You Ain’t No Cowboy If ‘An You Ain’t Got No Horse!

Today’s post really has nothing to do with fishing… It’s just one of the many funny stories from my not-so-distant shady past when I moonlighted as a farmhand. Actually, to be more accurate I was the assistant to the farmhand.  In other words, I was the one who got stuck doing the jobs nobody else would do...


Most of my duties on the farm centered on the heard of almost-purebred Angus and Heinz 57 variety steers. Over several years I became quite accomplished at calling cows in for their morning feed and fixin’ fences.


Of all my adventures, moving the herd from one wooded “pasture” to another was the most eventful!  My job was always to bring up the rear, keeping the herd together and moving along.  I was also the one keeping an eye on the misfits of the group, and there was always at least one… a blind calf, a bull that injured himself in the line of duty, or a cow with an infected foot.

I would like to say that my stint on the “ranch” qualifies me as a cowboy. All of this wranglin’ would have been much easier with a horse and a lasso. Sadly, that wasn’t the case.  On countless occasions I stumbled for miles through thorn bushes, ‘cross creeks, up and down hills… all on foot!


At the end of one drive, after counting the cows about ten times (because counting 80 head of black cattle is like counting 80 identical marbles that never stop moving) we discovered one calf was missing.  So back to the woods we went…


Fortunately, it didn’t take too long to find the poor little thing that got lost in the timber.  This little feller had been badly injured and was pretty scared.  Catching an animal that doesn’t want to be caught is not an easy task and it eventually came down to us cornering it in a particularly nasty patch of multiflora rose.


Finally my associate tackled the calf and exclaimed, “Damn, I wish we had a rope.”  Then he looks up at me and says, “Take off your belt… we’ll use that!” Farmers are resourceful people who will use just about anything that will get the job done and this was no exception.

So here I was leading this wounded calf with my belt in one hand and the other holding my pants up.  After the longest half-mile ever I have ever walked we got him back to the barn.  The vet took care of him and he ended up being just fine, the only reminder of his injuries was a patch on his hind end that didn’t have any hair. For the rest of the season he was known as Patch.


Sure it would have been nice to have horse, and believe me I pleaded with the boss for an equine assistant many times.  We didn’t have a rope either, so we just used my belt and made it work.  So it is in life, sometimes ya just have to find a way to make do with what ya got…