An athlete outraged by the waste thrown at Grand Teton…

As Tommy Martinez approached the Buffalo Fork River near Grand Teton National Park on Thursday, he looked forward to another day enjoying the crystal clear water.

But what he saw shocked him, then made him angry.

“As I was walking around the campground by the river, I saw all these glowing orange discs in the water. They were everywhere. There must have been a hundred,” he told Cowboy State Daily on Friday.

It didn’t take him long to figure out what they were: clay discs, commonly called clay pigeons, that are thrown into the air for shotgun shooting practice.

Someone had been shooting somewhere near the river, but had neglected to look for the targets he had missed and had fallen untouched into the water.

Martinez lives in California’s Mohave Desert, but spends several months each year in Wyoming. Fishing on the Buffalo Fork River is one of his favorite activities, so he was furious to see the river treated with such disrespect.

“I’m not a big environmentalist type of person, but I believe in ‘pack it in, pack it in.’ Leave things better than you found them,” he said.

He went to pick up someone else’s mess, then reported it to the U.S. Forest Service. He said staff from Blackrock Rangers District would come and clean up the remains on Friday.

“BTW, you are a terrible shooter”

Martinez also took to social media, posting derogatory photos and messages aimed at the shooters on the popular “Yellowstone National Park: Invasion of the Idiots!” » The Facebook page.

“Someone thought it would be a good idea to shoot orange clay pigeons over the Buffalo Fork River. I picked up these clay skeet targets while I was fishing until my arm turned blue,” he posted.

“There are still so many in the water. Buffalo Valley Trail 30086, Campground #7. Thanks for throwing the river, but you are a terrible shot,” Martinez added.

The targets are biodegradable, but…

Martinez has nothing against clay pigeon shooting. He himself loves sport.

But the riverside campground is a poor choice of location, and not having the targets cleared was just too hard to see and say nothing, he said.

“There is a time and a place for everything,” Martinez said. “If someone was up there trying to camp while they were doing this, and they heard gunshots every two minutes, it would get annoying.”

He said that when he shot clay pigeons, he picked up as much debris as possible.

“If I don’t get this thing back, it could sit there for years,” he said.

Clay shotgun targets are advertised as being completely biodegradable.

But that’s no excuse to leave them in places they just shouldn’t be, Brad Smith, head coach of the Cheyenne East High School clay-court shooting team, told Cowboy State Daily .

Someone leaving targets strewn all over a river bed is unacceptable and it reflects poorly on the sport, he said.

“People will say the targets could be biodegradable, and it’s true they could be, but it’s still going to take time for these targets to disappear,” he said.

“I think it’s a very poorly thought out law and it’s not a good example that we want to set for our young people,” Smith added.

Martinez said the targets he found were black on the underside, which he said could indicate they might not be fully biodegradable.

Smith said they are likely biodegradable, but there is still a small chance they contain contaminants.

“To my knowledge, it is not true (that non-biodegradable clay pigeons are still made). The only way to know for sure is to send them to a laboratory to have them analyzed and find out if they contain petroleum pitch,” he said.

Martinez said he was glad he found the clay pigeons and was able to clean up part of them, and that the Forest Service agreed to clean up the rest.

And it’s a good reminder to practice clay shooting responsibly, he added.

“If this material is left there, it will affect the dirt. This will affect the water. It has dyes and stuff like that,” Martinez said.

Marc Heinz can be reached at [email protected].