Don Hall is an avid snowmobiler, but instead of heading for the hills each winter in search of deep powder, he takes an older snowmachine to lower elevations nearer the snow line. There’s a reason the Riverton resident prefers the lower zones despite the rocks, fences and sage most riders avoid: That’s where the coyotes are.

“I’d rather run coyotes than go ride mountain snow,” Hall told WyoFile. “It’s that much fun to me.”

Running coyotes, a hobby he picked up about five years ago, is “beyond a challenge,” he said. It’s rough riding. Plus, when the 49-year-old spots an animal, it’s invariably wheeling — running as fast as it possibly can — and looking to cross a fence line and get to the nearest cover.

About two-thirds of the fleeing coyotes escape, according to Hall’s estimation.

Hall runs down the rest.

“I drive up on them and I park them underneath the track and I shoot them in the head,” he said.

For Hall, who’s also an accomplished carp shooter, running over coyotes with snowmobiles is just another form of hunting — little different than running a predator call and shooting lured canines. He concedes there’s an “unfair advantage” and says he doesn’t enjoy the violence and killing. Videos of coyotes being run over “tear me up,” he said. Nevertheless, Hall feels justified partaking in the practice. It is, after all, entirely legal in Wyoming.

“A snowmobile running over a coyote in the snow, I guess that’s brutal,” he said. “But [it’s] nothing compared to what they do when wolves surround an elk and literally tear it down.”

By Hall’s estimation, what’s sometimes called “coyote whacking” is a niche recreational activity in Wyoming, with maybe 100 avid participants. Others contend it’s much more commonplace. In Sublette County, the activity is widespread enough that a resident once made and marketed apparel celebrating a pursuit he branded “chasin’ fur.”

Regardless, relatively few people — especially outside of the Equality State — knew the practice existed. That changed when a western Wyoming man brought a dying wolf into a bar after running it down with a snowmobile this winter. Suddenly, people across the globe demanded to know why the state allowed an activity they considered nothing short of barbaric.

The outrage prompted Wyoming to temporarily halt its tourism marketing and empanel a new legislative group to study the issue. But that anger, observers say, isn’t likely to result in a ban anytime soon.

Passing on prohibitions

Calls to ban recreationally running over Wyoming wildlife with snowmobiles aren’t new.

In 2019, John Fandek, a former ranch manager and longtime contract elk feeder who lives the small Sublette County community of Cora, wrote in remarks delivered to a legislative committee that running down coyotes and foxes with snowmobiles has “evolved into merely fun-time family recreation” that occurs “every day all winter long in the snow country of Wyoming.”

“The kind of activity described in this statement is not hunting,” he testified. “It is merely despicable, disgusting killing.”

Fandek, who could not be reached, wrote those words the same year that two legislative efforts to criminalize running predators fell flat.

Rep. Mike Yin (D-Jackson) pushed the first bill, which died for lack of a committee assignment. Between sessions that summer, the Wyoming Legislature’s Travel, Recreation, Wildlife and Cultural Resources Committee also declined to pursue statute changes being pushed primarily by Teton County residents.

As it stands, it’s explicitly legal to use motorized vehicles to kill predatory species (wolves in 85% of Wyoming and coyotes, red fox, stray cats, jackrabbits, porcupines, raccoons and striped skunks throughout the state).

The laws governing Wyoming Game and Fish exempt predators from rules that otherwise prohibit harassing, pursuing, hunting, shooting and killing wildlife with aircraft, cars, snowmobiles and other vehicles. Species classified as predators can also be taken by anyone, at any time, by any method without a license.

The regulations allowed for the normalization and eventual popularity of running over animals with snowmobiles, but the controversial practice largely stayed out of the spotlight — an open secret mostly confined to a distinct subculture that bantered on message boards and posted helmet-mounted camera videos online. Many of those videos have since been taken down.