The body of a Cody man who had been missing since Saturday was found in the Heart Mountain Canal Tuesday morning.

Michael A. Shotts was 50 years old.

Shotts had gone out to walk his dogs in the Shoshone River Canyon area west of Cody on Saturday night, but his wife awoke Sunday morning to discover that he had never returned home, according to a release from the Park County Sheriff's Office.

Searchers spent all day Sunday and Monday looking for Shotts. They resumed their efforts Tuesday, but around 9:45 a.m., a Heart Mountain Irrigation District employee found Shotts’ body in the canal, off of Lane 17.

In a comment posted to Facebook, Shotts’ sister, Stephanie Shotts Ivie, expressed appreciation to the Park County Sheriff’s Office and the search and rescue personnel from Park and Big Horn counties who helped look for and ultimately recover her brother.

“Thank you for taking time away from your families. For the miles and miles of country hiked, for the kayakers that [searched] the river, the air search teams, the water rescue team, those coordinating the search teams and working behind the scenes. [Thank] all of you for helping to bring my brother home,” Ivie wrote on the Cody Enterprise page. “Thank you seems so little but is felt so sincerely from my heart; thank you!”

Shotts took his two dogs to the area near the Hayden Arch Bridge — off U.S. Highway 14/16/20 west of Cody — around 7:30 p.m. Saturday. He then hiked up an old gravel road that heads back east along the north side of the Shoshone River Canyon, said Park County Sheriff Scott Steward.

“It was a pretty common area for him to hike,” Steward said.

That night, Shotts posted a picture to Facebook of a rubber boa snake he’d found along his route, Steward said; from cellular data, authorities were able to determine the picture had been taken near the area where the Heart Mountain Canal comes out of Rattlesnake Mountain.

As for what happened after that, “we’ll never know,” Steward said.

However, given the information that is known, the sheriff speculates that the Cody resident “fell in that canal somewhere between Rattlesnake Mountain and that very first siphon that goes under Trail Creek.”

The water passes through a concrete liner in that spot, “so not only is it swift and flowing fast, it’s got very steep concrete banks in a lot of those areas,” Steward said.

Shotts’ wife reported her husband missing around 6:45 a.m. Sunday, sheriff’s logs indicate; she then found his truck parked at the Hayden Arch Bridge area, with the two dogs wandering nearby, the sheriff’s office said in a news release.

Park County Search and Rescue members began a search, employing multiple ground crews and dogs teams that combed the area until approximately 8:40 p.m. Sunday, the sheriff’s office said. With assistance from Big Horn County Search and Rescue members, they resumed the effort on Monday, working from 7 a.m. to 9:15 p.m. The search continued at 7 a.m. Tuesday, with sheriff’s office and Park County Search and Rescue personnel ultimately helping to retrieve Shotts’ body.

As of Tuesday afternoon, the exact cause of death had to be determined, but the sheriff’s office said no foul play is suspected.

It was the second death to be recorded in the Heart Mountain Canal in recent years: In 2016, a 26-year-old woman drowned along Lane 16, after she apparently entered the water in an attempt to save her dog.

The sheriff’s office cautions residents to be careful around canals.

“There are thousands of miles of irrigation canals in Wyoming and there are dangers to these waterways that need to be considered by all,” the office said in a news release last month.