Smooth Operators

          Branding this year was another smooth operation.  A major contributor to this event was my old Wilsall Ranch Rodeo partner Darin Veltkamp – and his older three progeny.

          I bonded with the Veltkamp boys nearly 25 years ago when I had reason to sort some cattle with Darin’s twin brother Phil.  We share the same style of cattle-handling – which is what led to our teamwork in the Ranch Rodeo competition among 40 of the top cowboys in Park and Meagher counties.  Darin and his kids have been working cows with me for 20 years, and the four of them are now a major component of the branding roster.

          Gathering the cattle for the branding is usually a non-event, as the cattle are still near the corrals.  The next step is far more important – that of sorting the cows away from the calves.

          Darin heads up the contingent sorting cows out of the “bridge trap”.  They throw open the gate into the bull pen and cut back the calves - allowing only the cows to leave the trap – ending up with a big bunch of mostly calves.  I generally take half of the cows into the corrals to sort up the alley.  I have the option of letting a group of cows out through another gate into the bull pen, or turning a sort of calves into the branding corral. 

It’s a competition to see who can sort their bunch faster.  The slower group is subject to the hoots, hollers, and helpful advice of all the members of the group that finishes first.

All of this, of course, is done ahorseback.

With the calves corralled, the next operation is to run the cows through the chute for their annual vaccinations.  Darin usually heads up the operations at the chute, while I work the back end, keeping his chute full of cows.

Then the branding.

We believe that the fastest, easiest, and least stressful on both man and beast is to heel the calves out to the fire.  Three or four ropers ride into a pen of some 50 feet square, flick a loop around the hind legs of a calf, and drag them to the waiting crews of wrestlers.

As the title of this essay implies, this operation went smoothly.  We branded and vaccinated some 150 calves in about an hour and 50 minutes.  Then we went to the house for lunch.

We’d already branded Darin’s bunch, and then Craig’s bunch, a few weeks past.  We had much the same crew – and much the same fun.  This was in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic, when much of the world was on lockdown.  Yet we all worked together, ate together, drank together, and told stories together - without the benefit of facemasks or hand sanitizer.

The operation a few weeks later was not so smooth.  There were about ten calves that were born too late for the main branding.  We called a neighbor, and set up again to get this last little bunch.  I was the designated roper for this event.

The last ten head at any branding are caught at a much slower rate than the bulk of the calves.  The assumption has always been that it is because these are all the ones who have jumped and kicked and evaded all of the previous loops thrown at them.  But this little exercise proved to me that it is simply harder to get an effective shot at some heels when 1) there are fewer heels from which to choose, and 2) the remaining calves have far more latitude to jump and run. 

One always prefers to catch a calf by “two hocks” – both hind feet.  It’s easier on the calf, the horse, and the wrestlers.  In fact in some neighborhoods now, a roper is expected to drop his loop if he picks up only one hock.  Of these ten calves I caught four by the traditional two-hock method.

I caught two more by throwing a head-loop, then waiting until the loop fell back onto the hind legs before I dallied. 

On three calves I jerked my slack on just one hind leg, and let my wrestlers deal with it.

Rather than chase the last calf round and round until he presented his hind legs, I simply dropped on a head-loop.  He sprang away too quickly to finesse the loop down to his ankles, so I pulled my slack and went to the fire.

He jumped and ran and circled my horse until I had to tie off to my horn and go down the rope to help the wrestlers throw him.  It took as long to brand these ten as it had taken to brand 100 a few weeks before.

It didn’t go any better after this mini-branding when we went out to catch a neighbor’s bull.

We don’t turn in our bulls until mid-June, so that we begin calving in mid-March.  This bull would be throwing calves in February – and he wasn’t the sort of bull with the genetics we desire.

But when we went after him, he threw up his head, pushed past the horses, and ran the other way.  We tried to hold him together with a few cows, but failed at that also.  Had I some backup, I’d have roped him and taught him some respect!!

I called my sons – who are both proficient with bull-whips.  They couldn’t make it up to the ranch.

I called my neighbor Lonn, who is a proficient roper.  He wasn’t home.

I called my granddaughter. She had more pressing projects.

Eric and I went out a few days later.  Our first mission was to move the yearlings to fresh grass.  That didn’t take much longer to accomplish than it takes to tell about it.  Then we went hunting for the bull.

That field is only some 300 acres, but it’s rough, rocky, and steep.  We had, however, picked our two best horses for open country cow-work.

We found the bull in the far southeast corner.  We were able to throw a dozen cow/calf pairs together with him, and took the works right down the east fence.

We’d left the gates open, and the group traveled nicely the whole mile or so back to the river, with the bull in the middle of the pack.  They all crossed the bridge; the bull went into the corral with one pair; the pair cut back nicely; and he was caught!

There were two escaped yearlings in this little bunch of cows, and we headed them all back from whence we’d just come.  When we reached the gate where we left the yearlings an hour or so before, it was easy enough to cut the yearlings back and push them through the gate to join their peers.  We returned to the barn with smug smiles.

Saturday had gone anything but smoothly for us.  Yes, we’d gotten the job of branding the tail-enders done, but we weren’t proud of way we’d accomplished it. 

Today, however, we’d made one big efficient circle:  We’d picked up the yearlings and put them on fresh grass;  We’d continued the circle to ride through the cows and find the bull;  We’d come up the far side of the circle with the bull, and captured him in the corral;  We’d returned to the field with the cows we’d used to accompany the bull; We’d gathered some escaped yearlings and threw them back with their bunch. 

We’d accomplished a smooth operation – and we’d recovered our pride.

Smooth Move

            We’ve had plenty of moisture, and June in Montana brings long days - the grass is growing quickly.  We try to get the cows out of a field before the grass has grown tall enough for them to take a “second bite” from any plant, so that there is time for it to grow new leaves and replenish its root reserves.  That’s only a week or ten days in June.

It was time to move the cows to the next pasture further up the mountain, and also time to put in the bulls.  We had a lot of country to cover, and I’d invited several people to help, but it ended up to be just Eric and me.  We saddled two of our best horses and we each went a different direction

            We’d just received a new yearling bull who was still in the corral. The yearling heifers were west of the barn.  I set the gates to run him through, and headed to the corrals for the new bull.  Eric headed a mile up west to gather the older bulls.

            I ran my one yearling bull out into the pasture where the yearling heifers were awaiting his services, and changed the gates so that Eric could bring his bulls past the east side of the barn, out through the orchard, and take them up the hill and into the “desert” where the main cowherd was camped.

            Circling back around, I came up on the outside of the fence along which Eric and his dog were bringing his bunch of bulls.  He’d already ridden out a mile and a half to gather those bulls, and was now halfway back.  I told him that the gates were set for him to pass through the yard and out into the south-west corner of the desert.  I had seen cows out in the hayfield, and would pick them up and head up through the south-east corner.

            So while Eric pushed his bulls up the hill on the far left of this picture, I gathered some fence-crawlers in the hayfield and pushed them up through a gate at the far right of the picture.

            I was just breaking out of the coulee on the far right, when Eric's bulls joined us from the hillside on the far left.  So eager were they to resume their duties in breeding all those beautiful brown-eyed girls, that they had quickly climbed up the hill on the far left, and followed the contour trail around to meet us on the bench at the far right.

            The bulk of the cows were on that bench.  I and my dogs gathered them, and started them up the fence which follows the ridgeline at the top of this picture.

            In the meantime, Eric was gathering the basin to the left of center in this picture.  I was about halfway up the fence with some 125 pairs, when Eric’s gather from the basin joined them from the left.

            Just over the top of the ridge is a gate into “the pothole”.  We dropped the cows through, then set off at a long trot on to the west and south, following the trail back down the mountain. 

            Returning through the Elges Creek field, we picked up the yearling heifers and started them back to the east.  With Eric behind the first bunch we gathered, I circled the east side of the field, checking all the timber and blind pockets on the way down, opening the east gate as I passed by.  Then I headed west up Elges Creek on the north side.

            From my eastward circle, I could see that Eric had about half the yearlings in a bunch, and that he had them headed toward another bunch further down.  He would throw them all together and push them on down the road on the south side of the creek, and on toward the gate on the east.

            But as I neared the northwest corner of the field, from my position on the north side of the creek, I could hear bawling - and watched helplessly as Eric’s bunch split up and headed back to the south.

            Then four yearling heifers came toward me on a steep, rock-strewn hillside high on my right.  I waited them out. 

            When they had passed, I got behind them and shoved them on east toward the gate.  More bawling to the south of me – but all of us emerged from the brush and timber simultaneously. We counted the entire bunch of 30 yearlings strung out toward the gate.

            I had to make one run to head off the few that hadn’t found the opening, but we had them quickly shoved out the gate and into a new pasture.

           

            It hadn’t been that big a ride.  We’d been only a mile and a half, at most, from the barn.  The route covered maybe 8 miles.

            But we’d been up and down and back and forth over steep, rocky, and brushy terrain.  We’d done some trotting, a lot of walking, with a few short bursts to turn various bunch-quitters.  We’d handled the cattle gently, we’d passed our gathers back and forth seamlessly, and we’d covered some 1000 acres without missing a single head. 

            It was a smooth move.

On the Prod

On the Prod

Merriam-Webster: “transitive verb:

1 a :to thrust a pointed instrument into

b :to incite to action

2 :to poke or stir as if with a prod

intransitive verb: to urge someone on

Over the years on the ranches of Montana I have heard the term “On the prod” to describe an animal that is in bad temper – as is a man who has been subject to constant nagging.

            That description fits a bovine that is stressed by pain – as with an injured or inflamed joint  or having recently calved – but is most often is applied to a bull who may also be described as ‘on the fight’.  This is the story of a bull, so I’ll give you a little background there.

            One might think of the life of a bull as idyllic: the grass is green, the sky is blue, and lots of the most willing brown-eyed females everywhere he looks.  But all isn’t fun and games – even in paradise.

            There are other bulls with their eyes on the females, and they are big: as big as a ton.  The hills are steep and rocky; the sun is hot; the flies incessant.  After a few years of that, bulls get tired.  By the time they are five years old, most bulls are either lame, or they have discovered that there is nothing that can stop them from doing whatever it is they have in mind: not a fence, not a gate, and not a horse.

            A cowboy can’t really make a bull do anything.  All he can do is make it so miserable in every other direction that the bull finally “chooses” to take the route that requires less pain and effort.

            There are a few tools in the cowboy’s arsenal: a horse, a dog, a bullwhip, a load of .22-caliber birdshot, and last-but-not-least – a lariat.

           

            On Saturday we had a foot of snow, with colder weather in the forecast.  The field in which the cows were residing had too many rocks to make feeding practical.  It was time to move them to their winter range “up west”.  First we had to cut out 6 calves which had crossed the river and two fences to return to their mothers after having been separated.

            That wasn’t much of a ride, as the cows were bunched only a half mile from the corrals.  We rode out, raked through the cows, took the six pairs on out through two gates and across the bridge, and into the corral, where we quickly separated them. 

            We returned to the cow-bunch, and discovered one of the neighbor’s bulls among them.

            Now was the time to cut out the bull, as we were only a few hundred feet from the neighbor’s fence, and we were about to move those cows a couple of miles west.

            But he wouldn’t cut.

           

            When I tried to turn the bull back, he just ran until we were even with him, then he shouldered through my horse and kept on agoing. 

I tried to throw a few cows together with him – but he was determined to head west away from his home.  I was alone with just a horse and a dog, and couldn’t hold a small bunch together with the bull.

We could have left him with the cows, but we were headed a couple of miles west – making it harder for the neighbor to retrieve him.

We could have turned the whole cow-herd back into the neighbor’s near-by corrals - but if we couldn’t cut him back with the horse in the pasture, how could we cut him back in the corral where we had no space to evade his charge?

Roping a bull out on the prairie is not a task to be taken on without some prior planning, and I’ve written a story about that.  But this was a young bull that didn’t outweigh my horse by much, and the corral was only a quarter of a mile away.  I stopped to tighten my cinches, then shook out a loop.

After having lost a couple of critters because my rope was too short to dally, I was now carrying a 45’ rope.

The rope was long enough to dally this time, but I was too late in jerking my slack: he had already stepped through with both his front feet - and when I pulled tight, the rope was around his chest.  I was slowing down.

Taking one front leg in a neck-loop can be a good strategy: it keeps a critter from choking down.  But with both front legs in the loop, I had a minimum of control.

The wolf advocates of our country think it is “cruel and unusual punishment” to shoot a wolf who is tearing apart one of our cattle.  They instead insist on the strategy of making the wolf “feel unwelcome”.  With a rope around the neck of this younger bull, I could have controlled him; but with the rope around his chest, I could only make him ‘feel unwelcome’.

That strategy worked in this case. I didn’t have enough control to take the buIl back through the gate into his own pasture, but Eric was able to push the cow-herd on west while I held the bull back, and made him feel unwelcome among our cows.

The bull was now separated from the cows, but my good rope was still on him.  I couldn’t force him back to the corral to pull the rope off in the chute.  I couldn’t choke him down and tie his back feet while I pulled off the rope.  Robby was due to arrive any time now, however, and we could ride out together to head and heel him to get this lingering rope off the bull's chest.

It was late and cold before Eric and I had dropped the cows up west and returned to headquarters.  The bull couldn’t get into any trouble with just a rope on his chest.  Tomorrow would be a bright new day.  Tomorrow we could go out and put that bull back in the field where he belonged, and retrieve my good 45-foot rope.


If you like this story, you'd enjoy my book Ain't This Romantic!?!

Slowing Down

My good old horse is slowing down. 

 That was especially apparent yesterday when we went to the far north corners of the ranch. He walked the whole way out to the job.

In years past, the default gait of my “Kentucky Colt” was a long trot. He would hold that pace without any urging, until such time as there was a reason to speed up: to turn a cow – or to slow down: to cross a stream or a log, or to follow a critter. Even at a walk he had to be reined to the left or right as we zig-zagged behind the herd.

But today he walked.

It's a tough pull up out from the barn and up Mike's Coulee to the top of the mountain – gaining 1000' in elevation in only a mile – and we weren't in any hurry. But when “The Colt” was younger he once made that entire 8-mile circle without ever changing speed. 

 

And he didn't change his pace today - just that steady walk - until I needed speed, that is.

We were at the far north fence when we began our gather. Rather than head straight south, however, the cows for some reason turned down Bull Coulee toward Mendenhall Creek. I had only to lean forward a bit in the saddle, and the Colt was off – over, around, and through the rocks and knee-high sage to turn them.

Once the run was turned, the Colt was willing to stand quietly as we waited for my granddaughter, Taylor, to show up over the ridge at the tail-end of the bunch, before we turned back to continue on to the next corner of the field.

We found another seven head, and turned them to follow Taylor's bunch – which was by now a good half-mile away.

It is four miles from the barn, up and over the top, back down the other side, and across the head of Bull coulee to the north fence. Even after we turned them, the cows dropped down toward the brush in Bull Coulee, and had to trail back up across the flats above. We followed this little group back up the hill until we could hear the bunch ahead of us. Then we turned off and headed back down off the bench and into the Mendenhall Creek bottom, to follow the creek up to the stock tank where Taylor's bunch would collect.

For a dozen years, riding the Kentucky Colt had been like sitting astride a Harley Davidson: you were straddling pure, raw, power. He had needed no urging to dig in with those powerful hindquarters and bust up, down, over, around, and through whatever country unfolded in front of him – one just released the clutch!

He had been ten years old before he could slow down enough to sort cows in a corral without getting frustrated and angry.

But after we dropped our little gather of cows with Taylor's bunch, the Colt had fallen back down to a walk again. And I had no interest in jogging. I was slowing up too. Perhaps the Colt wasn't getting physically old and tired. Perhaps he was finally getting sense.

The question was settled as soon as we dropped our gather through the gate and turned toward home. After some six or seven miles of up and down, through the brush and across the creeks, the Colt broke into a trot. And then a lope. Before long we were at a flat out run as Taylor's horse raced up behind us.

Even at 17 years old, the Kentucky Colt has plenty of life to accomplish whatever job is at hand. Maybe he's just maturing, and learning to conserve that energy for when he really needs it. I know I am.