We needed to get the calves branded. I had a couple guys working and we got the fences up and started moving cows. To make a long story short, on Thursday, Friday and Saturday of this week we branded 700 calves. Saturday was the big day, we branded 307 and were eating lunch at 1:30. I had three different crews for the three days and Carleen did the cooking. I’m not sure why they sent me three different crews. I guess I wear them out pretty quick.

If you’ve never been to a branding, It’s not like watching Rawhide on TV. We gather the cows and calves early in the morning into a big portable corral. The cows are bawling and the calves are bellering. The cowboys, 9 of them, are yelling. After the cows are in the corral, several of us will go to cutting out “drys”, cows that don’t have calves. After we get the drys into a side corral. (they go to the feed yard then on to Walmart), we sort off the cows to make room to rope. We kick out most of the cows and then it’s time to get to work. We fire up the propane branding pot to heat the irons, more noise. By now the dust is flying from every where. The gumbo here becomes a powder about like talcum.

When The irons were hot, I sent in four ropers. On the 9 man crew I had yesterday, one man didn’t rope. The ropers ride into the herd and rope a calf by both hind legs. We try not to bring in calves by one hind leg. As the roper drags the calf by the ground crew, one of the cowboys places a metal device called a Nord Fork over the calf’s head. The Nord Fork goes behind the calf’s head and over his neck but is open at the bottom so it doesn’t choke him. It is attached to a bunch of bungees and staked to the ground. The roper faces his horse and holds the calf’s heels. The calf is branded, vacinated, dehorned, casterated( if a bull) and tagged. With 4 ropers, 3 Nord Forks and a 5 man ground crew we averaged less than a minute per calf. It was noisy, dusty and hot. After about 50 calves the crews switch and the a new set of ropers go in. Around and around it goes until the last calf is worked. One of the guys got his rope under his horses tail and put on a pretty good bronc ride for us. One calf jumped up on the panel wagon and a rope was cut. I caught my right hand in a coil of my rope and said a few choice words. Luckily missed my messed up thumb. My thumb is still fat and the end is on crooked and it is a little like roping with someone elses’s thumb. The 6 weeks was up on Thursday and dang it, this was my branding.
Dinner was under a tree and it sure tasted great.

If any of you would like to experience this, go to the Padlock website and check it out. Carleen and I will make you welcome and send you home worn out.

All well and good. I caught a ride with the foreman’s wife and one of the Forks cowboys to get my truck out of the mud. I left my horse and two cowboys by the side of the road. By now the whole world was mud. We unloaded the horses and unhitched the trialer. Jerry floor boarded the pickup and we threw mud all the way to my outfit. He pulled up against the bumper of my truck and we hooked on a chain. He hit it hard and slid his truck off into the bar ditch and buried it to the hubs.  Justin and I sat in the truck while Vicky and Jerry walked back to the trailer, got on their horses and rode to the other truck then went to the Forks Headquarters and came back with a large tractor. This took about 2 1/2 hours. We yarded out Jerry’s truck then hooked the tractor on my rig and took it all the way to the hard road. I had one very muddy truck. We met the other two guys riding down the road worried that we were never coming to get them. We got home around 7:30.

Next day, Thurday, we got up at 4:00 and trucked the same road except with Carleen along to flag with the pickup as we trailed the cows 17 miles down the road to our side of the ranch. As we got gathered up to start the drive, it turned into a white out with wind driven snow. On we went.  At about 6:30 we got the last of 2555 cows into the pasture at Decker, Montana. The drive was over 5 miles long.  We did it with 12 cowboys and two flaggers. My truck was out of gas so I had to go to the main ranch for gas. Got home around 10:00.

We skipped Friday to let the cattle rest. On Saturday, we started at 5:00 and gathered the cattle. We needed to trail them another 6 miles to a pasture. Before we got them out of the pasture they were in, the owner of the range we had to  cross stopped us and made us split them. We got the first bunch of 1430 in the gate at about noon. We then trotted to the trailers, about 4 miles and all headed home for fresh horses. We started the second drive around 3:00. It was a fight because all the slow cattle were in the second bunch. We got the last of them into the pasture just as the sun went down. We trotted back to the trailers in the dark, in a rain storm that really got going just as we got loaded. We slipped and slid out to the hard road and home.I got home at 10:00. We took Sunday off and had a big ranch dinner and an Easter Egg hunt for the kids. The kids had a great time but the cowboys were a little draggy.
Anybody still think cowboying is glamorous??

The real news is; we are selling out here in Jordan Valley and moving to Wyoming. Owyhee Design is no more. It died for want of interest from the buying public. On Sunday, two fellows will be by to look at my machinery with the intent of buying it. If they don’t take it, I have a nephew who might. If that doesn’t work it goes in a storage unit for about the next 5 years. It’s not that we went bankrupt. It’s just that there is no business. I refuse to put any more money into this business. I’ve determined that it would take a pile to do the job. I have to say, listening to the members on this site has saved me lots of time and money. Hearing your experiences is a great insight. Thank you so much for your friendship and willingness to share your time.

On the plus side, Carleen and I are both employed by The Padlock Ranch with headquarters at Dayton, Wyoming. This is north of Sheridan, Wyoming. If we want a big city we will go to Billings, Montana, so look out Todd. We’ll be by to see ya. We are in the process of moving at this time.

We will be living at the Ash Creek cow camp on the Wyoming-Montana border. I will be responsible for 800 cows and calves, 2000 yearling replacement heifers and be head wrangler for the Wolf Mountain Lodge. Carleen will be cooking and cleaning in the lodge and about anything else that comes along. The pay is excellent, the benefits are great and so are the people. With the economy in the shape it is, we feel blessed to have this opportunity.

The Padlock is one of the largest ranches in the US. It runs over 12,000 cows and quite a bunch of yearlings. The ranch employs 55 people scattered over a half million acres of rangeland in Wyoming and Montana. The ranch has a website where you can see where we are going. I, quite frankly, feel privileged to have a job in these troubled times. I made a five year commitment to these people but also to myself. It is not a contract except by word but it is important none the less.

At the age of 62 and 65 we are starting out on a new adventure. The working ranch vacation business is new to the ranch and while dude work is not new to Carleen and I, I’ve never tried to do a full job of cowboying while trolling a bunch of guests behind me. Life will be interesting. I think the main job will be to”Bring ‘em back alive”. I would love to have any of you come out and spend a week with us. I can promise you a great experience on one of the greatest ranches in North America. The website has more information about the lodge.

The main reason I’m selling the machinery is that there is no place to put it at our new home. The company is remodeling it for us but outside of a back porch where I will put some of the saddle shop, there is no shop. We are discussing a shop in the next budget but I doubt if there will be time to do much in one. Interestingly, the cowboy running the camp next to mine is a saddle tree maker who closed his shop. It seems that many of us who left the ranch to try the business world are returning to our roots. I moved to Oregon from Wyoming nearly 20 years ago. It is good to be returning to the nearest place I can call home. It is a bitter sweet time for me. We invest a lot of ourselves in these shops and it is not easy to let go. I still have a couple projects to finish and post so I’m not gone yet, but soon. We don’ t have the internet at our house yet but as soon as we do you will hear from me. Lurking is free and it will let me keep up with all of my good friends here at Lumber Jocks. Thanks a heap for all the good times. Drop in any time, the latch string’s always out and the pots on.

The hunting camp I work in is on the Yellowstone river about 4 miles south of the boundary of Yellowstone Natl. Park. It is about 30 miles by horse from our base camp near Turpin Meadows on the Buffalo Valley road near Moran, Wyoming. It is from 7 to 8 hours riding to get to camp which sits on the north east side of Yellowstone Meadows. This is just about as far from a road as you can get in the lower 48 states. I went in on the 6th of September with the first load of groceries for the first hunt. When I arrived in camp, I was informed that I was in charge of everything except the hunting. We had 75 head of horses and mules to keep track of and up to 20 people in camp. Believe me, that’s a lot of toilet paper. I was in charge of 2 packers and a cook. Later I added a 4th man for the last hunt. Since the camp is in the Teton Wilderness all wood must be cut with a cross cut saw. As the weather turned colder, it took more and more wood to keep every one happy. The packers cut and I split and stacked. We never got very far ahead until the last hunt. So…..........I guess I did get to work some wood while I was gone. I also got to cut some ridge poles for the tents and a few other projects of lesser import. I was also in charge of the toilet tents and the garbage which had to be burnt every so often. We also packed in everything and packed out everything and hauled in any elk that were shot. I was awakened every morning at 3:30 by the cook rattling the stove in the cook tent and then the guides getting up at 4:00 then the hunters getting around and eating breakfast and leaving around 5:00. I could then sleep until 6:00 if I could. Ha-ha!! We then worked all day and waited until the hunters and guides came in around 8:30- 9:00 and fed and turned out the horses. Then we washed the dishes and went to bed around 10:00. Then it all started again at 3:30. 3-10 day hunts, 2-7 day hunts and no days off. Oh, the glamor!!!!!

Did I mention grizzly bears and wolves? I guess I should. We had wolves and bears and bears and wolves. Elk were in pretty short supply but there were enough bears and wolves to make up for it. Of course, you can’t shoot either one except in rare instances which I shall explain further. On the first hunt a guide and hunter killed a nice bull elk in the evening and dressed him out. They thought they had it hidden from the bears. Wrong!! When they got back the next morning a bear had claimed it and buried it in dirt. One guide herded the bear while a packer got away with the horns. On the second hunt, a hunter and guide shot a bull and went down to dress it out. A sow grizzly charged them and the hunter and guide killed her at 13 and 1/2 yards. Way too close. When we reported it to the Fish and Game we found out that the bears are coming to the gun shots because they have learned it is a free meal. I guess this one wasn’t in the mood to wait. We have no doubt that if the hunter hadn’t put his shot in the right place, she would have killed him before anything could have been done. We have 4 strands of electric fence around camp. We spend about 4 hours one day patrolling it because a 600 pound griz was on the other side. He stayed out about 50 yards but after the earlier attack we took no chances and 3 of us kept our eyes on him and carried shotguns. Believe me when you are that close to a bear, a 12 gauge looks pretty small. I saw several other bears but those were pretty mild incidents.

We saw almost no moose this year. It seems the wolves have a taste for moose calves and elk calves. If one of the guides bugled, a wolf would howl. Not very conducive to good hunting. We thought Wyoming, Idaho and Montana had put together a great plan to manage the wolves but an environmental group found a sympathetic judge and the wolf is now re-listed as endangered.

All in all we had a great time. It was great to be back in the wilderness of which I have so many memories. I also wanted to see how the country looked 20 years after the great Yellowstone fires. In a word, UGLY!!! Lots of standing dead trees and down fall everywhere. It will take hundreds of years to restore the forest to it’s former glory. However, it is a wilderness and this is nature. You take what it gives you. Any way you look at it there is no grander place on earth than the Yellowstone. Hope to see you there sometime. Will we go back next year? They want us back so I guess we will see.