Horsewright
Knifemaker / Craftsman / Service Provider
- Joined
- Oct 4, 2011
- Messages
- 13,326
I had a good friend, gone some years now, named Hawkeye. He would order his steak at a restaurant "blue." That would often result in a quizzical look from the serving staff. He would say: "Show it a match and call it good." When his steak would come I would often tell him: "Hawkeye, I've seen cows hurt worse than that get better!"I'm not vegan but I do think it's cruel to eat an animal alive...
I kid... with steak a good vet should be just about able to bring it back to life!
A cowboy story. Some names have been changed to protect the guilty, innocent, or yet to be determined:
I was talking with a friend the other day. This young man is the manager of one of the largest ranches/cattle operations in California. He is good friends with our son Logan who is a working cowboy and has been since high school. This manager, we'll call him Tom and I had done some trading and he was here picking up some chaps I'd made him as my part of the trade. Logan has worked for Tom off and on some and has worked for some years for a neighboring ranch so he and Tom were in contact often and would usually have the family's together on Wednesday nights as they lived a very few miles apart. Anyhoo. Logan worked for Ralph on this neighboring ranch. This story was relayed to me by Tom. He was telling me what a commodity Logan was and didn't even know it. Highly skilled cowboys are in demand and very hard to find.
Many large ranches will ship their cattle off for part of the year. Not unusual for the larger ranches around here to ship cattle to Oregon or Nevada, even Montana, for the late spring, summer and early fall coming home in early October. They will often lease whole ranches which they then stock and provide cowboys for too, to take care of the cattle while they are on summer vacation. Or "pasture out" some cattle with the deal being that the owner of the land will provide care for the cattle. Its not unusual in this case to send a couple of cowboys when its time to gather them in and ship em back home, to help with this large job. This story happened at a ranch in Nevada, we'll call it the Rafter Bar. Ralph had made arrangements and had pastured out several thousand head. George was the owner of the Rafter Bar. This pasturing of cattle for other folks can be very lucrative for land owners. We're talking big 1/2 million $ checks depending on the amount of cattle pastured of course, sometimes less, sometimes more. The Rafter Bar is a pretty good sized ranch. Not huge by Nevada standards but good sized. I know the dimensions as Ralph actually leased the whole ranch outright the next year and Logan and his wife Katy moved up there to run it for Ralph. The Rafter Bar is 7 miles wide on average and 35 miles long. Some bits and pieces inside this perimeter that they didn't own but still good sized. About 126,000 acres, (Logan later worked for another ranch in Nevada that was 1.2 million acres, now thats a big ranch!). The Rafter Bar covers a lot of relatively flat sage brush country and lots of mountains too.
Ralph and Logan had gone up in Oct to help George gather the couple of thousand head they had on the Rafter Bar and help ship them back home. They'd been riding hard for quite a few days as it was just the three of them, bringing in the cattle but still had some up in the high country that they were having trouble finding. The weather was changing and the snow had started and its always a concern to get your cattle down, out of the mountains, in time so they don't die. It had been a long, very hard day and while they had knocked down a few head out of the high country there were still some more, bout a hundred missing. Ralph and George were back at headquarters and were un saddling, their horses were "smoked," (worn out). It was well past dark and the snow was coming in sideways on a strong wind. George was working up into a frenzy. "We've got to go saddle fresh horses and go find Logan!" "He doesn't know the country, he'll be lost in the mountains and he'll freeze to death!" etc etc. Ralph, taciturn at best, said: "No, it's okay, its Logan." George: "What?" "No we've got to go, this is terrible, we've got to find him!" and he's catching up a new horse. Ralph: "You don't understand, its Logan," he continues. Ralph is still unsaddling his horse and George is getting more fretted as he's slapping leather to a new horse and then a voice from the darkness. "One of you guys want to get the gate." Logan trots back to the rear of the ninety head he has in a group as Ralph swings the gate open. Ralph looks at George and says: "See, it's Logan." Logan pushes the group of cattle into the pens and Ralph shuts the gate.
Does a papa proud when ya here a story like that about your son. Even better that it was three years back and your son never mentioned it. Another day at the office. As a friend of mine said about Logan, when Logan took his first cowboying job right out of high school, (on a ranch in Oregon twice the size of the Rafter Bar), "Logan sure jumped in the deep end of the man pool."
Gratuitous knife and cowboying pic:
Last edited:
