At 83, Trader Buster Wheat
Says He’s Calling It Quits

By Colleen Schreiber

ALLEN, Kan. — Eighty-three year-old Oatis "Buster" Wheat doesn’t like what he sees in the cattle business today. Though reluctant to do so, he says he may retire while he can still get out with black ink in the ledger.

Wheat has been a trader, and a big trader at that, most all his life. During his heyday he bought 25,000 to 30,000 calves every fall in Texas and New Mexico, as well as off some of the largest ranches in Arizona and from the Deseret in Florida.

He traded mostly cattle, but says his best trade was actually made on an old jack mule which he bought for $22. Wheat sold him for $800 and the new owner later sold him again for $1200.

Wheat has been down and out about four times, and he says the same bank, Citizens National Bank in Emporia, has stood by him for the last 61 years through all those times. Perhaps it’s because Wheat proved time and time again that he was capable of coming back. His wife of 62 years has also been right there the whole time.

Mainly it took guts, he says, and an optimistic attitude. The worst year he remembers was 1972-73.

"We had a lot of cattle bought on contracts, and by the time we got those cattle picked up, they were cutting my throat," he says. He remembers losing $280 a head on about 1200 steers.

"I always said I would get on top of a hill and trade with anyone, anytime, any place, on any number of cows, and I guarantee I wouldn’t be cheated when I left there," Wheat says.

Over the years, the native Kansan has also operated substantial lease country in Texas and New Mexico. In the 1950s he had a ranch leased in New Mexico for 65 cents an acre where he ran a couple of thousand cows.

"You could run them fairly cheap there if it would ever rain," he says, and then adds, "It didn’t rain very often." A cow-calf operation, he found out, was more work than a yearling operation, and he sold out after five years. Calling Southern New Mexico a trader’s paradise, Wheat says he thought at one time about moving to Roswell or Albuquerque. That never panned out, and he says he’s glad now that it didn’t.

He started running yearlings on wheat in the Amarillo area in 1969. Back then it wasn’t unusual for him to run as many as 7000 yearlings in a season.

Wheat remembers his first trip to Texas as plain as day. His uncle Jeff Wheat needed to make a business trip to West Texas, and he offered to take his young nephew with him.

"We got to Amarillo, got a hotel, and my uncle told me to stay put," Wheat recalls. "About three a.m. he woke me up to tell me we were getting out of there. He had won $15,000 in a craps game and was afraid to go any further with his pockets full of money. Over the years, I’ve never minded gambling on cattle but I never cared about cards."

In addition to his Texas and New Mexico leases, Wheat also leases another 20,000 acres, some of which he has leased for the better part of 50 years, in the Flint Hills of Kansas, and owns another 6000 acres where he runs 3000 to 4000 head. Wheat bought his first piece of ground, 80 acres, on time from his uncle in 1939 for $39 an acre.

Wheat has never taken an order, but instead was strictly a trader, and over the years he built a reputation which enabled him to seal most of his deals with a handshake. After he had been buying a customer’s cattle for several years running, he would often buy the cattle sight unseen.

He’s bought cattle from one current customer for the last 35 years. He traded with the likes of Joe Panky, Cotton McDade and Buck Greer, among many others.

"I never had a contract from those old men that I bought cattle from in New Mexico. They were awful good to trade with. Their word was as good as gold," he says.

Initially Wheat kept all his own books, but after he forgot to draw a draft on a load of calves he’d shipped, he decided it was time to get a good bookkeeper.

Born in 1915, Wheat was raised four miles to the north of where he lives today at Admire. His father left there in 1923, moving his family to Granada, Colorado, where he took a job with Ragland Commission Company. He stayed there about two years and then went up to Eads, and from there to Brandon.

When the banks closed in 1929, Wheat’s father, like so many, lost everything. Wheat remembers that day quite well. "My dad had just bought a nice home at Brandon, but when the banks closed it wasn’t worth anything because no one had any money, so he traded the house for 30 old brood mares," Wheat says. He used that money to help move his family back to Kansas. Wheat’s uncle Jeff helped his father out until he was able to get back on his feet.

Buster and his cousin rode two ponies the 570 miles back to Kansas. He was 12 at the time.

"We rode 50 miles or so a day, and it took us 15 days," he remembers. "We had $20 between the two of us. A room cost a quarter and a meal a quarter. We stayed a couple of nights in hotels but we eventually smartened up. Along late in the afternoon, we would find a nice ranch house and ask to water our ponies. They usually ended up asking us to spend the night. We saved a lot of money that way."

Miles on a horse, he says, didn’t mean anything in those days, and adds that the country has definitely changed with transportation. He remembers driving cattle from Eads to the railroad at Lamar or LaJunta as well as the times he traveled to Kansas City to the terminal market with a load of cattle. He and his father would ride the caboose down and a passenger car back.

For 12 years Wheat was an auctioneer for area sale barns including Council Grove, Herington, Overbrook, Lawrence and Salina. He started out working for $5 a day, a small pittance especially when you consider he didn’t have the use of a microphone but rather had to yell out the bids. He quit auctioneering in 1946. It was then that he really got to trading big.

In 1972 Wheat built a feedlot with a capacity of 2000 head so that when he did get in a bind he had a place to go until he could get them sold. Despite that, Wheat always tried to follow his uncle’s advice.

"He always told me if I had a place for something, then buy it; if not, then don’t, and he was right," Wheat says. "If you have to ship them to a terminal market or a sale barn, you’re broke before you start."

Today he leases the yard and his son, Pete, manages it.

For years, Wheat bought all the cattle off the Deseret Ranch in Florida. Most recently he’s been getting most of his calves out of Wyoming and still a few out of New Mexico. The Wyoming calves, mostly blacks and black baldies, are better quality, he says; they’re gentler and he’s noticed that they have a capacity to gain better than the Florida calves.

Wheat prefers a four-weight calf but admits that oftentimes that size is hard to come by. The calves come the first of November. He figures to put on about 150 pounds over the winter, feeding a growing ration of ground hay, silage and four pounds of grain. They go to grass about the 15th of April. Good Flint Hills country, Wheat says, will run a calf to four acres. Generally, the stocker calves are sold to a Nebraska or Western Kansas feeder.

The pastures on which he winters are rested through the summer. Summer pastures are burned off in the late winter in preparation for new spring growth. Cost of gain on pasture has gotten awfully high, Wheat laments.

"National Farms leases all the land around here for whatever they have to give to get it," he insists.

Though still actively involved in the business, Wheat is losing his optimism. He fears that this year will finish off yet more of the small to mid-sized operators. His calves, he says, have to bring $75 to even get close to making a little money. The majority of the $63 fats, he estimates, are losing $150 to $175 a head.

"I saw this wreck coming, but I didn’t have the guts to quit," Wheat remarks. "Usually, when you get in these things, you can look out over the hill and think the next year is going to be okay. It didn’t work that way this year."

He blames the erratic and poor market in large part on consolidation and lack of competition.

Referring to the bygone days, Wheat says, "Trading back then was so much fun. It’s not like that today. Today there’s no trading involved."

Wheat believes most all the cattle in the future will be sold on the "dead market," meaning on the rail, a trend he doesn’t particularly like.

"The minute he gets hit in the head, you’re out. There’s no bargaining when they tell you what they’re going to pay for them after they’re dead and hanging."

Wheat says he’s been seeing this trend of consolidation and the shift to bigger corporate control for quite some time, basically ever since they closed the terminal markets in Kansas City and Chicago and the packers were allowed to come out in the open market.

"Before then, the market wasn’t regulated, but now only one or two people make the market," he insists. "I thought at one time I was a pretty big operator. Now the guy with 10,000 to 15,000 head, well that’s just peanuts, and the guy who has 500 or so head, well he’s out. I really believe that the era of the cattle traders and smaller operators and middlemen is coming to an end."

Two years ago, Wheat made up his mind to quit, but his retirement was short-lived. The next day he was up at his usual five a.m. to get down to the feedlot.

"I poked around there all day with nothing to do, and the next day I told my son, ‘I think I’m going to buy some cattle.’"

He’s talking about getting out again this fall. "I didn’t think you could ever get me to say that," Wheat says. "I’m just really scared of this market and I’ve never felt just exactly like this. I’m afraid if I buy cattle today, I might have to mortgage my land, and I don’t want to do that.

"It’s no trouble to trade or handle cattle when you’re making money," Wheat continues, "but it’s a hell of a job when you’re not making money, because you’re using the bank’s money. My uncle used to tell me that the only way traders would have any money in the cattle business was to die at the right time — that is when you’ve got some — otherwise you won’t have any."

Then he adds: "I ain’t going to be broke when I get out."