Taking a ride on the elk train

Rex and Camille Reno stood with their daughter Pamela and her

husband, Larry Richards at the largest elk refuge and feeding grounds

in the United States.

Soon, 6,000 to 8,000 elk would start to migrate from Yellowstone

Park and the surrounding mountains, which are more than 8,000 feet in

elevation. They get the earlier snows, and by Christmastime, the

refuge is their home for the next three or four months.

While the elk are in the refuge, they will shed, or drop, their

antlers, and after they have returned to the high ground, the Boy

Scouts will go out in wagons and retrieve all the antlers. They will

be graded and sorted and taken to the park in downtown Jackson, where

a two-day auction will take place. People from all over the world

attend the show. Some people want them for trophies, some for

furniture, lamps, chandeliers, and many people from the Far East

grind them into a powder for an aphrodisiac. I can’t remember the

last time the auction netted less than $100,000. Half of the profits

go to the Boy Scouts, and the town of Jackson and the other half goes

to the Fish and Game Department to buy alfalfa pellets for the elk.

My first elk hunt in Jackson Hole was with some of my friends in

Newport Beach in 1969. We were told by other hunters that the best

outfitter and guide service was the Spotted Horse Dude Ranch, 17

miles south of Jackson on the Hoback River. It was owned by Dick and

Diane Bess. That became our home away from home for many years. All

my family loves going to Jackson Hole, and we invested in some real

estate projects. We were the former owners of Camp Creek Inn, across

the highway from the Spotted Horse Ranch.

Jackson Hole has all the amenities that anyone would ever want. If

you love outdoor sports, it has skiing, ice skating, snow machine

trips into Yellowstone National Park, rafting on the Snake River,

rodeo, backpacking trips in the Tetons, tennis, golfing on Arnold

Palmer’s course at the Teton Village, horseback trips and of course,

great fishing on Jackson Lake or Jenny Lake and hunting the best big

game animal in the United States, the bull elk.

If you visit Jackson Hole, spend some time in the Old Wort Hotel

or the famous Cowboy Bar, or the Stag Coach Inn, or spend some time

in a real estate office, you will hear the common phrase, “The

billionaires are buying out the millionaires in Jackson Hole.”

Jackson Hole has had very steady growth over the past 40 years,

but in the last 10 years, real estate has skyrocketed, and there is a

very logical reason. In Teton County in northwestern Wyoming, only 3%

of the land is deeded. The rest belongs to the U.S. government. You

have Grand Teton National Park, Bridger Teton National Park, Gros

Venture Range, the National Elk Refuge and many other Fish and Game

park projects.

Many of the people who are employed in Jackson Hole live over the

Teton Range in Idaho and commute.

Being a native of Casper, Wyoming, I would close with the state’s

slogan, “Wonderful Wyoming.”

* REX RENO is a resident of Newport Beach.