The world was recently shocked by a horrific act of animal cruelty that took place in the state of Wyoming when a local man named Cody Roberts ran over a young female wolf with his snowmobile and then dragged the injured animal to his local bar where he proceeded to torture and then finally kill her.

Although his deranged act of tormenting the wolf before killing her was clearly illegal according to Wyoming’s animal cruelty laws, unfortunately, his method of taking down the wolf by running her over with his snowmobile was not.

In the state of Wyoming, it is LEGAL to run wildlife over with snowmobiles.

As unbelievable as it may sound it is a fairly typical pastime for hunters in the state of Wyoming to run over wolves and coyotes with snowmobiles. This extremely cruel and violent activity is colloquially referred to as “wolf whacking” or “yote whacking” in the case of coyotes.

This practice, which obviously violates hunting ethics and the concept of “fair chase”, forces innocent native species to run for their lives until they collapse from exhaustion, or they are brutally run over.

These animals clearly suffer tremendously before they are eventually killed. One hunter went so far as to film himself repeatedly running over a coyote with his snowmobile before swinging the suffering animal by the tail and bashing its head into his snowmobile several times before tossing the poor animal’s lifeless body aside like trash.  

The Bureau of Land management and the federal government have made it clear in recent weeks that they have no power to end this practice in Wyoming as wolves are not on the Endangered Species List in the state. Wyoming is proving to the rest of the country and to the world that they are not capable of responsible wildlife management, and they should be ashamed of their blatant failure to protect native species from harm.

Now is the time for the Wyoming State Legislature to act and show the world that their state is not full of violent, immoral monsters.

Wyoming Rep. Mike Yin, of Teton County attempted to pass a bill to “prohibit killing, injuring or torturing predatory animals using snowmobiles” in 2019 but unfortunately the bill did not pass. We need to make sure this bill is reintroduced and that this time it gets passed!

Running over wild animals with snowmobiles should never be legal anywhere.

Please join Species Unite in urging the Wyoming State Legislature to do the right thing and finally outlaw the vicious, unethical practice of “wolf / yote whacking.”