Wild Cattle on the Rez

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This may not seem like a cowboy story to begin with, but hang in there, it gets to be. Several decades
ago, my cousin John was a professional trapper in eastern Colorado. He worked for the state and also for private ranchers and farmers all over the plains for many years, besides being a wheat farmer. He stayed pretty busy most winters, but one winter things had gotten a little bit slow, plus pelts were not bringing much. The wheat market was dead, it hadn’t rained for too long, and times were looking bleak.
When a Tribal council contacted him from southwest Colorado, he was glad to tell them that he would
go to the Rez and trap coyotes that were causing terrible losses to the tribal ranchers and cattle. They would pay a bounty on them plus he could keep the pelts. When he got there he set up a tidy camp near a windmill, and started trapping. The country was unbelievably rugged with deep canyons, brush, rocks, and the added feature of being on the very far side of absolutely nowhere. After his initial meeting with the tribal council member, he saw absolutely no one for weeks on end, and only saw people when he had to go out for supplies or ran into a hunter or wood cutter. That suited him fine though.
He had his trap line set up and was covering lots of miles everyday checking traps. He’d run the main trails with his pickup and walked many miles in and out of the canyons and rough areas the pickup
couldn’t go. While doing this, he’d seen many wild cattle and some less than gentle horses on his circles, but none bothered him, just vanished into the brush.
One of the things that made his trap line more difficult was the undesired capture of mountain lions
in his traps. It would be kind of exciting turning them loose, of course, and the risk they presented wasn’t something he enjoyed. He’d run into a rider one day, who in the course of conversation, was horrified that John was turning the lions loose! He assured John that the tribe would pay an extra bounty for the lions which were decimating the wildlife and darned hard on the cattle and especially the horses. Lions would rather eat a colt or yearling horse than about anything else.
With that, John was in business with the mountain lions too. He was catching lots of coyotes, lions, and some bobcats and it was definitely a paying proposition. Way better than wheat farming during a 100 year drought.
One day as he was working his way along a very rough canyon bottom on foot, he heard a commotion in the distance. It was faint, but sounded like a bull bellering and a bunch of dogs raising Cain. He was puzzled but kept on moving, having many miles of trapline to get checked that day. As he proceeded along the canyon, the noise was getting closer. Concerned, he climbed up along the base of the canyon wall and took cover behind some rocks and brush. Looking up the canyon, he saw brush shaking and whatever it was moving closer rapidly.
Finally, out of the brush came a big, wild bull with high horns, running as hard as he could with a pack of catch dogs in pursuit. There were several dogs hanging on the bull’s head and ears on both sides and the bull’s tongue was out with streams of slobbers flowing behind. The other dogs were trying their
best to get ahead and grab his nose as they thundered by, not 40 feet from John. As they disappeared
down the canyon, the baying of the dogs and the occasional bellering of the bull faded away. John
climbed down from his safe spot and continued his walk to his next trap set.
He’d just gotten lined out again when he heard more brush cracking and the thunder of more hooves.
Looking up, he saw a couple of cowboys on sweaty horses running toward him. He stepped to the side as they approached. One hollered at John as they passed “Hey, didja see a bull go by here wearing some dogs?” John hollered back that he had and pointed the direction they’d gone. He watched as they rode hard out of sight, ropes down, and loops tucked under their arms.
With that, he went back to walking his trap line. He concluded that there were sure enough bigger and more dangerous things lurking in those canyons than coyotes, mountain lions and bobcats, and that as
a farm boy, not a cowboy, he’d stick to capturing them. Roping a big, wild bull just didn’t appeal to him at
all!

cattle

Posted in: Featured, Ranch Life


About Jan Swan Wood

Jan was raised on a ranch in far western South Dakota. She grew up horseback working all descriptions of cattle, plus sheep and horses. After leaving home she pursued a post-graduate study of cowboying and dayworking in Nebraska, New Mexico, Montana, Wyoming and South Dakota....

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