AS A CHILD, I wanted to be a cowboy. To wake up under a starlit western sky to a breakfast of coffee, beans and bacon served from the chuck wagon al fresco. Then ride my faithful horse Buck out on the open range with my faithful six-gun by my side and a faithful lever-action Winchester stuck under my lariat, riding and roping from dawn till dusk and a supper of coffee, bacon and beans back at the chuckwagon.
It wasn’t my fault. As a child of the 1950s, we were raised on a diet of Western TV shows and movies that portrayed the history of the American West as one big party where we bellied up to the bar with Miss Kitty and the Marshal for free drinks and a card game that had us fooled into thinking it was a good idea.
Raising cattle in the real world was never like that for me. Instead of riding the range, we were fixing the fence and looking for the cows that busted it. Hunting for lost cows is a tough job, especially if they don’t want to be found. That’s why you want to train your cows by rattling some grain in a bucket. The sound will convince them to come running and cause a stampede, depending how hungry they are.
People who complain about the price of beef have never raised them. It’s a job with no days off for bad weather because the worse the weather, the hungrier the critters get.
So, it was just my luck to be feeding my furry friends on a day when the wind blew so hard I couldn’t slide the barn door open. It was pinned by the wind against the wall, and no amount of grunting and groaning would move it.
Then it slacked off for a minute or so, just long enough to get the door open. That’s when the trouble started.
Cows are a lot like people. You can give them all the food they want every day of their lives and they will fight over it. Once you understand that, the trick is to stay out of their way when it is feeding time.
Cows have big ears. The sound of the barn door opening is music to their ears or ringing the dinner bell. It started a cow migration, but I was one step ahead of them. By closing one gate and opening another, I could avoid the rush, start the tractor and head out with a big load of hay for breakfast.
It was a proud moment of triumph to realize I’d outsmarted the cows. A moment that did not last long.
The wind came back with renewed fury. I couldn’t get the barn door closed. The herd was closing in. I had to get the hay into the field before the stampede.
Unloading the hay, I noticed something was terribly wrong! There were no cows in the field! They were back at the barn! I had opened and closed the wrong gates! I remember wading through the mud pulling a gate closed when it caught on the edge of my heel, throwing me face first into a big pool of a manure and water mixture.
There was no time to waste.
The cows were jammed in the barn tight as ticks having a big cow party.
They looked so happy until I shooed them out. A big red heifer tried to horn me in the guts and kick me with a rear hoof as she trotted by.
She missed.
It’s not easy being a cow whisperer.
_________
Pat Neal is a Hoh River fishing and rafting guide and “wilderness gossip columnist” whose column appears here every Wednesday.
He can be reached at 360-683-9867 or by email via patnealproductions@gmail.com.
