Thought I'd drop a note and tell you what we been up to this summer.
This spring we got a bunch of yearlin's in for the season's grazing. The cattle were mixed, steers and heifers. We had the heifers spayed so we didn't have to worry about bulls. At least on the north half of the ranch. On the south half we had all heifers that ran with bulls.
In the mixed lot of yearlings on the north half, there was one that was left a bull. I didn't notice this at first. Never even gave it a thought. That is until the day I was in a bad mood and happened to be counting yearlings through a gate. This little, black, scrub bull, and it was real easy to see he was a bull, come trottin' through the gate, just as pleased as punch with himself as he had quite a few females for companions. Of course most of them could only provide companionship. But there was the small matter of a small bunch of cows that I had running with these yearlings to act as leaders. They belonged to me and I didn't want them bred to a little, stinkin', scrubby black bull!
I was ridin' Woody so it was just a matter of hollerin' at Chance, who was watchin' a gate afoot, to swing another gate, and we had him sorted off in a different pen. Ain't no little, scrub yearlin' goin' to outfox Woody.
We got the cattle counted out and turned into a different pasture and then proceeded to stretch the little, black, scrub out and change his patterns more toward growing instead of chasin' heifers and breedin' my cows.
It was hot and we used one of these new-fangled banders, so as to not have him bleed. I have a neighbor who has one and he swears by it, so we decided (meaning me if it was a wise choice and Chance if it was a bad choice) to give 'er a try. When we let him up from his operation, it was pretty easy to see that the little, banded bull was not impressed with his new fate. He jumped up and went to hookin' at poor ol' Woodrow instead of headin' out the gate! Woody and me made a few laps around this good sized corral and then just headed out the gate, with ex-bull in hot pursuit! Had to go quite a ways before ex-bull decided to go with the rest of the cattle and leave us alone.
Fast forward about three weeks and Chance is ridin' a young horse and checkin' on this same bunch of yearlin's. It's been droughty here this summer and when Chance rides up to this good-sized waterhole that is getting' low on water, he sees that the whole bunch of yearlin's are usin' it for a wading pool!
When he approaches, the cattle start to leave the water. All but one who just stands there in water deep enough to almost cover his back. Chance thinks there must be something wrong with this critter, as it isn't normal for a yearlin' to let his/her buddies just walk off and leave said critter. When Chance rides up pretty close, this critter comes chargin' out of the water like he was a hippo late for the feed trough, headed for the kid and the colt.
As Chance told it to me, "Ol' Preacher sucked back and went to the left and I thought he was going to try and use this as an excuse to try and buck me off, but all he did was whirl and let fly with both hind feet and caught ex-bull right in the ribs! He left us alone after that! Ol' ex-bull must have been standing in the water to keep the flies off from his bag, cuz it ain't fell off yet."
At about this same time we started to have a few of these yearlings try testing the fences and perhaps see if the grass really was greener on the other side. When I took the cattle in, the agreement was, on these cattle, that I wouldn't stand for no breechy stock. The owner of the cattle didn't want to sell any unless they were in a lot load, so I told him that if anything got to crawlin' through fences I was either gonna sell them or train on them. He told me not to sell any. I figured that meant he wanted me to train on 'em!
My grandfather, whenever he had a breechy cow, would get him a fair-sized club, that a man could still swing ahorseback, and then go to tryin' to use the critter for the ball and practice his polo swing. By the time Grampa had his swing perfected, the critter was so tired that it could hardly walk. Dad said that after that, a breechy critter wasn't very prone to be very breechy. "Make the right thing easy and the wrong thing difficult" sort of philosophy, I guess.
I have done about the same thing but with a slightly different twist. I would practice swinging my rope and see how fast I could make the pulled-down loop of the hondo travel through the air before it came in contact with the hips and/or back of a breechy critter. And how many times I could do it until said critter quit running and dropped down to a walk. Seemed to work about like Grampa's deal, and I very seldom got to practice on the same critter twice.
I told this to Chance and told him to come up with some exercise that he would enjoy and that would make a breechy critter sore, tired, and maybe decide that the grass wasn't greener on the other side of the fence!
Chance decided that tripping would be fun! No, not him or the horse he was ridin', but to trip the breechy critter. I wasn't home at the time.
Chance grew up dallying whenever he roped something, but had always wanted to try trippin', where you rope a cow critter and drop your slack on the off side and then see if you can out run it on the near side. Kinda like a race to see who gets to the tight end of the rope first!
When done right, the horse and rider win the race and the cow critter is left in a heap on the ground wondering at how it changed directions at such a rapid rate of speed. If done properly, the critter isn't physically harmed, but it has a whole new perspective on cowboys with a horse and rope!
As Chance told me when I got back home, "I went out on Kid (read: big, stout, fairly well-broke horse of mine) to check cattle while you were gone. There were two yearlings out and I just happened to have an old chain link along and a fairly short rope with a knot tied in the end, so I decided to train on these fence crawlers. The biggest one was the gentlest so I got her back into our pasture and stuck a loop on her, throw'd my trip and rode on by. It was beautiful! Worked so good that I did it two more times before she would lay there and let me get my rope back off."
"Then I went and got the other yearlin' out. He was a little wilder, and me and Kid had to work a little harder to get him back into our pasture, but when we did, I got him roped and we rode on by. Man, it was beautiful! I tripped him three times, but he wouldn't stay down. When I tripped him the fourth time he got up and headed straight for me and Kid! It was then I realized that he was ex-bull! As he came at us, Kid ducked out of his way and ex-bull got his front feet across the rope, and we tripped him pretty hard again! We did that about six or seven times and by then he was gettin' smart. Ol' ex-bull wouldn't even pick his front feet off from the ground. Just kinda shuffled along like you do, when you walk! I finally got him laid down long enough to tie two feet together. I tied him kinda loose and got back on Kid and ex-bull struggled and got free. Here he came and away we went! Every time I'd get him led off, we'd circle back to get my piggin' string and here he'd come again! I'll bet we circled that pasture for a good half an hour before he left us alone long enough to get off from Kid and get my piggin' string back!"
The next day Chance rode a big, stout, red roan colt named Termite out to check on this same bunch of cattle. The colt probably had about fifteen rides on him, and he was coming along good. As Chance rode through these cattle, he was checkin' for bad eyes and foot rot. He said, "I was about through the bunch, when out of the corner of my eye I see this little black yearlin' headed for me and ol' Termite. It was ex-bull! I tried to pedal Termite out of the way, but it was no use! Ex-bull hooked Termite in the flank and man, that horse can fire! I damn near pulled my rope strap and a saddle string off, gettin' him rode!"
So when the first bunch of yearlin's was shipped this fall, ol' ex-bull was in the first load. Even if he didn't quite match up in size with the rest of them! Oh, and Termite? He's getting' to where he really watches a cow! Oh, and Chance? He ain't been trippin' very many critters since. Although there was that one that got into the waterhole on him and he lost his rope and had to use a boat to get the critter back out. But that's a story for another day!
