Stray range cattle and little range wars

You know, a little owl stopped a forest from being cut down. You got endangered frogs. Call the right people about the endangered frogs.

In the meantime, get a dog to patrol the fenceline and keep the cattle where they belong. This is the first job German shepherds had.

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Nothing is as strong as gentleness, nothing so gentle as real strength - St. Francis de Sales

Sorry, rodeo people in general take very good care of their animals, there is no comparison between a few minutes of riding a bull or bucking horse and running cattle until they are ready to drop, then repete. You said you miss doing it, that it was fun. That's sick,IMO. I don't know where you live, but here in rural WA if you don't want the neighbors animals on your property you fence them out. Like it or not, that is the law. If someone hauls cows up here and let's them out, I might not like it, but doing what you did would get me in trouble. I think the open range law is common to most western states, either work to change it legally, or stay in the city. Don't take it out on a cow.

People have been working to change it legally for generations. I did, in one plot of about 750 acres, and as far as I know, I'm the only one, ever, without shooting them. if somebody starts dumping cattle on your place and you want to move to town and give the place to the rancher, be my guest. That's what it amounts to. I'm not put together that way.

it would be perfectly legal for me to go file a mining claim on my neighbor's ranch and start excavating, because he does not own the mineral rights. This info is from the state, but that would not be neighborly, and so I won't do it. The fact that it is legal does not make it right. For that reason, if I did it, I would expect him to kick the crap out of me if he were able, or destroy my equipment. These are casual remedies to violations of private property rights, and those, also, are a great Western tradition that has been in place longer than open range law. I have spent most of my life in the Southwest, and I understand these things, as do most ranchers, which is why you rarely see them doing these things to one another, but only to homeowners from elsewhere who will let them get by with them.

One local rancher actually had a neighbor run some of his cattle in on his land through a cut fence. His WIFE actually went out and rammed a cow with her pickup truck from the side and drove up on it so far she couldn't get off without a tractor coming over and towing her back off. Cow actually got up and left on her own. Not pretty, but it illustrates how they treat range violations amongst themselves. They expect more sedate reactions from homeowners like yourself, and get them, which is why this problems still exists.

I have a system that works, which seems to surpass any other system in SW ranching country where ag pays most of the taxes and controls law enforcement. I put it out there as a suggestion, and nobody has to use it who thinks that a cow has more right to his property than he does. A lot of old folks who couldn't afford fencing can now garden, and property values are a lot higher than they were 13 years ago, because the land actually belongs to the folks who buy it.

Don't like it? Don't do it. Ranchers didn't like it either, but they found a remedy. keep the cattle on their owned and leased land and leave mine and my neighbors' alone. It's just not worth the hassle......Joe

By the way, If I dropped off a thousand goats on the local cattle ranch, they'd shoot every one of them and let them rot, and the law would not be answering the phone after I called the first time. Caller ID saves a lot of trouble. The people who move back to town are the ones who allow themselves to be treated as second class citizens....Joe

I would be tempted to put a add in the local paper ask for some one to drop a small herd,,20-30 head off. For ropeing and herding practice, team penning and sorting. Can't pay anything but will give free graze. Will use to train herding dogs and ropeing horses. Just turn them in the field through the last place that was cut or the gate,,thank you.

this might give you grounds for what you are doing and they would not want there cows mistaken for herd. and be something to show the judge,

After some thought,,you have a gold mine here. set up a small team penning area. every Saturday night have a event with jackpot,winner take all penning. use the above add to get the herd. you charge a gate fee, make a couple bucks while your at it..won't be long before the owner hears about his stock getting run down. And you have the news paper add to show they brought them free will. I like it.

You sure you haven't broken any laws with those antics? In some states closing open range cows inside your fence could be considered rustling, among other things.

I don't think you find decent people hurting and tormenting animals because they don't like what their owners are doing. Bragging about it and enjoying hurting any animal is about as low as you can get.
If you have open range in your area, you are the one not obeying the law. Hurting your neighbors cattle doesn't help your case at all. If locking up the cattle is considered rustling,
the laws in most states are pretty strict. You will be the one on the loosing end of things, not your neighbor.

that's why I say rent the cattle...tell them up front what you are using them for,and what you can pay. Then they can decide for them selves if they want in.
Don't see how anyone could think they would get away with just bar-b-Q one. and the butcher guy is a local. he would pass the word quick as well.
nope renting is the best way to have cattle if you can't afford to buy your own.

No need to close them after I got the tote gote. I can go wherever they go, until they go home. prior to that, it's only rustling if you keep them. I never hid what I was doing......told the ranchers exactly what, why and how. Before that, they always claimed I was reading the brands wrong and it wasn't their cattle. Of a sudden, when they learned I was "traing them" to run, they had trailers in here picking them up. can't pass a law against "moving them around"........Joe

Back a ways, you said some of the cattle at least were in a section the forest service has closed to grazing this year. That sounds to me like a major piece of leverage, especially if it's federal jurisdiction and regulation on that. Forget the locals, some hobby rancher who owns a couple car dealerships, where, in Show Low or St. Johns?, will have them all flummoxed and probably have leverage to have the sheriff make trouble for you and your community through further neglect and slow response if nothing else. The feds should be a different matter. Research the hierarchy for forest service (and Fish and Game for that frog issue) and send registered mail, snail mail, in writing, receipt postcard required, to the level up OUT of AZ, calmly presenting the info just like you've done here, with some of those photos included. As soon as some response from higher up hits the fan, the local feds will have their excuse for taking your side, and more than an excuse, might do so out of fear of a transfer to Siberia for ignoring regulations if that's what they're doing now.

You might also consider trying to find a contact phone number for one of these (out of state?) higher-up federal offices and ring them up, voice-to-voice with no quotable documentation, and ask in a friendly tone what the contact might suggest as a effective action on your part. What exact address to send the written complaint package to? How far up the food chain do you need to go, would too high alienate the official that would actually be handling the situation? You can't tell, you might just have yet another dweeb on the line who'll blow you off, but you might also enlist a helpful contact and get some really good inside advice. If there's a fed office close enough for a personal, face-to-face, visit, say in Phoenix, that might be an alternate.

The next level could be legal advice, threat or fact of lawsuit (class action vs feds for not enforcing that range-closed-this year situation.... overgrazing increasing fire hazard, threat to your entire small community from that, possibly), and in tandem, possibly try to find a local or regional muckraking reporter who could sniff this all as a lynchpin for a bigger story about grazing regulation enforcement issues.

Maybe Google the subject for AZ, search the rancher's name, his dealership names, corporate information, searches on family and corporate board members... all looking for some reporter's byline who has a history of interest in the dude if he's not totally on the up-and-up and just being careless with you. You're in former US Rep Renzi's district, right? He was just convicted on a bunch of corruption counts from the first half of the past decade. See if this rancher has a clear history of serious contributions or other connections to that scumbag. If he's just spread his donations around and especially backed your present Rep and more especially, Renzi's opponents when he was active, I'd give up on that line of inquiry, but if there are connections, or might be, then you can look in that direction for reporters or legal aid ... you can mention the Renzi connection, possibly, if there is one, to try to tweak motivations to help you.

Edit add: I see the present US Rep Kirkpatrick there is on the House Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment although with limited influence as a minority Democrat. That would make direct contact with her relevant on your problems, though I'd search to see if your rancher buddy has been in her camp, or that of other Renzi opponents, before doing so.

We certainly wont be renting any cattle. The point is, we don't want cattle here, and now we don't have any running loose any more. Mission accomplished. it was fun because we were solving a longtime problem in a direct manner. I certainly would not do it for entertainment. I also miss the days when we were building our first house in 105 degree temps, but I wouldn't do a repeat unless I was homeless.

I think a few folks are vague as to the history about "open range". I suggest reading Charlie Siringo's book "16 years on the hurricane deck of a Spanish pony" for some context.

Open range was an arrangement where anybody who owned land in an area (and often those who did not) could bring in cattle and cut them loose to graze and breed for natural increase. Each rancher would brand his cattle, and they would have roundups at calving time, with each rancher sending a "rep" to the roundup to oversee his interests. The "gather" itself, was a group project followed by the branding and cutting. A calf was said to "belong" to the ranch that the calf's mother had been branded by. Sometimes, so much range was claimed by a single ranch that they did not "make a gather" for a few years, and would then make a LARGE gather and brand everything in sight.

Smaller outfits might move in with stock that was branded, and might wind up branding some other stock that was not really theirs, and so conflicts arose, accusations made,
both justly and unjustly. Folks got hanged and shot, to the point that it is still against the law to show up at a roundup armed. Siringo, who was the fist range cowboy every to publish his autobiography, wrote that "the ony thing a man needed to start a big ranch in those days was a running iron and a lot of cheek", a running iron being a chunk of metal that could be used to alter one's neighbor's brand.

At any rate, the range was open, no fences, no particular restrictions. Yes, you had to "fence them out" if you didn't want them around.

Jump forwards 100+ years, and there are no more group roundups and sortings, because there is no more 'common range" that is shared by several ranches. At least noplace I know about. The country is all fenced, even if it's 660 acres per fenceline. The government land is now leased by individual ranchers for their cattle alone, and when they make a gather, every brand they see belongs to them, or it's a red letter day.

In short, even though they'd like to think it was 1874, there is no more real "open range", because if there was, I could cut a handful of stock onto their ranch and get by with it, which is clearly not the case.

As a legal ( but nearly empty of people) subdivision, this 7 or 8 hundred acres is NOT legally open to grazing by anybody who wants to run in some cattle, but the law was never interested in stopping it, and the BLM was never interested in fixing the bad fences or making the rancher do it. They loved to say "I"ll get back to you on that........end of story. The presence of range cattle here was against the law, and we had a record of asking the law to do it's job, to no avail. When that happens, it nearly always gets solved one way or another, and we elected to do it without killing any cattle.

if you want to feel sorry for the range cattle, be my guest, but I doubt you have seen much of how they live. It will hit 110 degrees in the shade today, with no shade anywhere. if a local rancher is out and about in his pickup truck checking stock, ( a rare event) he will be going from stock tank to stock tank and either running cattle away from the water with the horn and the truck or fanning a 44 revolver full of rat shot into their butts to get them moving. Cattle laying around the water supply in hot weather do not eat much and gain no weight, hence they need to be harassed away from the water just far enough that they can make it back, grazing all the way, without dying of thirst.

I could give you chapter and verse for pages on end about stuff like that, but it's pointless. Go read Siringo's account of what they did with "bunch quitters" when gathering the wild stock in the Texas brush country after the war.

They are not now, nor have they ever been, your grandma's milk cow.

Don't get me wrong. I'm glad people raise beef on the desert, because it's not good for much else, and they perform a valuable function. I stand with them against closing BLM land to grazing, I admire many of them and the historical families that opened the West and made it valuable to our nation. Most of the ones I have known would never try to steal graze from their neighbors, or so much as a meal if they were starving, but some few of them have no manners, and you can't cure that by saying "please".

My cure worked, and I have no regrets....Joe

Pretty sure I know your car dealer/rancher. 5 letters in his last name, right? His community ties, both business and other, make him a regular paragon in his part of the country. Might as well call the law on Obama, if that's him.....Joe

Makes me wonder if the fence wouldn't become a higher priority if those strays started showing up at the owner's car dealerships........

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It is still best to be honest and truthful; to make the most of what we have; to be happy with the simple pleasures and to be cheerful and have courage when things go wrong.
Laura Ingalls Wilder

Dryheat, the guy owns a couple large car dealerships in the valley and is a well known name.

And the methods you mentioned? Oh, yeah, I've been doing some research and I've amassed a list of names. We don't have much money but we do have time.

I have no intention of hurting or harassing the cattle. It's not their fault.

Joebill, no, not five letters, but the description otherwise fits.

I was thinking more along the lines of "That ain't no bull" beginning with an E. Pretty sure he has a ranch up towards Payson.
The 5 letter name guy I was friends with (his wife) and I don't think they have any ranches. (If it begins with a G). Our daughters went to school together and are still friends. They are pretty nice people.

Actually, I just checked, and the guy's dealership is now a used car dealership, and he owns a repair shop. (See? I'm digging up more info on him.)

Lisa, no, not Tex Earnhardt.

I live in what was farm and cow land. It's almost downtown now. There was a farm across the highway at one time. A man rented the pasture and put not 3 or 4 range cows on 2 acres but 20.
He did not fix the old messed up fences (part of the lease). And he did not feed any hay at all. So they of course broke fence and ran all over. We put them up and found the guy the first time. Caused enough stink he removed all but 8. Did not fix fence but just tied break with bailing twine..from my house. Bynow there isn't enough grass for even 1 so they they go again. Police found them this time and he got a hefty fine. Did not fix fence. Last time they got out a pair of "nice" women in dreeses and heels put them in my yard and when I got home they were so proud of themselves for saving my cows fron the traffic. I told them they were not mine but thanks for the cow patties and holes in my yard. When they asked where the lived I told them and they were worried how the poor cows would get home. (2 lane highway). I showed them and had them hold traffic while I used a broom to move them over, all jumped the fence but the last one who tried to go back to the nice lawn..I had to smack her rump to get her over the fence and I though those ladies were going to faint from the injustice. I have 1 acre of property running long wise with no room for cows but the neighbor has 20 and has cows so they thought they were mine and they also thought I should just let them stay because the poor cows were sooo happy in the lawn. I bet they would have had a fit if some cows tromped all over their well manicured grass and rose bushes.

Joebill, as far as I'm concerned there is no justification for animal cruelty. What you did is cruel. Bragging about it and encouraging others to do it is sick.

I tried putting myself in this situation - if the cows didn't pose a danger to me or my family I'd wouldn't do anything - if I truly felt that me or my family was in danger then I would shoot the cow and call the sheriff - tell him that it attacked and you didn't have any choice - if he wanted to he could remove the body - if not keep it and butcher it - how would I determine if the cow was a danger - I would approach it and see how it reacted - if it was aggressive I would shoot - tell the sheriff you when out to chase it off your property but it attacked - you have every right to defend yourself -