First time I heard the phrase about the “fun ending when you pulled the trigger,” it was from my old friend Scottish Bill (not me, I am Irish Bill) when he recalled all his Wyoming hunting trips.

         Hunting is a fall tradition in the Cowboy State. It is viewed as an entitlement.

         Not sure what all those thousands of wives and girlfriends get in return, but they seem eager to send their hubbies and boyfriends off armed to the teeth and loaded down with food in rustic old campers or super-fancy brand new RV’s with flush toilets plus quad runners, huge pickup trucks and even portable satellite television receivers.

         Oh yeah, and cards. Lots of playing cards. And quantities of liquid refreshment.

         Cigars used to be a big part of the equation but surprisingly a lot of the groups I talked to recently just do not smoke. Not even a celebratory cigar?

         There are a lot of very serious hunters in Wyoming. But even some of them have decided that that hunting trip is still going to happen, but for some reason this year, the rifle may not even be removed from the scabbard. 

         Sometimes these old veterans are just tired. Maybe their wives finally confided to them that they are tired of cooking elk, deer, antelope and even moose.

Other times these hunters are more interested in taking their sons (or daughters) or even grandchildren on the big hunt and really want to concentrate on those folks getting their first kill.

         But I think the main reason is that weather in the mountains or foothills of Wyoming is so darned nice in the fall, that they are just wanting to get away from the humdrum of daily life and enjoy the paradise that God has put at our disposal called Wyoming.

         Plus another reason the “fun ends” is that when you pull the trigger that often signals the end of the hunting trip. Darn it, we have to leave the mountains and go back to our regular lives.

         Now let’s talk about the “real” hunters. Those men and women who are truly serious about killing their prey and filling their licenses.

         In many parts of the state, these hunters are discovering that they are no longer at the top of the food chain.

Grizzly bears are reportedly stalking both human hunters and the game those same hunters recently killed.

         Several hunters told me that the most uneasy they can recall is when they are gutting their animal and suddenly things get real still. Sort of like maybe some big critter has smelled your animal and is sizing up the fresh carcass. And yours, too?

         A Cody hunter considers himself the luckiest man alive in Wyoming after his close encounter with a grizzly earlier this month.

         Steve Bates, 27, ended up on the losing end of his scrape in the Shoshone National Forest but is happy to be alive, despite his fractured ribs and cuts on his face and scalp.

         The grizzly rushed him on a dead run before Bates could react. After he was knocked over, the bear worked him over before ambling off.

         Once he recovered his senses, Bates grabbed his rifle and aimed at the bear, but then paused. He wisely let it lope off. Game and Fish officials said they would not track down the bear because it was reacting normally to its perceived threat.

         “Considering what happened, “ Bates, recalls, “I think I came out pretty good.”

         Recently a grizzly bit an Oregon hunter in the hand also in our Shoshone National Forest. Now that hunter must have one helluva story to tell. Names were not released.

One of my favorite bear stories concerns an old grizzly bear known as “Old Number One” – a sow in Yellowstone National Park. She was the first grizzly to ever wear a radio collar in the park.

A long-time agent for the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Roy Brown of Lander, told me this story.

When the bear died some years ago, Brown headed up a necropsy procedure on the bear and the team found a surprise. The bear had six .38 caliber bullets in her head. It must have happened many years before because skin had even grown over the injuries.

Roy says people wondered: “Hmmm, what happened to the guy who emptied his revolver into this bear?”

That poor guy may have found out first-hand where human beings are finding themselves in the food chain these days.

         Shortly after the turn of the 21^st century and up to now, the people of Wyoming have struggled against a scourge that ruins people’s lives all across the state.

         That scourge is the drug methamphetamine. It gives abusers unprecedented highs. It also allows them to perform hard work in harsh environments unlike a normal human being.

         As Wyoming boomed, young men (and their girlfriends and wives, too) embraced this new drug and found themselves addicted to something so perverse, it was almost unbeatable.

         From 2004 to 2007, an ad agency that I founded (Wyoming Inc. ) handled the national award-winning anti-meth campaign for the state. Remember those Meth Makeover billboards?

         During that time we met with many meth addicts who were in recovery as part of our Wyoming Faces Meth campaign, which sought to put a local face on the problem.

         I remember a young gal from Powell who lived in Casper who worked for a TV station. She told me she tried meth once, quit her job and then left her husband and kids and moved in with the meth dealer. The drug was so powerful it ruined her life immediately.

         A Rock Springs man from Evanston spent Christmas sleeping under a bridge two miles from where his wife and kids were, so overpowering was the drug’s hold on him.

         Yes, meth is a problem in Wyoming and it is also a problem in other parts of the country, too

         From 1997 to 2008, the town most recognized as being ruined the most by the ravages of methamphetamine was Oelwein, Iowa, where I have been staying this past week.

         Oelwein is 18 miles from my hometown of Wadena and one of my first jobs was delivering its daily newspaper.

         In 2009,a best-selling book called Methland identified Oelwein as the epicenter of the country’s meth epidemic, which was prominent in small town America.

         Wyoming, with its open spaces and small towns, has endured a similar epidemic. Luckily, it did not quite get as devastating as what the book Methland says about Oelwein.

         So meth is something that I had been observing closely over the years. And during my occasional trips to Iowa, it was obvious that this scourge was having its way with a lot of small towns.

         The book, though, tries to find out the “why” places like Oelwein were hit so hard.

         Ironically, meth is described as a “workingman’s drug,” rather than a recreational drug. 

         Iowa was going through a farm crisis plus good union jobs at railroads and meat packing plants were eliminated. Many of the men profiled in this book were being paid $18 per hour plus benefits at a union job in 1992. Their unions were dismantled and their pay dropped to $5.60 per hour. Oelwein, whose population dropped by 8,000 to 6,000, also used to be a big union railroad center but that was shut down about this time, too.

         Men who wanted to work had to do double shifts at the new wages to make ends meet. Plus they felt bad about themselves. 

         Meth solved both of those issues. They could work non-stop for days on end and the meth made them feel good. 

         Too bad this “devil’s drug” also provides long-term devastating physical, mental and social costs in response to its few short-term perceived benefits.

Over a four-year period, investigative reporter Nick Reding studied meth manufacture and distribution to addicts in Oelwein. Once a thriving Ag community where union work and small businesses were plentiful, Oelwein is struggling through a transition to low-wage employment. These conditions, Reding shows, made the town susceptible to methamphetamine.

A Washington Post book reviewer, David Liss, said the following about Reding’s book:

“There is no more horrifying example of the drug`s ravages than Roland Jarvis, who began using meth as a way to keep up his energy through double shifts at a local meat-processing plant.

“When the plant where Jarvis worked was de-unionized and his wages slashed by two-thirds, Jarvis went from an occasional meth user to a habitual user and then a manufacturer. One night, in a fit of drug-induced paranoia, he attempted, disastrously, to dispose of his cooking chemicals. In the ensuing fire, he was so horribly burned that paramedics could only watch while the flesh literally melted from his body and Jarvis begged the police to kill him. Reding`s description of Jarvis now, using his fingerless hands to lift a meth pipe to his noseless face, is among the most haunting images in the book.”

Farmland selling for $10,000 an acre and small towns full of humble millionaires are some of the observations we have made during a motorhome trip to the heartland .

         I am spending quality time with five of my 10 siblings. We have had some great get-togethers back in my hometown area of northeast Iowa.

         My sister Susan Kinneman recently of Dubois has some of the best interpersonal skills of anyone, yet a superintendent consultant was coaching her about her new superintendent’s job in Iowa.

She was told “Iowans are humble” and “although they will ask you about yourself, don’t talk too long and too loud about yourself.”

         That is truly an understatement.

         Iowans are humble.

         A lot of Iowa natives fled to Colorado and California (even Wyoming). When they returned home for a visit all they could do was brag to the locals about how great things are “out west.”        

         For years, the locals would say nothing. Look at their feet. Feign interest but deep down just sort of feel like they were missing out.

         Not anymore.

         The Iowa economy is robust with corn selling at record prices and farmland value off the charts.

         One of my brothers from Cedar Falls laughingly called it the “4x4 lifestyle,” which might imply driving big pickups. Nope.

         “It stands for working four days in the spring when they put in the product and working four days in the fall when they harvest it!” No doubt that is not true, but gives an idea of what modern farming might be like in some people’s eyes.

         Although the Hawkeye state is full of closet millionaires, they still have a reputation for being cheap (let’s call that thrifty.) Lots of jokes about this tendency

         Another Iowa brother told this joke:

         A guy goes into an Iowa bar he had not been in before. He asked for a beer. The bartender gave him one and said that would be a quarter.

         “A quarter? Man, that is the cheapest beer I have ever seen. How can you do that?”

         “Well, I retired some years and I did well and I just like having a bar. I don’t make any money so I just sell beer here cheap.”

         The stranger then looked over at a table where four men were sitting. They did not have any beers.

         “What’s with them? Don’t they like beer?” he asked.

         “Oh, don’t mind them. They are just Iowa farmers. They are waiting for the 2 for 1 happy hour.”

         Susan Gore, who now lives in Lander, recalls when she moved from Vermont to Iowa some years ago: “One difference I noticed was that Vermonters do you a favor by respecting privacy. Iowans do you a favor by knowing all about you and telling everybody.”

         The fall colors in Northeast Iowa are fantastic at this time of year. My oldest brother Tom and his wife Olivia had driven up from their home in Columbia, SC and met up with Nancy and me and my 87-year old mother (Betty Sniffin). Then we took a tour of our home town, little Wadena, Iowa.

         It is apparently famous for two things:

         First was the infamous Wadena Rock Festival which occurred about the time of Woodstock and saw 60,000 naked folks invading the little valley for a week of rock and roll music back in 1970.

         Second is what has come to be known as “the Barney Burger,” a double cheeseburger served at a little spot in the road called Barney’s.

         This was the best burger I have eaten in months. Well worth a trip to little Wadena. It was priced right, too.

         My little home town of Wadena is a town of about 250 and always reminded me of Hudson, Wyoming.

         I was born there 65 years ago and spent my first 18 years there.  My grandpa’s barber shop is where Barney’s is now located. My friend Neal Jennings’ family hardware was torn down and that spot is Barney’s parking lot.

         During our tour of neighboring towns, we were stunned to see a little miniature gas station featuring “DX gasoline” which was the brand our late dad handled. My dad also owned that station in Volga City and both my brother Tom and I had lots of memories of working there.

         Although there were plaques for Bill Coming and Dutch Krause, both of whom worked there for my dad decades ago, there was no mention of our father. We will see what we can do to remedy that.