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Unregistered
Bull
Choice gleanings
from 45-plus years of Unregistered Bull
Everywhere you go, you hear ranchers talking about
proper range management, soil conservation, or whatever else
you choose to call common-sense use of land. It’s
encouraging. Even stockmen whose country has made amazing
recovery from drouth say they don’t intend to restock too
heavily — ever. They swear they’re going to try to grow a
little grass all along from now on, instead of simply running
as many livestock per section as they can finance. |
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Doc
Blakely
Pokin' Fun
Ran into an old friend who is a trader. It's a
disease that has no cure, but it's so exciting that he doesn't
care. To give you an idea of how avid this character is, I've
heard that he went hunting on a deer stand once and when his
buddies came to pick him up in the jeep, he was weaponless.
When asked about it, he excitedly showed them a gold ring.
"A guy came through here on foot about daylight and I
traded him my gun for it," he said. |
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Monte
Noelke
Shortgrass Country
We don't work big enough bunches of stock nowadays
to stir the dust in the corrals. Weeds grow in the cutting
chutes; ant beds flourish in the loading alleys. In my tender
years, I wept copious tears at Roy Rogers singing "Empty
Saddles in The Old Corral". The abandonment is so
traumatic now that my lips won’t pucker enough to whistle in
the horses, much less hum an old cowboy dirge. |
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Baxter
Black
On The Edge Of
Common Sense
A man with bandaged hands and welts on his face
limped painfully into the doctor’s exam room. A nurse held
out two latex gloves and said, "This is probably going to
hurt." "No doubt," said the patient sitting on
the exam table. "Yeeow!" said the doctor. |
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Lee Pitts
Its The Pitts
It's a scene repeated countless times every day: A
housewife goes into a big box store where she can buy a
five-pound box of corn flakes, a small swimming pool or a
garden tractor without leaving the premises. |
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Dale
Rollins, Ph.D
Wildlife
By Design
Back in 1997 I rode herd over a series of workshops
called "W.I.L.D. about Deer." The gist of the
program was to enlist a corps of adults, train them in
"graduate-level" deer management, and then empower
them to conduct educational programs on deer management at
their local level. Basically an adult version of the Bobwhite
Brigade, but focused on the ever-popular whitetail. W.I.L.D.
was an acronym for Wildlife Intensive Leadership Development. |
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Charles
Rodenberger
The
Computer& The Cowboy
There are still many people who say they don’t need a
personal computer, but I don’t hear anyone saying they
don’t need a telephone or a television. Many of my ancient
friends (my age) even are insisting on having cell phones, or
at least their children are insisting they have one. |
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D'Ann Ducote
Palabras
CAJUN ... The little tow-headed, dark-eyed four year-old
boy stood on the bank of North Concho River where he and his
eight-member family had pitched a tent near 19th
Street. The venture didn’t seem too odd to him; he’d moved
from Arkansas, to Louisiana, to East Texas and finally to San
Angelo in those few years. |
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