Unfortunately, my camera has taken all of the abuse it can handle today and can no longer take very good pictures, so I am not able to show you some of the most scenic pictures of the entire drive.
The cattle get driven through the “counting gate” which is near the US Forest boundary. Grazing allotments are for certain numbers of cattle, so we're very accurate in our counts to comply.
The cattle on the Upper Green River cattle drive mingle with campers in the sagebrush prairies of Sublette County, Wyo.
Our herd of cattle made it to their summer pasture today. It was a long trip, but the cows did well. We moved them up into an area we call the Northwest Pasture, one of four pastures these cattle will be rotated through during the summer. They can relax now, enjoy the cool air and eat and get fat. They will have to keep an eye out for wolves though. There are not so many bears in this area, but the wolves frequent it often.
We move from the Kendall Bridge to the bridge at Tosi Creek today. I don’t have much to report; the cows moved good and finished the day quickly and in good shape.
The cattle on the Upper Green River cattle drive mingle with campers in the sagebrush prairies of Sublette County, Wyo.
There are lots of little creeks and springs in this area that run into the Green River and you can often see fish in them. Many of these creeks are a great place to bring the family for a little fishing.
Take time to thank the families that provide safe, affordable and quality food to the world! Wyoming farmers and ranchers are the original environmentalists and animal care advocates.
Today’s drive is from the Circle S, through the Tin Whistle (a giant culvert under the highway), past the spot where the highway ends, and finally across the Kendall Bridge at the Green River.
The ranchers of the Upper Green River Drift cross the Green River.
We are getting into bear country now and I’m pretty sure I crossed the path of one bear. A few head of cattle were all looking up into the trees and sniffing the air and when I rode close my horse got real nervous and snorted. Eventually the animals settled down, so I think the bear moved on. Grizzly bears and wolves create major difficulties for ranchers all around Sublette County and other parts of Wyoming. The ranchers like us that move their cattle up onto US Forest for summer grazing lose many cattle (mostly calves) to the bears and wolves. The stories about the wolves and bears killing only the sick and weak are completely false. Typically they pass up the sick calves and go for a nice fat healthy one. It makes sense too… if you are going to have a steak do you get it from some old cow who is on her last leg and tough as old leather or do you barbecue up that nice fat T-bone from a prime steer? Wolves and bears aren’t stupid; they’re going to eat the best they can.
Real Ranchers Kent and Nikki rope a sick calf as fellow rancher Charles doctors the animal. No amount of doctoring will help the calves if they are attacked by the wolves that environmental activists introduced to the area several years ago. Photo by Jill Bontrager
Often times this day proves to be very difficult. We move the cattle through a lot of trees and on steep hills. The cows, especially yearlings (one-year-old cattle), will escape down the hill and into the trees. A dog can prove invaluable on a day like today. However, the cows missed their opportunity to misbehave this year. They moved quickly and stayed on the trail.
Friends from the Box R Dude Ranch came along on the trail today.
The big excitement was a calf found stuck in between two trees. The best we can figure is that he made a jump through the trees and didn’t make it. Charles and Randy were able to remove him unharmed (except for his pride perhaps) while our friends Tom, and Gary and Jill (dudes from the Box R Dude Ranch) looked on and took pictures.
Taking care of business emails while I move cattle.
We pushed from Marsh Creek to the Circle S on today’s drive. These latest days of the drive are the most enjoyable to me, we are further into the mountains, there is a lot of wildlife to see, there are trees for shade, and the cows seem to move better.
After a good day yesterday, the cattle got counted onto US Forest today. I know I said we would push the cows up to US Forest land for grazing, but the drive is not over yet; we still have a ways to go. This is the day where we drive the cows (or at least our particular group of cows) through the “counting gate” which is near the US Forest boundary.
The cattle get driven through the “counting gate” which is near the US Forest boundary. Grazing allotments are for certain numbers of cattle, so we're very accurate in our counts to comply.
The US Forest Service requires an accurate count of all cattle grazing on forest land and on today’s ride there is an alleyway built in to allow for counting of the cattle. The Upper Green River Cattlemen’s Association pays a rider and an assistant to count the cattle by brand as they go through the alleyway. Usually the counter calls out the name of the brand owner as the cow or yearling passes and his assistant makes a mark under the appropriate name on a sheet of paper. The total head of cattle (cows and yearlings, calves are not counted) we put through today was 725. This is a decent sized group, but yesterday the riders ahead of us counted through more than 1,300 head (head=number of cattle).
We had some dudes from the Box R Dude Ranch that rode with us today and they were all real friendly and quite helpful. Two of them had been out to ride with us before in previous years. For those of you who don’t know, dudes are people who come from all over the world to experience a real western cattle drive. It is somewhat similar to the movie City Slickers, although the movie exaggerates a lot. The dudes usually come to the Box R for a week at a time and often ride with us or do other trail rides in the mountains.
After counting the cattle, they are driven onto the U.S. Forest Service land where they will be driven to the appropriate "allotments" or areas for grazing. Grazing helps maintain a healthy forest ecosystem.
Once through the counting gate we pushed the cows on across a mostly useless and broken down bridge at Marsh Creek and then rode back to the truck. We finished today’s drive in good time; we started about 5 a.m.. and finished about 10 a.m. There were no major incidents; we had to doctor a few calves that were sick and my horse tried to buck a little, but nothing too exciting happened, which is a good thing!
We picked up where we left off yesterday at Mickey Adam’s (the end of the driveway). I should mention that the very tail end didn’t make it to Mickey Adam’s yesterday, the calves got tired at the back and the cows wouldn’t stay with their calves so they ended up stopping a ways back. That worked out ok though because we were able to make a split in the heard and my crewand I moved them forward, leaving another bunch of riders to pick up the cattle herd behind us.
I liked today’s ride, it is almost always an easy day where the cattle gather decently and go up the trail easily, plus the distance to travel is not that far. I don’t know the actual distance of today’s ride, but I don’t think it’s more than a few miles. We moved from Mickey Adam’s to Bloom Springs. The drive includes going through a highway underpass. Some years the underpass can cause real big problems if the cows are not strung out and trailing good. What happens is you have a big wad of cows that aren’t paired with their calves and you come to the underpass and all of the swallows come flying out (they build their nests in the corners of the underpass) and scare the calves who don’t want to go forward anyway and then you get a big run back and the day is pretty much finished and you have to pick up the pieces the next day. Our cows didn’t do that today though; they moved really well and we finished riding by 9:30 a.m.
Sorry, I forgot to bring my camera today so no pictures. But be sure to check out all the photos on my previous posts!
We pushed from what we call Barlow’s Corrals (the end of the driveway) to a place we call Mickey Adam’s today (It’s common practice for ranchers to name our pastures and other places on our ranches. This makes it easier to communicate when we’re conducting business).
Not a bad drive, but the cattle did not want to stop grazing (feeding on the vegetation) and they took a long time to gather. It seemed like they only walked as far as you followed them, but as soon as you headed off to gather other cows they would go right back to grazing. Eventually we got them all on the trail and they lined out pretty good.
The cattle rest along the trail while antelope (the fastest animal in North America!) watch in the background. Antelope give birth in the late spring, the same time most cow herds start calving.
I saw a baby antelope jump up about 20 feet ahead of my horse today and go running off for his mother, just bawling. They are funny when they bawl because they have a pitch black tongue that shoots out of their mouth. I also saw several baby sage chickens… it seems like they can fly almost as soon as they hatch from the egg. I know sage grouse can’t fly quite that soon, but I’ve rarely seen one before it could fly.
Now that's a LOT of sagebrush! Wyoming has an abundance of sagebrush which provides habitat for Sage Grouse (we call 'em sage chickens). Wyoming is home to 54% of all sage grouse.
I rode my new horse, Peach, again today, he seems to be doing better on his reining already, but there is still a lot of room for improvement. He seems to do well off on his own where no other horses are around, although he did find a few large rocks and his own shadow to be a little spooky. I’m hoping he will continue to improve at a steady rate and turn into a decent horse.
The mountains of Bridger Teton National Park provide a nice view for the week-long cattle drive in Sublette County, Wyo.
After we finished moving cows today, Dad and I went to our lower place to round up a couple bulls (an uncastrated male bovine) that we will use to cover our separate purebred Angus herd. The bull pasture is kind of a swampy area and much of it you can’t ride through on a horse, but the bulls don’t mind going through it. So I had to get off on foot and look for a particular bull. As you might have guessed, he happened to be the farthest bull away. I wasn’t prepared to go swamp wading since I just had my cowboy boots on, but ended up hopping from stump to stump toward the bull. Then a bull being a bull, he wouldn’t cooperate and went into an even worse part of the swamp. So, to make a long story longer, I ended up wading up to my thighs, but in the end got him over to where Dad could chase him with his horse. However, when we got him near the gate to the next field and I went ahead to open it, the bull started heading back and Dad couldn’t turn him. By the time I ran back to help the bull was starting to get angry and wanting to fight the horses so we had to let him go… making the whole incident a complete waste of time.
Today was an easy day and it provided a nice break after the last few days gathering off the Mesa. The cattle are contained in a pretty small area at the drift fence, so they can’t wander far unless they go up the river where we want them.
The cattle can't wander too far away at this strech of the cattle drive, making it easier for the ranchers to gather.
So we gathered the drift fence area and the area on the other side of the highway with relative ease and put the cows into the driveway. The driveway is a trail with fences on both sides and it runs mostly along the highway. Since the cattle are so closely contained it makes it easy to push them forward, at least until the calves get to tired or hot to travel any further.
Here's the driveway. Looks a little different than the one on your street, right? This driveway is a trail with fences on both sides, which pushes the cattle easily toward summer pasture.
I had a lot of fun today practicing my roping along with some of the other cowboys (mainly Shawn and Tanner Butner, also Nikki Marincic and Albert Sommers). There were quite a few sick calves and we had to rope them and give them medicine.
The ranchers had to rope a few sick calves on the trip to give them medicine.
We were supposed to make it to the end of the driveway today, but the day got hot and the calves got tired so we had to stop a little short. Making sure the cattle are healthy is a big priority. The cows will normally go ahead for water and then come back for their calves afterward and may even head up the trail later in the day or evening.
The drive takes the ranchers past the tiny town of Cora, Wyoming. Pop 300.
Things went fairly smooth today. We were a little short on help for such a large area to gather, but things came together in the end. The cows didn’t bother to move forward from where we left them yesterday, they just spread out, so there was a lot of territory to cover in order to get them gathered. However, as difficult as they were to get started, once we got them on the trail they stayed there pretty good and traveled forward.
Cow dog Chance heads across the sagebrush prairie of the Messa allotment to gather stray cows.
I was on a new colt (refers to either a male baby horse, or a horse still in training) today that I named Peach, he’s a palomino, and he did pretty good for his first day out moving cattle. I found that I need spurs on to keep his attention and he is a little difficult to steer, but he was willing to work and didn’t pull any tricks and most important he didn’t try to buck on me. I’ll give him a day’s rest and then ride him again.
Fellow rancher Jonita Sommers photographs the cattle drifting down the trail. Jonita is a member of the Upper Green River Cattlemen’s Association. She and her brother Albert own the Sommers’ Ranch.
Since the cattle came off of the Mesa yesterday, today we mostly just put them on the gravel road that follows along the Green River. We end up at the Drift Fence when we finish out the day. The Drift Fence is so named because in the fall the cattle drift back down from the mountain, mostly on their own, and we catch them at this fence, separate them, and take them home to our respective ranches.
The cattle rest at the Drift Fence after a long day of trailing down to summer pasture. Photo by Jonita Sommers.
The cattle are starting to come together into one large heard now as we near the end of the gathering process on the Mesa. This year the grass has been good on the Mesa, so the cattle don’t want to leave, but we had plenty of cowboys and cowgirls out riding, so the cattle had no choice! Last year on the same day we had more difficulty because we lacked people and the cows (female who’s had a calf) wouldn’t stay with their calves (babies) and just wanted to graze (feed on the vegetation).
On Day 2 of the cattle drive, the ranchers finish gathering the cattle to move to summer pasture.
Generally, if you wake the cows and calves up early in the morning, the calves will get up and suck and then the pair starts heading up the trail. It is important to gather in the sides of the herd and give them a chance to string out on the trail. If you simply start pushing them from the back and do nothing else, then it will be a difficult day of cattle driving.
We came off the Mesa today and the place where the cows trail down makes for a very scenic picture. The dudes (visitors to a guest ranch) from Lozier’s dude ranch always take pictures at this point on the drive because you can see the cattle stringing down with the Green River Valley and the Wyoming Range Mountains in the background. I stopped to get a scenic picture of my own specifically for this blog.
The ranchers trail their cattle in an easy-to-move line of livestock as they move down the Mesa.
We ended the day’s drive about Noon at the bottom of the valley and will now start pushing up the Green River. The cows and calves stayed pretty well paired through the end of the drive and very few ran back. Those that did run back will go to the last place where they saw each other and then come back up the trail. Some riders will go back tomorrow to make sure they do come, while the rest of us push on ahead.
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