Ain’t this Romantic!?!
by Kent Hanawalt
With bonus section of cowboy stories contributed by
Kenny Doig
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2011 Kent Hanawalt
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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Introduction
"Ain't this romantic?" hollered Steve from his position on the opposite flank of the handful of cattle we were struggling to push into the biting wind.
"The best part is that there are no mosquitoes," I replied, pulling my neck-scarf up to cover my numbing cheeks.
Steve Gordon and I were gathering a small group of two-year-old heifers with new calves which had been caught in an open field by a late winter storm. The heifers were new to this business of motherhood and alternately ran away from the group in a tizzy, then returned bawling for their new babies. The calves couldn't decide whether to follow the group, their mothers, the horses, or to just lay down where they were and hide.
Our objective was to push the group into the shelter of the brush along lower Richardson Creek, but our erratic progress was further hampered by a north wind which was blowing snow into our faces at a temperature of 5o below zero.
The life of a cowboy has long been envisioned as romantic. Popular movies of the late 1980s, such as "Urban Cowboy" and "Lonesome Dove", sparked a resurgence of interest in the cowboy way of life, and commercial "trail drives" became popular recreational events. Steve and I are "real" cowboys, making our living day in and day out from the cattle for which we are responsible. We both understand that modern ranch life has become largely mechanized, and that a cowboy now spends more time jockeying equipment than riding horses.
But for each of us, horses continue to be vital to our lifestyle and self-image. We know both the joys and sorrows of the ranching business, and our love is unshaken. We tolerate the months of routine and boring chores, and live for the moments of drama and excitement.
In these pages I share some of the events that have made cowboy life worthwhile for me. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I have enjoyed living them.
Rolling Ropers
There were three of us riding in the front of the pickup this beautiful spring day on the east slope of the Bear Paw Mountains of Montana. It was calving time on the Mitchell Ranch and we had just finished feeding the cow/calf pairs. Doug, Mark, and I were headed back toward the buildings for dinner when someone noticed a cow in need of attention.
The cow had not "cleaned" after calving - the placenta had not been expelled. This is not an uncommon occurrence, but it must be treated. A cow left alone will likely develop a uterine infection that can leave her very ill, and probably barren. Treatment involves donning a long veterinary obstetrical glove to clean out the putrid material, and insert antibiotic boluses.
We were in a big bunch of cows, a couple of miles from the barn. Doug, the boss, did not particularly enjoy horses, nor was he a proficient roper. He considered the time it would take to drive home, catch and saddle horses, ride back out and find the cow, then take her back to the barn - versus roping her here and now.
We checked out the pickup for the necessary supplies: behind the seat were lariats; under the seat was a box of gloves; in the jockey box was a jar of antibiotic boluses. We had all the equipment, and the cow was in sight.
The decision was made. I raised questioning eyebrows at my brother Mark as each of us took a rope and climbed into the back. Doug put the rig in gear, and off we went after the cow.
A good rope horse will put you right up on a critter, and follow at an appropriate distance. He can keep the roper within range wherever the cow chooses to go. A pickup has enough speed, but nowhere near the agility of an animal. And pickups don't maneuver well the various obstructions indigenous to prairie pastures.
Another advantage of a horse is in the stability of the rider. Sitting astraddle the horse and having two stirrups for balance is considerably less precarious than standing in the bed of a moving pickup.
But Doug pulled in beside the cow as Mark and I swung our loops. When she saw us coming, the old girl sensed danger and headed off at a high lope. As the pickup closed the gap, we each took a swing and a miss, and watched as the cow ducked off to the left. There was just enough time for us to brace as Doug swung around for another pass at our quarry.
The cow was on to our game now, and the next time around she was quicker on the dodge. We weren’t as close to the cow as we’d have been ahorseback, and we were off at a bad angle. Both our loops came up empty again.
We were coming up behind the cow for the third time and gaining, when Mark hollered and Doug hit the brakes. We were thrown against the cab as the pickup slid to a stop just short of an irrigation ditch.
It took awhile to find a crossing suitable for a pickup, and get over to where the cow was now standing - time enough for her catch her breath for the next heat of the race.
We made several more runs with much the same results. As soon as we were close enough for a throw, the rig would have to swerve around a rock or a bush, or the cow would duck off to the side and lose us. Mark and I in the back were fighting to stay aboard our wildly gyrating "steed".
Finally Mark connected with a loop. Then we were faced with another problem - there was no saddle horn on which to dally.
Roping technique has two basic divisions - "dally" roping, or "hard and fast". Rodeo calf ropers tie hard and fast: the end of the rope is knotted to the horn. Team ropers in a rodeo use the dally method - once the loop is in place on an animal, the cowboy jerks up the slack and takes a turn around the horn to hold it.
In some parts of the country, all roping is done hard and fast. "If I catch it, I keep it" is the rallying cry of the proponents of that method. This allows the rider to leave his horse and go down the rope to the calf.
The prairie ropers of Montana mostly use the dally style of roping. The word "dally" comes from the Spanish "dar le vuelta", meaning "give the turn". The originators of the dally technique were the old Spanish Vaqueros. Their rawhide lariats were not strong enough to take the jerk of a heavy animal, so they had to "play" the rope, much like a fisherman landing a big catch. Vaqueros used long ropes, and played the slack around the broad wooden horns of their Spanish style saddles.
With no saddle horn on which to "give a turn”, we scrambled to get the end of the rope secured to something solid before it pulled through our hands. Finding the spare tire rack in the pickup box, we quickly threaded the rope through and made a knot.
When the lariat was tied off, we hollered for Doug to stop. After bringing the pickup to a halt, Doug opened his door to step out. But he quickly changed directions as he saw the trajectory of the angry cow! Doug was on his way out the off-side door when the cow hit. Her weight folded the open driver's door forward into the front fender, nearly tearing it off its hinges.
Doug kept glancing back at the deformed cab as we worked at catching the cow's hind legs. But we were again faced with the disadvantage of being without a horse. In order to "heel" a critter it is necessary for the legs to be moving. A horse can pull an animal in a circle while the heeler lays the trap-loop to pick up the hind legs.
The cow was hot, tired, and angry. She was secured to the pickup with thirty feet of nylon lariat. Whenever one of us would come near her with a second rope, the cow would charge.
Finally, Mark went out as a decoy while I maneuvered into position behind the cow. When the mad mamma charged Mark, I was able to flip a loop into position to catch her hind legs.
With a critter squirming on one end, the heel rope must be kept tight. If the loop is allowed to loosen, the animal will kick free. From a saddle, a man can take a turn around his rubber covered horn and let the horse's weight do all the work. From the ground, holding onto a rope affixed to the back end of an angry 1200 pound cow is quite a struggle.
The process of catching that cow had burned a lot of time and energy. We had chased her over hill and dale before the final hand-to-hand combat. By the time we had the cow immobilized, the offending afterbirth had dropped free. We had only to insert the antibiotic boluses to complete the task that we had begun a half hour earlier.
It took some prying to get the mangled door shut. Doug was quiet as we drove home for dinner, and we were respectfully sober. As long as that pickup was on the ranch it would be a constant reminder of the foolishness of trying to save time by using a pickup to do the job of a horse.
H-Heifers
My brother, Mark, and I had both been raised among our grandfather’s livestock. We each loved horses, and had found our way to real horse country in the Bear Paw Mountains of North Central Montana where we were eager to become accepted.
Mitchell Ranch had been Mark’s first experience. He had hired on for calving, and took to the lifestyle instantly. Spring had sprung and the grass was starting to come when I joined him there at the tail end of the calving season.
Working together was a first for the two of us, and we were enjoying it. That was quite a change from our growing up years when we were constantly at each others’ throats. I’d always considered my little brother to be a pretty rotten kid as we were growing up, and I was surprised at how well he’d turned out.
One day we went off in a pickup to feed the bunch that Mark called the “auterial heifers”.
Heifers is the term for young female cattle - usually aging through three years old, when they are finally considered to be “cows”. Most breeds of cattle achieve maturity at about four years of age. Heifers are generally bred as yearlings to bear their first calves when they are two years old - two years before they have grown to their full size.
This class of cattle has different requirements than the rest of the cow herd and is thus usually managed separately. The smaller body size of the heifers results in a much higher incidence of difficulty giving birth. They need more and better feed since their bodies are still growing at the same time they are providing milk for their new calves. And the older cows often push the younger ones away from feed.
I had majored in animal science in college, and I’d been working full time on Montana ranches for a couple of years, and I’d never heard the term “auterial” before. I asked Mark about it. He’d heard Lawrence Mitchell use the words, he explained, and had followed suit without questioning.
“That must mean they haven’t had a calf before,” Mark guessed.
I wasn’t satisfied with that definition, but I didn’t have a dictionary to check it out. I mulled the word over in the back of my mind and waited for the chance to follow up on its meaning. It was a few days later when I had the opportunity to question Lawrence directly.
A puzzled look came over his face when I asked Lawrence the meaning of the word “auterial”. He thought for a few moments as he tried to make a connection in his own mind.
His brow furrowed as he tried to figure out what I was talking about. Finally he replied in his typical stuttering fashion: “Ah… you mean, ah... ah two-year-ol’ heifer?”
Blizzard!
April 15, 1973 began as a beautiful spring day in the Bears Paw Mountains. The sun was spending more time in Montana now, after wintering somewhere farther south. The color of the prairie was rapidly changing from the bleached brown of last year's grass as the new shoots of green pushed through and took over.
I'm not much of a tractor man, but I had agreed to plow a small field not too far from where my growing family was camped. I usually get quickly bored with the driving around and around in circles that makes farming, but the view today kept my mind occupied.
Overhead was a clear blue sky. Underneath lay fresh-turned earth. Behind me were the crisp, clean mountains. Ahead of me, across the prairie and on the other side of the Fort Belknap Reservation, was the outline of the Little Rockies.
At noon my ears were relieved as I shut down the noisy diesel contraption and walked the half mile home for dinner. Fresh antelope steaks were cooking on the wood stove in the abandoned bunkhouse that we had reclaimed from the mice. I sat down at the table and pulled Amy, my year-old daughter, up onto my lap. My wife Barbara put some dishwater on the stove to heat.
The big south-facing windows of the bunkhouse let in a lot of light. This was an important feature of the building as there was no electricity. The main house had been sold and moved off the foundation several years before; the power poles had been used to build a shed. We did have "running" water of a sorts - it was running by in a little stream.
As the noon hour passed, clouds gathered between us and the sun. The light coming through the windows became less and less. By the time I was ready to go back to the farming, the wind had turned cold, and snow was coming out of those clouds! I never did like to drive tractor, and this weather was all the excuse I needed to quit for the day.
The wind and snow escalated all afternoon as I scurried around to find a few more fence posts to saw for the fire. By morning there were 3-foot drifts and visibility of about 20 feet.
For three days we sat by the fire and watched the storm rage. We'd have liked to get up to the ranch headquarters to take a shower and wash clothes, but it would be foolhardy to set out in this weather. Evenings were mighty short and the nights long without electricity to augment the meager light coming in the windows.
On the morning of the fourth day the wind began to lose its fury. The snow eased up and visibility improved. By noon the sun was again shining over the prairie. We were still thinking how nice a hot shower would feel, but our pickup would never make it through the drifts that had piled up downwind of every rock, bush, and tree.
Suddenly I heard the roar of exhaust as a pickup clawed its way into the yard, chains on all four wheels. "Grab your coat and your overboots", said the driver, "We've got a hell of a mess at the home place."
As we headed back toward the headquarters I looked all around at the landscape. Drifts were everywhere, the coulees full of snow. The ridges had blown almost clear, leaving patches of frosted grass. Cows and calves stood in bunches here and there, all of them bawling. A tractor was plowing over, under, around, and through the drifts to break trail for the pickup following in its tracks with a load of hay.
We picked our way where the snow seemed the most shallow, gunning through the spots where it had piled up deeper, and found our way to a haystack. Surveying the stack we found the easiest access and used our scoop-shovels to clear a path in.
Leaving the stack with a load of hay, we were soon met by a noisy crowd of hungry cows. In the storm, the cattle had drifted with the wind into the fence corners. They had been standing with empty bellies for three days, humped up and shivering with the cold. Now the cows were famished, and the hay disappeared as fast as we could haul it out to them.
The hair on a cow, even in the winter, is rather sparse. It could never be considered "fur" as on a bear. In cold weather, cattle depend on the heat generated by the digestion of the roughage in their diet.
A good ranch practice is to lay in a supply of straw for the winter. During arctic weather, a cow will consume twice the feed that she needs in nice weather. Straw does not have much food value, and is therefore relatively cheap. But the inefficiency of digestion is an excellent heat source, and the leftovers make a wonderful bedding to insulate the animals from the frozen earth.
But the winter was past, and most of the year's feed had been fed. The stacks of hay were dwindling.
We put off a couple of loads of hay before we saddled our horses. Cows were stranded here and there by the deep snow. We broke trail in to each little bunch and then pushed the cows over to where hay was spread. By dark we finally had all the cattle gathered to the feed-grounds. I took a pickup and followed our tracks back home. After supper and a sponge bath, I fell into bed exhausted.
The next day dawned clear and bright. The spring sun was much higher in the sky than it had been during the winter, and it glared off the new snow. Feeding the cows was much easier now that we had trails opened up, and it only took us until noon. After dinner we were a horseback again.
As we fed we had noticed lots of hungry calves, and an equal number of cows with tight udders. Many of the pairs had been separated in the storm and the calves had not sucked in days. Cows identify their calves by smell. A number of the cows had either forgotten their calves, or the distinctive odor of their offspring had been overpowered by other smells in the crush of bodies during the storm. Anxious mamas and babies were bawling in every direction.
There was no way to know which one of the 1200 cows was the mother to any particular starving calf. Four of us rode until we found a bawling calf, gaunt and hungry. Then one of us would rope him and tie him down in the pickup driven by Grandma Rose while the others looked through the herd for swollen udders. Spotting a cow who hadn't been sucked, a pair of us would swing in behind and rope her down. Using rope braided from bale twine, we hobbled her hind legs together, and pushed the motherless calf up to suck.
Most of these newly-orphaned calves were a little head-shy. They had been kicked off before when they had tried to steal a meal from other cows. After a few tentative motions, however, the calves quickly went to work on the udder of the immobilized cow. In the meantime, someone would have found another calf who needed a mother, and the process was repeated.
At suppertime I again longed for a nice hot shower. But this would not be a possibility for awhile - the power lines in to the ranch had been blown down in the storm. In fact, supper would be a problem for those at the ranch headquarters. While my family had the dubious luxury of a wood stove, two of the three kitchens at the home place sported modern electric ranges!
Automatic forced air heating systems had likewise replaced the less efficient but simpler modes of heating in the newer homes. Our wood stove required a fair amount of labor to saw and split the fuel, but it continued to serve us well when others around us were trying to heat their homes and cook their meals with a fireplace. When I returned home I informed my wife of the good fortune of our independence from electricity.
On the third day after the storm, Doug's father, Lawrence, left us to battle the drifts and feed the cows without him. He took some warm clothes, a scoop-shovel, and his checkbook, and headed up the road toward town. It took three hours of plowing through the small drifts and shoveling through the large ones to make the five miles to the wide spot in the road called Cleveland. But the snowplows from Chinook hadn't yet reached there. After a little gossip and couple of drinks at the Cleveland Bar, Lawrence headed back to the ranch.
Again the next day Lawrence tried the county road. He arrived home after dark with a heavy load on his pickup. In the box was a tractor-mount snowblower. Trailing from the hitch was PTO-driven generator.
Before retiring for the night, the men attached a tractor to the generator and connected the output to the electric panel of Lawrence's house. For the first time in a week they had electricity to run the lights, the furnaces, and the pumps!
The next morning the generator was moved to the panel of Doug's house. During her eight hour shift of electrical service, Doug's wife, Joanne, washed the past week's accumulation of laundry, and cooked us a fine dinner. Mid-afternoon the generator went back to Lawrence. At bedtime the generator moved again. The night shift went to the two big freezers up in the shop.
And so the power was parceled at the ranch for two more weeks while utility crews worked long hours replacing miles of downed poles.
Meanwhile we continued to find calves that had been weaned in the storm. Each of the three milk cows was given four calves. Twenty-five more calves were fed with bottles. A five-gallon butterchurn was used twice a day to mix up milk replacer for the orphan calves.
The milk cows were fun to watch. After several days of being forced to let the strange calves suck, the cows claimed all four of the calves assigned to each of them. The cow would call her brood and smell each one before going out from the barn to graze. The experts say a cow can't count, but these old girls always knew when one of their four was missing.
Pleasant weather returned quickly and began to turn the snow into mud. But the snow wasn't gone soon enough to prevent a new problem: sun-burned udders.
We tried to keep the cows in areas where the snow was tramped down, but they liked to range off in search of the tender new shoots of grass. The bright spring sun reflecting off the snow caused the bags of lighter colored cows to become cracked and tender. Now we were roping cows for the purpose of greasing their teats.
And then we ran low on hay. The extra feed required by the late storm had emptied the stackyards of bales. One morning I was given a pitchfork.
I had seen some structures from afar which I had taken to be straw-roofed sheds. The sides were made of slab-wood, and a black thatch was visible on top. When we got closer I discovered that there were no open sides. These were old stacks of loose hay surrounded by slab-wood panels.
Pulling open the panels we found tightly compacted mounds covered with a musty, weathered scab. Under this crust we found beautiful green hay! These stacks had been there when the Mitchells had bought the ranch seven years before. They had shrunk to half their original height, but six inches down the hay was just as clean and nutritious as the day is was stacked ten years before.
We continued to feed loose hay every morning until we had the last stack cleaned up. Our afternoon work included the job of roping cows to cut off the rope hobbles that were no longer necessary.
By the middle of May even the deepest drifts were gone. The moisture was quickly absorbed into the earth to come back up in the form of grass. The country was green and lush, the air balmy. It was hard to believe how fierce the weather had been just a month before!
Choking!
I had driven up to the ranch headquarters that morning, where I saddled my horse for the day’s work. At noon I was closer to home than to headquarters so I just rode in and tied up for dinner with my small family. My wife met me at the door.
“Thank God you’re here! Amy is choking!”
My first-born daughter was just over a year old and of course stuffed into her mouth whatever her little fingers could grasp.
“She was playing with a penny and now she is choking on it!
I rushed in to assess the situation. Indeed the toddler was in distress – something was lodged in her throat.
My horse was tied nearby, and the pickup was 3 miles away. Red was half Quarter Horse and half Arabian. He was good and hard, and up for whatever mission. We galloped all the way to the ranch.
Holding the reins and barging through the door, I hollered to my brother that Amy was choking. I left the horse in his care, jumped in the pickup, and raced back down the trail from whence I had just come. It was smoother to be on this “road” ahorseback, and nearly as fast, but we would need the speed of a motorized vehicle when we finally reached the highway.
My wife was frantic with fear when I at last returned with the pickup. Amy was still in distress, gagging repeatedly on the coin lodged in her throat. We bounced along toward town as fast as the road conditions would allow, finally hitting the pavement when we reached the “town” of Cleveland – which entailed a two-room school and a post office.
Now on the oil road I could finally stomp on the throttle, hitting the top speed for this 1953 Chevy pickup – a mere 65 MPH.
Amy continued to gag as we raced up the road toward the town of Chinook. There was a doctor there, and I had located his office the previous winter when I had jabbed a stick into my thigh in a horse-wreck.
We were halfway to town when Amy – exhausted by more than an hour of pain and wretching, finally fell asleep on her mother’s shoulder. Soon after she fell asleep, Amy swallowed, and the gagging was suddenly relieved. It seemed that as soon as she relaxed the penny was able to pass on down her throat.
The emergency was over by the time we reached town. We had the doctor examine her, and confirmed by x-ray that the coin had passed into her stomach. He assured us that it would most likely pass through into her diaper in just a few days.
It was in my Emergency Medical Technician advanced airway training years later that I learned in detail the anatomy of what we commonly refer to as the “throat”. Within the neck are two tubes: along the front of the neck is the trachea – through which we breathe; and immediately behind it is the esophagus – through which we swallow.
In retrospect, I can see clearly that the penny was lodged in the esophagus, causing the “gagging” reflex. It was indeed uncomfortable, and would prevent food from passing through, but it was not an emergency. Air was still flowing freely through the trachea. But hindsight does you no good when you are faced with an emergency a long way from help.
Bear Paw Branding
With calving finished and the farming all done, the next major task was branding the calves. We had cut out the pairs from the calving fields into 3 bunches of 400 cows each. Branding those cattle was spread over three days - one day for each bunch.
We began the day by setting up a circle of portable corral panels in the corner of the field where the day’s gather was pastured, leaving a large opening along one fence line. Rigs began to arrive from neighboring ranches at about 9:00, and we saddled up to gather the field.
When the pairs were all in the corral, a couple of ropes were hooked to the end of the corral, and horses helped drag the panels into a tighter circle, overlapping several lengths to make a 16 foot wide alley leading out of the corral. The cows were eager to escape, and a couple of guys afoot in the alley were able to let them past while turning the calves back into the corral. A couple of the better ropers were positioned at the exit to catch any calves that snuck past the men doing the sorting.
On one of these days I found myself in the middle of the alley, in precisely the right place to begin sorting out the cows.
The cows were eager to get out of the confines of the corral we had thrown up on the prairie. They had lost track of their calves in the shuffle and were determined to get back to the place they had last seen them. Ordinarily it would have been left to more experienced members of the crew to do the cutting, but I just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I stepped back to let a stream of cows blow past me and out the opening in the circle of panels. When I saw a calf coming, I simply stepped forward and turned him back. A step backwards let more cows run out, and a step forward turned back more calves.
I had never considered myself a dancer, but that’s what I was doing right there in front of God and all the neighbors – dancing with a bunch of cows.
The cows were flowing well, and was able to turn back every one of the calves. As the corral emptied, some of the men ahorseback worked the last of the cows toward the opening. The flow slowed, and finally stopped as the last cow ran down the make-shift sorting alley.
With the cows now on the outside and the calves on the inside, we pulled the corral into a smaller circle and set up the propane branding pot near the throat. While the irons began to heat, and the syringes were filled, the rest of us made our first trip to the ice chests. When the irons were deemed hot enough, the boss raised an arm and made a circling motion with his wrist, and the first three ropers went in.
These ropers rode into the bunch, standing a loop just ahead of a calf’s hind legs. As the calf stepped forward, the roper pulled his slack, dallied to the saddle horn, and turned for the fire. Four teams of wrestlers were waiting. A team would step out and throw the calf on its side while the horse pulled past, drawing the calf into a good position near the fire.
When the wrestlers had the calf on the ground they pulled off the heel-rope and awaited the convergence of the rest of the ground crew. Castration of bull-calves, dehorning, vaccinations, and branding were accomplished. In an hour we were through the first 100 head, and the women showed up with dinner in the pickup.
I had been working with my brother Mark for the last couple of months, and we naturally paired off to wrestle. We had a good system and we were enjoying the work. Our strategy was to take opposite sides of the rope as a horse came between us. One of us would take the rope and the other the tail, pulling in opposite directions to throw the calf. When the calf reached the fire, one of us sat on the ground behind the calf holding tight to one hind leg and bracing a foot into the hock of lower leg, while the other of us kneeled with one knee on the calf’s neck, pulling back on a front leg. It worked well for us and required a minimum of effort on our part. The country was pretty, the weather was nice, and there was an endless supply of beer.
Better than wrestling, however, was roping – and we looked for our opportunity to get in there ahorseback. All it took was short run where the wrestling was going a little faster than the roping and one of us would tighten our cinches and ride in to start heeling. Depending on how hot my roping was for the day, I could heel around 25 calves before I got tired enough to relinquish to another roper.
In the 70s most ranches were feeding small square bales and we loaded them all by hand. It took more labor to run a ranch in years past. Town jobs didn’t have the same appeal that they seem to now, and the country had plenty of young men like Mark and I to do the wrestling. The girls from the neighboring ranches attended also, and the brandings were a social occasion as well as exchange of labor.
There were 4 of us working on the Mitchell ranch. A good branding crew required 3 roping, 8 wrestling, 2 vaccinating, 2 branding, 1 castrating, 1 dehorning, and a few for spares and consultations.
For 3 days in early June we had some 15 of the neighbors helping us brand, and it took another 10 days of branding on other ranches to repay the help. So for two weeks we were at a branding nearly every day.
When the brandings were finished it was time to move the cattle to summer range on the reservation – we had been ahorseback every day while we were calving in March and April, and here was another week spent exclusively atop our horses. It wouldn’t be long until we turned out the horses and began the greasy, dusty, and boring job of riding the haying equipment. But for now we were cowboys, and we were enjoying every minute!
Stampede!
Ahead of us the bawling cattle moved eagerly eastward away from the shelter of their winter range on the east slopes of the Bears Paw Mountains. In the lead were the older cows who had made the trip many summers. We four riders enjoyed the sunshine on our backs and the new grass beneath the horses' feet as we kept the stragglers up with the bunch.
Snow still lay in the sheltered spots, the soggy remains of a late spring storm. After the biting cold of winter and the steady grind of calving, we felt the tension leave our bodies as our horses worked back and forth under the huge, blue Montana sky, pushing the cows onward across the prairie.
Although we'd been ahorseback all our lives, my brother Mark and I were enjoying the experience of trailing this herd of 400 pairs from the Mitchell Ranch in the Bear Paws to summer range on the Fort Belknap reservation. Lawrence Mitchell, who was approaching retirement age, was on the left flank of the herd. His adult son Doug was keeping the cattle shaped up on the right.
A jet passing high overhead was in sharp contrast to us on the ground. While he burned hundreds of gallons of fuel and covered thousands of miles, we burned only grass and hoped to cover but a few miles. Our concern was not speed, but rather to reach the Rattlesnake holding field with as little commotion as possible. Cows and calves will inevitably be separated in the confusion of a moving herd, and we had been as gentle as possible.
We moved along at such a steady pace that we reached the gate into the section pasture before we realized the morning was past. The cows headed for the creek for a drink, then turned back through the herd in search of their calves. The bawling quieted as the calves mothered up and eagerly began to suck.
After five hours in the saddle it felt good to swing down and head towards the pickup which had just arrived with our lunch. Doug and Lawrence dropped their reins and loosened cinches while Mark and I tied up to the pickup grill guard and reached for a cup of hot coffee. As the cows spread out to graze, we dug into the grub box and made short work of the lunch that Lawrence's wife Rose had brought. Then we dropped into the grass to give our stomachs a chance to settle.
The field in which we had stopped was called the Rattlesnake holding field by the Mitchells. It was one section in size - one mile square - 640 acres, and it was located within sight of the remains of the abandoned town of Rattlesnake.
In some parts of the world, 640 acres is a wealth of land. But not on the Montana plains. In this area it takes between 20 and 40 acres of grass to summer a cow. During the early part of this century thousands of families starved out of 320 acre prairie homesteads. The town of Rattlesnake had once been a center of commerce for the homesteaders of this area. But the hulls of the few remaining buildings were now the home of only the rattlesnakes themselves, and other assorted local wildlife.
This section field could support only about 40 pairs through a season; the 1200 that Mitchells owned would reduce the entire field to dust in just a few short weeks. Most of the cattle grazed on reservation allotments through the summer. This field was used mostly as a stopping place for the several groups of cattle that were trailed through to the reservation in June, and home again in the fall. We would pause here with three herds of around 400 pair before the month was ended.
After our "picnic" lunch, I dozed on the grass in the shade of the pickup. But when I heard Lawrence holler “Boots and Saddles!” I jerked my head up in time to see a handful of calves emerge from the head of a coulee behind us. Mark's horse picked this precise time to kick a fly off his belly and hang a hind foot in his loose flank cinch. The horse reared back in surprise, breaking reins and cinch in one thrust, while spooking my horse which was tied beside him. Mark’s saddle rolled under the horse's belly, adding fuel to the fire as both our mounts stampeded through the peaceful cattle. Doug and Lawrence ran to their horses to turn the bunch quitters, Doug never pausing to pull on his boots.
Mark and I were thankful to be in a field that was only a mile square as we ran over the hill after our horses, carrying the remains of our reins. We were panting and sweaty - as were the horses - when we finally got them cornered and caught. After repairing our gear, my brother and I turned our attention to the scattering cattle. A substantial number of calves had not yet found their mothers and were heading back to where they'd last sucked early that morning. Doug and Lawrence were out of sight, pursuing calves that had already headed back toward the ranch.
As we worked back and forth on tired horses, we were losing ground to the bawling animals. Finally, we let ourselves out the gate and raced up and down outside the fence, turning back the calves trying to crawl through and return to the only home they had ever known.
As the afternoon progressed, the cows gradually picked up their calves and bedded down, leaving just a few distressed mamas. It was then that Mark and I began to wonder what had happened to the rest of the crew. As the last calf in the field found a mother, we climbed off our weary mounts and discussed the situation.
The original plan had been to leave the horses in the Rattlesnake tonight and go on with the herd tomorrow. But now maybe they were waiting for us to ride back to the ranch. With no way to communicate with the rest of the crew we were at a loss as to what we should do - so we just waited.
The sun was low in the sky when Doug returned in the pickup with several calves hog-tied in the back. Their bawling attracted some anxious cows, and it wasn't long before the calves were all paired up and sucking.
We threw our saddles into the pickup and turned the horses loose with a pile of oats in the grass. On the ride home with Doug we learned what had happened "in the mean time, back at the ranch".
Having no piggin' strings and but one lariat between them, Lawrence and a stocking-footed Doug had pursued the escaped calves back to the field where we'd gathered that morning. When Rose arrived with the pickup and Doug’s boots, they'd quit their played-out horses and began roping calves out the back of the pickup.
When Doug swerved to miss a ditch, Lawrence had fallen out on his head and was knocked cold. While Mark and I were holding the calves on the prairie, Doug and Rose had been speeding the unconscious Lawrence up the canyon and through the mountains to the hospital, 55 long, rough miles away.
The next morning, Doug's wife filled in for Lawrence as we pushed the cows on the last leg of their journey to summer range. As we rode along, I vowed to be more careful where and how I tied my horse; Mark pulled the slack out of his flank cinch; while Doug made a mental note to keep his boots on. And back home, Lawrence adjusted the ice pack on his head and swore to drive the pickup next time they tried to use it instead of a horse.
Shooting Gallery
The Bear Paw Mountains are prime country for cows - and therefore, cowboys. It is a region of mostly open, grass-covered hills punctuated by rocky outcroppings and stands of pine. The meadows are fertile, water is abundant, and there is adequate cover for both cattle and wildlife.
Antelope frequent the flatter areas of the Bear Paws; both Whitetail and Mule Deer cling closer to the protection of mountain, tree, and bush. There is the occasional Black bear, and plenty of coyote. Sage Hens, Prairie Chickens, and Hungarian Partridge are everywhere, as well as Chinese Ringneck Pheasants.
Fall in the Bear Paws, like nearly every other region of Montana, brings out the hunters in droves. There is always plenty of game there for all comers, and most ranchers welcome hunters onto their land. The owners of the Mitchell Ranch, where I was employed, were no exception. They had already fielded numerous phone calls and were expecting a couple of dozen hunters to spread out over their thousands of acres on opening day.
Lawrence Mitchell and I had discussed the situation in advance, and worked out our own plan for opening day. Nearly all of the hunters out from town would be afoot. We expected that when the shooting started at dawn on opening morning there would be hundreds of deer looking for a place to hide.
Black butte stuck up just behind the ranch headquarters - a pile of volcanic rock fringed with a stand of pine. The slope of the butte was rather steep, and was comprised of dinner-plate sized slide-rock that was miserable to navigate. The pine grove on top gave a perfect hiding place for nimble-footed deer, offering a good view of the approach of any foe.
The deer would be out grazing the hayfields at first light, we reasoned, and would be startled at the sudden invasion of their domain by the sight and smell of enemies from every direction. Black Butte was the obvious place for a number of deer to escape, and if we were to arrive there under the cover of darkness, the other hunters would drive the deer right to us.
Last thing before supper on Saturday we used a pickup to run the horses in from pasture. Each of us picked his favored mount for the expedition and fed them grain while we turned the rest of the bunch back out to grass. Our plan for tomorrow was for both of us to be back at the horsebarn by coffee time with nice young bucks draped over our saddles.
On Sunday morning Lawrence and I each arose earlier than usual. When I had finished my breakfast I walked across the yard to join him and Rose for coffee. As we nursed our cups of fresh hot brew we saw the headlights of several pickups pulling into the yard and heard the sound of doors being slammed.
There was just a hint of light in the east as I walked with Lawrence to the horsebarn. We quickly haltered our horses and let them munch on another bait of oats as we threw on our saddles and drew up the cinches. It took a little rigging with bale twine to sling the thermos safely on a saddle, but we intended to enjoy our little morning excursion.
When we at last switched off the barn lights and headed out, we were surprised at how quickly the sky had brightened. The outline of Black Butte was already visible to the west.
It was only a mile or so from the buildings across the hayfields to the base of the butte, and it was a glorious fall morning. Looking around us as we rode, we could see spots of fluorescent orange in several directions.
Daylight comes quickly to the clear and open Big Sky of Montana - a little quicker than we expected. The pair of us were not yet to the base of the Butte when shooting erupted to the north of us.
As we searched the terrain in the direction of the first shots we heard more rifle fire to the south. Soon we spotted a bunch of deer headed for shelter. More shots, and more deer, all of them at a distance.
The trip across to the foot of the Butte had only taken 15 minutes, but the sun was breaking over the horizon as we started up one of the many game trails picking their way through the rock. The climb was steep and we were forced to stop a couple of times to give the horses a blow. From our vantage point on the open slope we could see both the hunters and the hunted moving in every direction.
We pushed the horses up the trail as hard as we dared. Our assumed advantage was rapidly passing us by. Still a ways from the top, Lawrence groaned and pointed toward a flash of hunter's orange moving through the trees above us. We had been out-maneuvered!
At this point there was nothing for us to do but finish the climb. The frequency of the gunfire around us was starting to slow, and the last shot we heard came from the direction of the pines on the top of the Butte.
The gunfire had ended, the smoke had cleared, and the sun was full up when we at last reached the woods at the top of Black Butte. The white tail-flashes, which we had seen en mass earlier, were now gone - the deer all brushed up somewhere. We had been skunked!
As we rode along through the trees looking over the country spread around us, my attention was pulled to the ground off to my right. A prime Whitetail buck lay motionless by the trail.
Climbing down from my horse I quickly assessed the animal. It was still warm. Further inspection revealed a bullet hole centered cleanly in the brisket.
Lawrence and I tied up our horses and sat on a nearby log. We sipped our coffee and tried to figure out where we had gone wrong. When we had each finished our second cup, we decided that we had waited long enough. Donning plastic gloves to keep our hands and arms clean, we pulled out our knives and field-dressed the animal.
Inside the deer's chest the damage was massive. A large caliber slug had expanded as it penetrated, destroying the heart and one lung. Mortally wounded deer seldom fall over instantly like the men who are shot in the movies, but this one couldn't have traveled far after being hit. What kind of slob hunter, we wondered, could have walked away and left this buck to die?
There was still no one around when we finished the job, so we heisted the deer up and across my saddle. A few lengths of bale twine secured the critter. From atop his steed Lawrence gave me a hand up behind him; riding double, we led my loaded horse down off the butte.
We made it back to the barn with plenty of morning to spare. There was a pulley set-up in the back shed just for the purpose of hanging such a carcass, and we made use of it now. Rose had fresh coffee and cookies ready for us, and we told her our story as we nibbled and sipped.
We were in the house for coffee the following Saturday when an outfit pulled up in the yard. The driver was familiar to us as the proprietor of a tire shop in Chinook, and he was again seeking permission to hunt. The man laid out his battle plan for the weekend, and told us excitedly about "the one that got away" the week before.
He'd been up on Black Butte last Sunday early, he said, and spotted a nice buck between two trees. He'd gotten off a quick shot, he said; but he missed. The buck had run off.
Lawrence and I sympathized with the fellow, and exchanged knowing glances over our coffee cups. We had already enjoyed the first steaks from that prime alfalfa-fed deer. We saw no reason to spoil the man’s day by gloating over our success
Fall Sort
The headquarters for the Mitchell Ranch lay 34 miles south of Chinook. There was an oil road to Cleveland, where there was a post office, a bar, and a two-room school. From there it was a hard 7 miles through a rocky canyon to reach the ranch.
At the time I worked for them, the ranch was running 1200 cows. The cows were wintered and calved at the home ranch, and summered on the Fort Belknap Indian reservation. The permanent working facilities at the headquarters would hold only a fourth of cattle, and it was more expedient to do the corral work in whatever field the cattle were at the time. We had a portable corral setup that was transported in a trailer that doubled as a loading chute. With all the panels in a circle, we could corral about 400 pairs. We branded in the portable corrals, and we did the fall pregnancy testing in them. We would also ship out of them.
With 1200 calves to ship in the fall, it would take 10 truckloads to get them all. (A semi hauls around 100 calves, and we kept back some 200 heifers for replacements.) There were only 5 semis hauling cattle in the area, and loading all of them would be a day’s work, so we had to be prepared to ship on two different days. Steer calves bring about 5% more per pound, and must be weighed separately. We also needed to cut out the top end of the heifers to save for replacing cows as they got too old to remain in the herd.
The week before we would ship, we brought the entire herd up closer to the headquarters. Five of us were ahorseback: Lawrence Mitchell - in his 60s, Doug Mitchell – in his 30s, Doug’s wife Joanne, Doug’s brother-in-law Noel, and me. We gathered them into a fence corner and began sorting off the steer calves and their mothers.
We couldn’t separate the cows from their calves with a week to go before shipping. The calves would have lost some 25 pounds apiece and would be far more likely to get very sick from the stress of weaning and shipping. Neither could we deal with the whole herd on the day when we would be shipping less than half of them. So we had to separate the 1200 pairs into 3 herds that would be handled on different days. We began with the steer pairs.
With the herd in the corner, each of us ahorseback would study the cattle in front of us looking for a calf to “mother up”. As soon as any of us spotted a steer pair, that person would swoop in, cut them off, and start them for the gate. If anyone else had a pair headed out, we might throw ours in with theirs and take a larger group. The remaining riders made sure the herd stayed in the corner.
As a rider pushed more cattle out the gate he would add them to the tally, and as returned to the herd he would holler out the total number we now had out. We worked steadily from soon after daylight until almost dark, and it was into the third day when we had 500 steer pairs cut out – enough to fill the trucks.
The week had started out with nice fall weather – 40o and sunny during the day. By Wednesday, however, the temperature had dropped and snow was falling.
I had been riding my horse Red for the first two days. He was a 4-year-old QH/Arab cross, and an excellent cow horse. I had broke him the previous winter, and used him every day for several months during calving, branding, and trailing. After being out to pasture for the summer, I had ridden him again trailing the cattle home from the reservation. But after two solid days of cutting, Red was tired.
On the third day I gave Red a rest. Charley was a big tall horse that was used as a spare. When I started out on him I understood why. He was tall enough, and I had on enough clothes, that I had to maneuver him into a low spot to get my foot into the stirrup. His gait riding out to the field was rough and awkward. And when we started cutting out pairs, it was obvious that he had no cow savvy.
By that third day we’d already gotten all the steer pairs that mothered up and handled well. Now we were after the renegades that were hiding among the heifers. They were harder to find and harder to cut out. I was on a horse that didn’t understand what we were doing, and didn’t have much rein. The weather was colder, the light was poor, and the snow made traveling more difficult. Cowboying was beginning to lose its joy. I was sure glad to head back to the barn later in the afternoon.
It wasn’t until I rode a different horse that I realized what a team Red and I had become. Somehow he knew which cow and which calf I was after, even when the pair split up and tried to duck away in the herd. Was Red feeling the subtle movements of my fingers through the reins, the changes in my butt muscles or shifting of my weight? Was he reading the cattle in the same way I was, or reading my mind?
On the fourth day I saddled Red again. It was great to be back with my partner! We had enough steer pairs to fill the first group of 5 trucks, and now we were sorting off the better heifer pairs that would be kept on the ranch.
The snow was beginning to pile up, and footing was becoming a problem for the horses. The snow began to cake up under the shoes, making snowballs that could build up several inches thick. The weather had been nice when we started, and none of the horses had pads under their shoes. I tried spraying “Pam” on the bottom of their feet, but the oil soon wore off and the snow built up again. Without shoes the horses would have no traction.