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 75th
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.
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