Stray range cattle and little range wars

Re: post # 17, you know what is supposed to be done and who is supposed to do it. Time to turn up the heat. Start working your way up the food chain. Even your state senator and representative. You are documenting each and every contact with the locals?

I haven't said anything incriminating. Other people have suggested shooting or butchering the cattle. I have joked about 1500 pounds of beef not fitting in my freezer, but that's it. I'd love to see them try to make a legal case over one snarky comment on the internet that was clearly not meant to be taken seriously.

I'm not going to shoot his cattle. We may take LEGAL measures, such as capturing strays and holding them for the livestock officer to pick up -- but that's legal in this state.

A picture of my home is attached. I guarantee you, the bull is not going to fit in my freezer.

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I agree with Raymond on this one. Just because your chasing the cattle off of your land doesn't mean you have to chase them back to the same pasture they came out of. Just escort the cattle out whichever side gets them off your land with somewhere else to go. Where the cattle go from that point is not your problem.

Here's some pictures of the private land vs. the overgrazed range land, posted just because I'm mad and sad about all the devastation to the national forest. You should be able to tell the difference between what's been grazed to dust and what hasn't. A couple of the pictures show the fence line and the direct contrast between properties.

The national forest belongs to everyone -- it's a shame that they let the rancher overgraze the land so badly that it looks and smells like a feedlot. It should be a paradise, lush with raspberries and grapes and little pools of water. The difference between our side of the fence and the overgrazed land is just unbelievable.

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So sorry to hear this Cygnet - I, too, have leased forest service land on two sides of both of my properties.

My first issue was when I first moved here & had cows go through my saggy 4 strand barbed wire & were eating my alfalfa bales.
The second, was a bull on my raw land. Both times as soon as I called the rancher he was there to take care of his stock.
Then he tore down the fencing on both properties & restrung, nice & tight, new 4 strand barbed wire to keep his cattle where they belong. Love that guy!

I sure understand that good ole boy network - seems to be a lot of them in AZ. I'd take pictures and get a paint ball gun - When he sees his cattle marked, that may wake him up to the fact that the next time it may be a 30-30.

I'd also have a community meeting. When a group get together and go en mass to a governmental agency - they usually listen rather than just to one cranky old complainer. (not saying you are - that's just what they'd label you).

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Only she who attempts the absurd can achieve the impossible

the paint ball gun and send them down the road any way they want to go would be the next step...just don't think you can butcher them,,,the butcher just might tell the owner what you got planned and offer to tell him when you got one ''stolen cow'' to butcher. the best bet might be to buy a few bags of feed then train them that if they follow you they get a little..and when they get where you want them, drop them there. back in his catch pen might not be as good as going down the road to town. if they ended up in town, he would have even more people on him to get things taken care of.

Please don't try anything with the bull. Even "tame" ones can have a bad day. And you certainly don't want to be the cause of having one "snap'.

Wish I was there. I would look at this quite differently, I would farm these as my own. Culling one whenever the meat supply gets low. Just remember a cow is a lot of meat. I'm fit but I don't want to field dress and quarter a cow by myself to far from where it will be processed. Just sayin.

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So in the morning, please don't say ya love me.
Cause you know I'll only kick you out the door.

might try branding one and let it go back..just got to pull the ear tags off first.

Still think the best is to run them off with the paint ball gun. Don't think I would wsnt to sneak one away..they might be watching closer than you think.

BBQ every week end until the problem is consumed

Here in AZ rustling is considered a very serious crime. We do have open range in most of the state.

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Mess with me? I may let karma take care of it. Mess with my family? I become Karma.

Wow, looks just like our land in MT that bordered the FS cattle grazing land! We fenced the whole section (8 full time residents and about 25 property owners) Took us two summer with six folks working. Then every spring and after every storm we walked the fence line. Still cows got in, still we led them out.

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www.MontanaSticksAndStones.com at Goshen Farm

That's a serious offense in most western states, doesn't matter if they're on your property.

Don't they still hang rustlers in Arizona?

Cattle rustling isn't in my plans, believe me. I don't think I'd enjoy jail all that much.

I have cows. I once had a great Black Angus bull that would make 2 of the one pictured, who had great calves, and was quiet. Trouble was, he wasn't afraid of you and didn't move away if you came near. He got out a couple of times by leaning on the fence so I sold him. It was a little tricky getting him on a trailer but that's another story. I now buy calves and keep them a while before selling them, and have an electric fence inside the barbed wire. If the rancher can hire a foreman he can afford to build a fence. Also, he doesn't have much grass, nor is there much on the Nat'l Forest land as pictured. He needs to sell out the cows, or move them to another pasture and let the range recover. I've traveled some in the West and asked about carrying capacity of range land. I would guess that that range would need 30-40 acres per cow-calf pair, but I'm not there. I asked that question near Carlsbad caverns, NM, and they said 7 head per section(640 acres). In the part of SC where I live 3-4 acres will support a cow and calf, assuming good rainfall and fertilizer. Obviously your area is not fertilized.

If you have a small area that you want to keep the cows away from, You could string one strand of electric fence and solve the problem, but you shouldn't have to consider it. Dump the problem on the government and let them enforce the laws you describe.

COWS

I have solution that has worked very well for me. We bought this place 13 years ago, and there were range cattle everywhere. People who did not even own land here were bringing stock in during and after monsoons for some free graze and telling us "you gotta fence them out" with a grin on their face.

Well, I did fence them out of the home 10 acres, EVENTUALLY, but by then, I had pretty much solved the problem. I put up an electric fence around the 10 acres they liked best, and every day I would go down to work in the shop and when the parcel had a nice bunch of cattle in it, I would close the gate and start running them in circles with the truck. I'd run a few until they could barely walk, then start a few more in circles. By the time THEY were worn to a frazzle, I'd pick up on the first ones again.

Later, I learned to speed them up with the truck horn and the front bumper tucked under the tail, and a paintball gun was a great motivator, too. After they had slimmed down and had ribs showing, I went to the guy who owned them and told him he should thank me for "conditioning" his cattle. He asked me what I was talking about, and I told him "when you first dropped them off, they were just run of the mill cattle, but NOW they are thirty mile and hour RACING cows! I have finally gotten them down to their fighting weight!" He had that bunch out of here a coupe of hours later.

Next, some guy dropped off some bulls to teach me a lesson , and I left them alone until they came on my land. Bigger truck, now, and the biggest bull thought he could scare me, but hey!, i'm inside the truck! Blow the horn, get behind him, start tapping him with the bumper, and every time he tried to turn back on me, bump him again. got him running full out for nearly half a mile, and he was wore out, but couldn't turn around on me and I wouldn't let him slow down.. he finally went THROUGH a fence, and I don't think anybody has seen him since. His smaller buddy left on his own when I came after him.

Next, they cut a ranch fence, but by that time I had built a tote-gote which is an old-timey trail scooter, and now it was more fun than ever. Leave the gate open on the home place until I had a yard full, then close the gate and run them around until they could hardly take another step, then let them rest, but no water. Do NOT rinse, but wait an hour and repeat. half a day later, open the gate and watch them head for home.

I had one batch "trained" so that they could jump a full-height barbwire fence without pausing on their way home. Fastest cattle in the Southwest.

Of course, when they get that way, the ranchers either move them far away or take them to the sale barn pretty quick. They are skinny, hard to handle, run like hell every time they hear an engine, etc. it took about 4 years for them to figure out that this "free grass" was far from profitable and keep them off of it.

Of course, accidents will happen with fences, and I'm understanding of true accidents with no punishment done, but when it turns into a pattern, out come the paintball guns, tote gote, dirt bikes, 4 wheelers, grandkids, sling shots, air horns, line of beaters and all the makings of a wild-ankle rodeo. hasn't been a problem for years, and I miss it.

One can also plant a bunch of pyrocantha SP? around and about, letting the rancher know ahead of time......Joe

Yeah. I don't think anyone here expects a fence to keep the cows out 100% of the time, but there's a difference between an occasional cow hopping a fence, and the fence actually being down in places.

Thank you for being a responsible rancher. :-)

I think the bull is fairly young. Most of the older cattle are pretty scarred up -- it's rough country -- and he doesn't have many marks on him. The rancher's cows were also almost skeletal by the end of the season last year, so if he was on range last year, he may be a bit stunted. I dunno.

We've put electric around some recently planted grass and flower beds, as of the day before yesterday. I've got a couple whopping good chargers and I know how to use them. Two hot lines at nose and chest level, and one ground line in between ... (I have goats ... if I can build an electric fence to keep goats in a field, when said field is down in the desert and is mostly dry sand, I can keep cows out of a damp garden with wet clay soil, LOL.)

I don't know what the carrying capacity is up here, but it's not that high. Most of the land is a mix of manzanita thickets and ponderosa/oak forest, with very little grass to start with. What grass there is, is mostly love grass, and the cows only eat it when there's nothing else left. The cattle are also in direct competition with elk for what food there is, too, so it's not just cattle on the land, there's a lot of elk, too.

(The elk do a lot less damage to the land, however. The elk are always down in the creek bed, and it's still nice and lush and green on this side of the fence.)

It's really nice of you to hurt the cows to punish the owner. Maybe you could find his children and hurt them too. In most of the rural west you do have to fence them out-that is the law. You may not like it, but that law was there long before you were. There is something wrong with people who like to hurt animals, that has been proven by many studies on serial criminals.

Never did it because I enjoyed hurting animals. did it because I enjoyed ----ing off ranchers who enjoyed hauling cattle 20 miles to turn them into land they did not own and then laughed when people complained. This is all private property, and while it might be, in a stretch, legal to haul cattle into a fenced area you do not own and turn them loose, I doubt it, and they only did it because most of the folks here were afraid to put a foot down.

Personally, this has been an issue in the West forever, and while it might have been justified 100 years ago on truly "open range", it's far from justified today in places like this. No unfenced range left, at all, they haul them through the gates in trailers to graze them on those neighbors' yards and gardens who are afraid to put a stop to it.

Across the valley, they were doing it right inside a small town until they started losing stock. It's common, all over the West, for them to be gut shot and left to die slowly when they turn into a major problem. I never have and never will do that, but it's not illeagal for me to "herd" them. Yes, it's being a bad neighbor in return for the same behavior from the rancher. It's obvius by the existance of this thread that I'm one of the few who has solved the problem for me and my neighbors without killing any cattle or breaking the law, so if success is any reflection on actions, I'm high and dry. On the other hand, if you think what I did indicates I'm sick, I guess you can say the same for all the bull riders, bronk busters, wild cow milkers and other rodeo guys who enjoy it. Serial killers, one and all..........Joe