Wild times at the Rocking W

Welcome to my first ever blog post. I really don’t know anything about blogs except for the fact that you type stuff and people can respond. The reason I am starting one is kinda selfish. My memory has been getting pretty bad over the past few years and the only way I can remember things is if I see them in writing or pictures of them. I don’t really remember events I remember pictures of events or stories about the events. I know it’s kinda weird.

I don’t know how many of you have ever done ranch or cowboy work, but most of the time you are alone and doing monotonous tasks, this gives you a lot of time to think about things. I plan on using this blog to write some of these things down and to keep track of some of the wild things that happen to me and how God faithfully takes care of me. I do not know how exciting it will be for the reader, but I will do my best but if it bores you, I will not be mad if you choose not to read. I also know a lot of you get pretty anal over spelling and grammar, if so this blog might not be the place for you! So take it or leave it. I make to guarantees about the quality or entertainment value of said blog.

Lets get started, Whats going on around here…I have had a break from rodeos for about the last 3 or 4 weeks, I turned out my pickup horses and have been enjoying the time at home. For the last two weeks (with the exception of a few days in Vegas!) we have been trying to gather the rouge cattle that wouldn’t pen when we weaned. For those of you that don’t know every fall we pen all of our cattle and sort the calves, which by this time are around 400#, off of there mommas and start them on feed.

We typically don’t feed the cows much during the summer because the grass is pretty good. This means the cows aren’t really used to coming in the pens and it takes several weeks of feeding them to get them used to coming in. Once they are in the pen we close the gate and use horses to separate the mommas from their babies.

This is all fine and dandy but there are always some wilder cows and calves that would rather starve to death or kill you than come into the pen. Thus are current situation. We have to get the calves off their mommas pretty quick because as the calf grows and the grass looses quality the momma losses a bunch of weight producing milk for the calf and subsequently goes into the hard winter months skinnier than she should.

There are a couple ways to handle the task, since this is getting pretty long I will just share how we do it. We Rope em’.  Rope em, jerk em town, tie their feet, then drag them into the trailer. This procedure has it pros and cons. One of the cons is that it makes the wild cows that won’t come in the pen even wilder but I will admit it is a lot of fun!

Over the past few weeks I have roped probably 25 or so. Its kinda a wild dangerous job catching these mean rascals. A couple of years ago one of my pickup horses broke his leg doing this and I had to shoot him, since then I do not use my pickup horses, I only use colts, if possible.

The decision to use a colt instead of good horse has its pro’s and cons too. A good horse knows what your doing and what is expected from him when it gets wild. A colt doesn’t.

Last week before I left for Vegas I was on the trail of a particularly angry yearling bull weighing in at about 600# and I was riding a colt that was kinda acting up. I didn’t want to loose the bull once I caught him due to an ill-behaved horse so I had my roped tied of to the saddle horn. I caught the bull and stopped him and then things started going south. The bull turned around and stated hooking the horse I was on. While this was going on I made a rookie mistake and let the horse step over the rope.

For those of you that don’t know what this means let me take a second to explain. You have a 35 ft rope. One end is around the neck of a 600lb bull and the other is tied to the saddle horn. Normally this is what you want, but imagine if you will what it would be like if the colt your riding steps over the rope while there is a bunch of slack in it and one horse leg is on one side of the rope and the other horse leg is on the other side, now envision what happens when the bull takes off again and the rope gets tight!!!

So the bull turns to run off again, and I know once that rope got tight we were gonna all be in a mess, so my solution was to not let the rope get tight and try to fish it out from under my horses legs at a full run. Bull takes off, I take off in full pursuit determined to keep slack in the rope until it was safely out form under the horses leg.

We are in a beautiful 200 acre pasture with rolling hills and a few big oaks dotting the landscape. It was one such tree that made my day get worse in a hurry. I don’t know if any of you have ever tried to fish the rope out from under your horses legs at a full run but I will tell you this: Sometimes you can kinda peel off in one direction and the horse will step out of it, but this was not of those times. The bull was so fast and the horse was so tired I was having a hard time gaining enough ground to get ample slack for the horse to step out of it. Trying to get it out with barley any slack is not easy. It takes concentration and your full undivided attention. So as my horse is running wide open tied to a bull who is also running wide open through the beautiful hills of the rocking w ranch, I am leaned over diligently giving all my attention to the tangled mess of rope underneath my horses feet and I didn’t notice the tree. Unbeknownst to me there in our immediate trajectory was a pretty little blackjack oak. Its been there for 20 years and I never really noticed it and as I was leaning over working on the rope I still didn’t, notice it that is. The bull went left, the horse went right. We were still tied together, still at a dead run, and the rope was still under the horses legs…TO BE CONTINUED. In the mean time feel free to use the comment section below to predict the outcome, or leave any comments.

Jeremy