exploded in laughter.

To which, Mead said he had been greeted in a lot of different ways during this time as governor but rarely like that!

While he sitting with us, the governor told us about a recent adventure he endured at his home in Cheyenne.

He likes to sneak out the back door of the governor’s mansion early most mornings and jump into his car and go to a fitness center for a quiet workout.

The mansion grounds have lots of rabbits and one morning recently he heard a stirring in a bush as he walked out the back door.  He lifted up the bush and got blasted full in the face by the stinking wrath of a startled skunk.

Not sure what to do, he got into his personal car but realized he really, really stunk.

Then he went inside where First Lady Carol Mead chased him outside. “Where can I go?” he recalls asking her.

“Anywhere but here,” he recalls her saying.

He quickly got out of his clothes.  With 409 and bleach (they could not find any tomato juice) and long showers, ultimately he got clean enough to make it to an important 7:30 a.m. meeting.

He said he was very self-conscious about whether he smelled. He said it was impossible to get that taste out of his mouth.

His car has been scrubbed down repeatedly and is finally able to be used.

His clothes were washed six times before being thrown away.

Game and Fish ultimately came and rounded up the offending skunk and took it away

Mead speculated as to who is the poor junior person in the Game and Fish who gets stuck with trapping and then having to relocate skunks?  

Although I doubt he would ever refer to another governor as skunk, Mead has an intense but friendly rivalry with his “greenie” counterpart to the south.

The governor got in his licks against Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper during their annual competition at this year’s One Shot Antelope Hunt in Lander.

The hunt celebrated its 75^th anniversary this year and it has been co-hosted during all this time by the governors of the two states.

With nine teams of three hunters each competing this year, the Colorado team walked into the Friday night banquet and saw the scoreboard showing kills by every other hunter but the Colorado team sitting there with just three zeros.  This prank was also the brainchild of the afore-mentioned Freedman, who was serving as head greeter at the hunt while his pal McRae was in the hospital.

Hickenlooper, when he got to the stage, reminded Mead how he had created a special traveling trophy that would circulate between Wyoming and Colorado depending on which team did the best each year.

Mead promptly reminded Hickenlooper that the trophy has “never left Wyoming.  We are taking good care of it and intend to keep it again after this year’s hunt.”

Well said.

Early on a beautiful Saturday morning the 27 hunters headed to the field.  Guiding Hickenlooper was Fremont County Sheriff Skip Hornecker, who said he found a gigantic Pronghorn buck for the Coloradoan to kill.  Oops. He missed.

Later on Saturday night, the scoreboard showed 15 hunters had scored kills out of the 27.

And Colorado?  Their scorecard still showed three zeros. None of their hunters, including Hickenlooper, managed to kill their antelope with just one shot.

The trophy is still sitting in Mead’s office.