Wild Cow Hunt At Dude Ranch
Complicated By Culture Shock

By Curt Brummett

I think I'm beginning to understand how them mercenary soldiers feel, being called in to do somebody else's dirty work and then not being appreciated for their expertise. Not to mention the little messes that sometimes get left behind.

When you day work for the public (so to speak) you can get into some rather strange situations. Especially if you are trying to get established as a hand who can gather pert-near anything.

I got a call the other day from this resort. They had a few cows that had come from somewhere and no one claimed them. At first some of their guests thought they added to the atmosphere of the ranch-style dude outfit, so the manager didn't do anything in particular to get rid of the cows.

What caused the decision to be made to remove the cows was pretty exciting, from the way the managerette explained it.

Seems as though there was this couple on their honeymoon down by the lake in a somewhat secluded area having a picnic (so to speak). Two cows and a yearling bull walked out of the brush, headed for the lake to get a drink, and managed to disturb the picnickers.

The man tried to run the cows off.

The cows tried to run the man off.

Now, I'm not sure why the man would stampede towards a thousand pound cow (complete with horns designed to check oil) waving his pants. I'm not even not sure why a man would have his pants off while having a picnic.

Anyhow, as the little managerette explained it, the cow took it personal and she attacked.

The woman screamed, grabbed a shirt and started running. In the confusion, somehow or other the first cow ended up with a pair of Dockers on her horns, and the second cow had chosen for her apparel the lady's blouse.

I have yet to figure out if they ever got their picnic basket back.

Well, that's when they called me.

I was told I could have the cows and the yearling if I would just get 'em off the property.

I made a couple of calls and found out that since the cows were on the resort's property and no one claimed them, they belonged to the resort and the resort could give them away if they wanted to.

Greed is a terrible thing.

I loaded old Easy, called a friend to help me (he has some

pretty good dogs) and we headed for the resort.

When we got there, there was a bit of confusion.

One cow had fallen off into the swimming pool. The other cow and yearling had taken refuge on the tennis courts. As luck would have it, it was still early in the morning and not many people were out playing tennis. But the four that did happen to be there were a little upset. The yearling was wearing a really nice brown and white sweater, the cow had a tennis racket on her right front foot, and both was getting a little antsy.

Jackie closed the gate at the tennis courts and I was trying to figure out how to get the cow out of the pool into the trailer.

No problem…

I took the fence down and backed the trailer up to the kiddie end of the pool. We unloaded the horses, tied them to a bush and started our cow towards the trailer. We each had a rope on her and we figured when she 'got to the end of the pool, we would run the ropes through the trailer, take a couple of wraps and just work her up the steps and into the trailer. It took almost an hour, but we finally got her out of the water and into the trailer.

By now we had a crowd of yuppies and yuppettes standing around watching.

One of the yuppies walked to the pickup and tried to pet Jackie's black mouth cur catch dog. Jackie don't even try to pet his black mouth cur catch dog. By the time we got the yuppie and the dog calmed down and agreed to pay for a high-dollar watch that seemed to been ingested, the other two cattle were about to destroy the fence around the tennis courts.

We managed to get the pickup and trailer down to the gate on the courts and had no idea as to how we were gonna load either one of them.

I went back to the pool area to get our horses, trying to figure a way to rope a cow and drag her while riding a semi-spooky horse on cement. Things was not looking all that good.

We couldn't turn 'em out and rope 'em because there was just to much stuff and people in the way. I sure as hell wasn't gonna get in that tennis court afoot, and if we turned the dogs loose on 'em we would get arrested for cruelty to animals. Them dogs are not only very good at what they do, they are very vicious about it.

Jackie suggested we just shoot 'em and let the resort have a cookout, but that idea didn't go over all that well. At least not right then.

We finally backed up to the gate on the courts, opened the trailer gate, went around to the other side, spooked the cattle and they went around the courts about three times, then just jumped into the trailer.

We took the cattle to the sale barn and was pretty proud of getting a job done that could have turned into a total wreck.

Four days later, I got a bill from the resort. It was for the replacement of a sweater, a tennis racket, a pool cleaning and a scrubbing as well as resurfacing the tennis courts. And a tree of some kind that our horses had managed to eat while we were loading our cattle.

I told 'em not to worry about it, cause I was bringing those cows back and putting them where we found them. And they could sell 'em and pay for all that stuff.

The managerette liked to have passed smooth out when I told her that, but we did come to an agreement.

The next time something like that happens they will just shoot 'em and have a really big cookout.

I wonder if they will invite Jackie and me?