A Sublette County rancher who has taken on the role of a one-person posse is doggedly searching for clues in the brazen daylight theft of his 12,000-pound trackhoe snatched from a grassy canal bank off U.S. 189.

However, 81-year-old Earl Wright, who owns Fishtale Cattle Company near Big Piney, isn’t out for vigilante justice. He just wants his $30,000 Caterpillar 305C Midi Excavator, which he has owned for more than a decade, back.

“Whoever did this had a pretty good plan and got home free,” Wright, who previously ran a construction company and owns a lot of heavy equipment, told Cowboy State Daily on Thursday.

A hunter spotted the trackhoe, also known as an excavator, parked near mile marker 128 early Sunday, which is where Wright left it while repairing a culvert for the Green Riv

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