Wyoming’s 66 Mountain Retreat

Clear Your Mind & Your Mags At This Shooter’s Paradise

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Twenty minutes out of Cheyenne, Wyoming, a sign whips past that reads, “Next Services 74 Miles.” My amber, low-fuel indicator warning has been burning for 20 minutes. I choose to press on instead of returning to Cheyenne for fuel. 

My adrenaline spikes as the range reads 0.0 miles and the SOS symbol replaces my cell signal bars. I laugh, realizing I’ve asked for this. Forward is my choice. In our world of agitating digital prompts and mind-numbing corporate routines, I wonder if there’s a place where a shooting enthusiast can clear the chamber of his mind. But a destination nestled beneath a sandstone mountain range in southeast Wyoming holds promise—the 66 Mountain Retreat.

Where Freedom Rings

Crated in the back of my Land Cruiser, my German Shorthair Pointer, Forty, is oblivious to our fuel issues. After six hours of driving through the lights and past the billboards of Interstate 80, we’re on the tail end of a 500-mile run from Utah to La Grange, Wyoming. Finally, we roll off the blacktop, and the tires crunch quietly onto a level gravel driveway—the gas tank running on fumes. After shutting down the truck and stepping into the cool, arid night, I’m reminded of what light pollution means. Above and around us there’s nothing but stars and the deafening quiet of the Wyoming prairie. 

The 66 Mountain Retreat is the brainchild of Alex Volk. For five generations, his family has lived in the La Grange area. His great-grandfather was the first to turn the surrounding open pastures into productive cropland. I joined Alex for his morning supply run the morning after my arrival. We stopped at a small, white, clapboard country store where locals can still pick up a six-pack of Coors and put it “on the account.” As we drove, a sandstone mountain loomed over us, a silent witness to centuries of history. 

“66 Mountain was an important Native American hunting ground and buffalo jump,” he says. “Riders on horseback pushed herds from the high plains up there to the rocks below. It was named ‘66 Mountain’ after the massacre of 66 settlers at its southern edge. Number 67, Hugh Sherrill, was the only survivor and spared because of his ginger hair. Sherril fled on foot to Fort Laramie but later returned to bury the dead. Their graves are still up there but unmarked. Some of Sherrill’s descendants still live in the area.”  

To understand the vibe of southeastern Wyoming, it helps to meet a few residents. On the drive back, we meet Jeff, a retired machinist who spent much of his career at Los Alamos. We’re headed in opposite directions, so Dave flashes his high beams, and we pull to a stop. Alex introduces me. Dave nods, sweeping his hand across the horizon. “Welcome to freedom,” he says. Freedom indeed. Known as the Equality State, Wyoming has no state income or corporate tax, no excise tax on gas and food or the sale of real estate, and state sales tax is 4%, and local municipality add-ons get capped at 2%. It makes you wonder how politicians get by—somehow, they do, and so do the people. Some would argue they thrive.

Pheasants & Geese

The 66 Mountain Resort sits amidst 4,000 acres of productive Wyoming plains. A purposeful mixture of pivot-irrigated cropland, CRP, and natural cover along the fences and at the natural edges attracts and protects the region’s pheasants and waterfowl. The adjacent Hawk Springs Reservoir is a magnet for migrating geese and ducks in the fall. 

We arrived during a busy annual tradition. Just before November’s goose season starts, the “pit party,” numbering nearly a dozen, arrives to install ground blinds into the cropland. There’s an excavation crew, a pit crew, and a camouflage crew, each with specified tasks. Their collective effort and a few beers ultimately put six blinds below ground level, each capable of holding six hunters and two dogs.

As for Forty and me, we’re here to chase the pheasants. Forty’s a male, three-year-old, gray over black German Shorthair Pointer. This is his first official hunting season. To my great pleasure, he’s busting cover like an angry Cape buffalo. After Forty’s first turn into a CRP edge, I feel the weight of the world begin to lighten. 

The open land makes for easy walking. In this part of Wyoming, you can walk the edges and let the dogs use the wind and bash the cover. Alex keeps his fences in tight shape. At the corners, he built functional walk-through gates that avoid the risk of barbed wire through the crotch when stepping over or getting slimed with a muddy back from crawling under. 

After two days of more flushes than Forty had seen in his lifetime, we’re invited along on an opening morning goose hunt. Versatile breed or not, I gratefully accept but disclaim I have a young dog with zero time in a blind or under geese. The La Grange regulars seem game for the show and have taken a shine to Forty in the evenings back at the main hunt house. Two days of walking with a dog instead of technology has reset my internal clock. I wake before dawn, ready to get to the blinds.

As dawn breaks, lessons unfold for geese, hunters, and dogs alike. The geese learn what it means to be called to and shot at by humans, and hunters are reminded that even naïve geese don’t like shiny hinges on blinds. Forty practices how to sit still and quietly on an elevated wooden dog shelf. Most importantly, he gets an in-the-face lesson that geese are bigger and meaner than pheasants and sometimes don’t go down without a fight. 

Paradise & Gunpowder

In addition to the hunting opportunities, Alex Volk created a feature-rich venue for pistol, carbine, shotgun, and precision rifle shooters. It includes stationary and moving targets along with known-distance steel out to 1,000 yards, all with paved and covered shooting stations.

For the weary traveler, his “Round House” is an architectural sight for sore eyes. Nestled on the bench below the crest of 66 Mountain, the two-level stucco and glass structure sleeps eight and offers 360-degree views of rock, water, sky, and prairie. 

Adjacent to the Round House is the Bunk House, a low-slung, modernized building of reclaimed barnwood and local materials that combines rustic charm with contemporary comfort. Down a short path just below the crest of the bench is my favorite of the three buildings: the Writer’s Cabin. This spartan, contemplative space overlooks a juniper-filled draw that cuts across the bench. The cabin is secluded enough for uninterrupted writing sessions but close enough to finish a story and walk to the Round House for sunset and cocktails.

Shotguns & Influencers

For the shotgunner, 66 Mountain Retreat offers a two-level, five-stand sporting clays facility. The shooting stations are indoors and sheltered from the elements—no hula hoops or PVC pipe cages here. 

Down and away from the five-stand facility, pistol, carbine, and shotgun ranges are set up across the valley floor for recreational shooting or 3-gun competitions. Each has covered loading and shooting bays. 

A team from an Idaho-based camouflage company arrives with a gaggle of outdoor industry social media influencers to test their new line of waterfowl hunting apparel.

For the three days, the newest generation of outdoor media personalities stacked geese like cordwood, dusted clays from the 5-stand, and competed against one another in a high-speed paintball course, firing at stationary oil drums from a Polaris RZR atop 66 Mountain. The paintball course is the brainchild of Volk’s neighbor, Tony Stoddard. Stoddard drives shooters, riding shotgun, around a mile-long loop at high speed while they attempt to hit brightly colored, stationary oil drums. 

Grassy Knoll Enterprises

Volk’s talents don’t reside entirely within the boundaries of his manifested vision of a shooter’s Valhalla. For Volk, his passion is as much about the pursuit of adventure as the hunt. For example, his Grassy Knoll Enterprises outfits high-tech, night-vision and daytime helicopter hunts for feral hogs in Texas. Additionally, his Ford F-150 Raptor makes even the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense jealous. From the truck’s interior, he can launch and control multiple thermal camera-equipped drones to recon water holes and other known locations for wild hogs. Once located, he takes his night vision and AR-equipped hunters on a short patrol to set up on their quarry. 

If Wyoming is the only place you want to be (and who would blame you), his ranch and the surrounding area hold upland, waterfowl, turkey, mule deer, predator, and prairie dog hunts aplenty. 

This traveler and his dog left the 66 Mountain Retreat stronger and much more connected. The simplicity and raw beauty of the land had worked their magic. If you’re seeking freedom, hunting, and a place to clear your mind, head to 66 Mountain Retreat. But remember, fill your tank in Cheyenne. 

For more, visit 66mountainretreat.com and grassyknollenterprises.com.