The Arizona Strip (1973)

this is the Arizona strip it's a mostly a flat uh desert strip of land in the north west corner of the State of Arizona it lies between the Colorado River and the Utah State Line most of the land is is flat desert type [Music] land there have been men come into the country and buy a little range who feel that they want to be a cowboy it takes someone with a lot [Music] of should we call it gut [Music] [Applause] uh when I was a boy most of our horses were were range raised uh didn't have any uh particular special breeding uh that we know today uh many of our saddle horses were were uh these old wild Mustangs that were so plentiful on the Range some of them were the best horses I've ever written and some of them you just never could break them they they always remembered their old wild ways and you never they never could overcome it [Applause] most of the ranchers are breeding Quarter Horses which are naturally adapted to work with cattle they're tough they're sure footed and they're alert and they take to to work in cattle real well it takes uh several years to make a good real good Cow Horse a lot of experience a lot of training a lot of patience and a lot of knowhow and in handling a horse to to make a good Cow Horse out of him now some horses are better qualified to naturally adapted to be a roping horse than than others and uh then you might find another horse that's uh adapted to be a cutting horse and uh we watch for these natural characteristics in the horse and and and train him for this particular thing that he's best adapted to do we save our best horses for Cil work such as roping when we're branding and and cutting cattle when we're selling and so forth [Applause] when you got on the Roundup you uh you look for a variety of things you uh you check your range very closely for what it's uh cost you over the winter to run your stuff your cattle air if you're Gathering up in the spring then you have to watch very close that you don't drive the cow away from a calf you may see a cow off here somewhere and uh you've got to be absolutely certain that you don't bring that cow away without a calf if you're bringing them up to brand or and to move off the range to a winter R to a summer range so uh any any Cowboy can tell if a cow is being sucked and if her bag if she's got a fresh bag and it shows that she's got a calf somewhere why she might fool you around for half a day and won't go to it but you just have to wait until she does get it or just find it and that's very hard to do [Music] and another thing a cow will do they'll leave a cow to Babys set they might be four or five cows with their calves way off here several miles from the water but they'll leave one cow there with this bunch of calves and the rest will go into water and then feed back and that night this cow the state will go into water and it's uh it's amazing to a lot of people this cow might leave this calf down there 5 miles and she'll come in and get her drink Fe back but she'll go right straight back to that Cal she knows exactly where she left [Music] [Applause] [Music] a [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] w used to be that we'd round up uh a cattle around a water hole like this and we'd have enough Cowboys that we just hold the cattle right here and we put a couple of fellas the best ropers in in the herd to rope the Cales and drag them out to The Branding fire but now we we've gone a little more modern we'll drive our cattle down to a CR to do the Browning because we just don't have that much help and and it's makes a lot easier job of it to put them in the [Music] ground I remember when I was a boy and I uh first began to ride this range we there were no fences it was hard for the oldtime Cowman to to think that they could run cattle any other way than on the Open Range however came a time when there was so much competition for grass and forage and and water between the cattle and the sheep and the wild horses that uh the government DEC they were going to have to St take a a stand on this thing and uh do something about abusing the the range the way someone was being abused at that time so the tailor bill came into effect and the range was divided into individual allotments the man had to fence his allotment and keep his cattle right there and in that particular area many of the Cattlemen felt that they were going completely out of business it just this just wouldn't work and now they just couldn't understand understand how it would be possible to hold their cattle right in one particular area but there were good things about this of course we didn't like the fences but uh as we were uh forced to to go this way we found that there were many advantages because a man then could run the kind of cattle he wanted he could work them the way he wanted to work them and without competition from uh someone else and however it's a it's a little hard for some of us to have to accept the fact that uh there are fellows in the working out of the BLM officers that have a college education without practical experience and it's hard for us to to accept them trying to tell us how to how we can run our cattle we who have been raised on this rain spent our lifetime here feel that we have our ideas that are hard to change and and we feel that we have got along real well uh this is the big complaint that we have but uh most everyone now is uh pretty well satisfied with with things as they are and take it as a whole I can see that there's quite an improvement in in Forge conditions and range conditions uh many of us don't run as many cattle as we used to but uh we run a better quality cattle and we're raising heavier Cales we're actually selling more pounds of beef than we were when we had had more cattle and they weren't good of quality and they they didn't get as heavy as they they do now well what's happened the older men have about all died off since the tailor act has come in are gone out of business now I I went out of business a year ago because I had no boys to follow in my tracks most of the people that are in the cow business now are boys that inherited from their parents and they inherited again from their grandparents back to the front end of it around in this end of the country a good share of the cattle was started from the marman herd cattle it was raised here to pipe and here on [Music] the properly run these younger people could have a lot better cow life than they're going to have the way it's being run so these young people have to go have a job on the side and they punch cows Saturday and Sunday and they work too fast and then they got to get back to their job on Monday and they uh they either ought to have enough cattle to give them a full-time job or they shouldn't have any c but uh then the the grz service comes along and I have a winter range set up for 132 cows they cut me down to 53 well you can't run 53 cows cuz that's not a living so I just sold out to another man that had a little bigger units than I did I didn't have any kids that wanted mine so I sold out to a man that made his operation enough bigger so he could afford to stay in [Music] business back in 1935 there were at least 30 homesteaders right in this area all of them are gone now but me and uh they uh they sold out some of the larger ranchers around here and they they didn't all leave at once just kind of dwindled over a period of about 15 years and I think there were a few left yet uh about 10 years [Music] ago and the folks came in here [Music] in January of 1924 and uh we've been here ever since at the time that we came in here there's quite a bit more rainfall in this area and this range grass that's about 2 in high now was about 18 in high in those years and oh the main reason for the the conditions of this area the day is more drought and overstocking I would say and uh this is not a [Music] uh a normal year by a long shot one of the main reasons why a lot of those homesteaders had to leave here the uh they didn't get uh even culinary water on the on their ground they drill drilling facilities back there were mostly homemade and uh even though there was a a commercial rigging here at the time a lot of them couldn't afford to hire him even the $3 foot the the way they powered him was just muscle and tie a a stick in this rope and jerk it by hand and your biceps were the walking beam of the well so there are some wells in this uh Valley over here to the north that guys drilled in rock up to 90 ft down then got water those Wells are still producing this well right here is 32 ft to the water strata it's a it's a weak flow it's running water all right paper thin in River gravel on top of shell yeah when we first came here I we tried farming and various crops s corn myo Ma and other field crops and then they didn't do too well because of the uh the way the rainfall was and uh we found out later on that uh small grains such as wheat and rye would do better here and uh a few years later it just kept getting a little bit drier and the moisture wasn't dependable so we finally just went to livestock exclusively and uh that seems to be the best crop and the native grass here that you can can grow here without irrigation now with irrigation you can grow anything that this growing season uh in this area is long enough for but without irrigation no some years yes but you can't depend on them the uh wheat that they planted here did real well for a few years and then as it got drier the uh the winds would uh blow away the top soil and this happened about uh oh two or three times in a row and I think that was the factor why they [Music] quit there's lots of erosion in this country that's filled up with thistle and a cow can be going along the edge of this wash maybe that calf will just walk off in them Thistle and can't get out and if the cowboy don't watch that he'll lose a c and of course all this erosion it would be expensive of course it cost a lot to to erode it because we fed the vegetation all off in the range but if we would stop the get the vegetation back and Dam off these washes then we raise our uh our water table and we'll have twice the feed that there is on the same area now and if we're going to have some young people raising be Forest e we got to encourage them by having some feed to run on [Music] it's a Cook's duty to do all the cooking for no matter how many men you got and to move your outfit the range boss or the ride boss will say now we're going to have dinner over the pipe so as soon as he can gather up all his stuff from breakfast and then he hitches up and he his funky and uh sometimes they have two wagons sometimes only one throw all the beds on and close their Chuck Wagon box and put their cooking tools in the wagon and they'll go on over the pipe they might be there 2 three hours before the Cowboys get in but they'll have all this time to get a good dinner ready for them one thing uh that makes a difference is you would never see a package you bisqui in an old time cow outfit then for this many people you'd have at least two big bread ovens have a full trench clear along under that line and a tripod hanging over it to have different sets of pots and have coals for your dutch ovens he's going to put that Dutch oven there now and put a lot of cold underneath and a lot on top with this Breeze blowing if you don't put some sand up around the bottom so it don't blow under it he'll burn them on the bottom but maybe he knows that I suppose he does but there'd be a real big deeper oven course he's got a roast in we never used to cook meat in a roast in an oven we'd uh roast it by running a rod through it and hold it by the coal and just spin it around let it slowly cook from the coals and uh it'd use a big oven just for frying meat of course it didn't take much to fry that meat cuz we wouldn't eat anything but second year Lin heers was good and fat meat was tender juicy nice to cook but this uh this is quite an authentic old cupboard they've got here this mess wagon that's that's pretty good for these times car carry dry beans mainly them little white navy beans and uh then we carried all kinds of dried fruit and rice with raisins we use lots of rice with raisins you would never have this Lumber to make your coals out of because it uh it just doesn't make too good a cold or it doesn't last long enough Oaks or Pino Pine make the best cold but that's pretty authentic the way he's working there this is uh that all that canned vegetables and what have you that's pretty modern we started using canned goods oh maybe 25 years ago but the other thing was you see most of this range this desert range could be used pretty well with a wagon but all the mountain range had to be used with pack outfits when you use a pack outfit you're very limited as to what you can take and most of our ranges was pack outfit ranges in fact a lot of the desert was we never had pies and cakes we just had uh sarum we used to call it lick that's sarum made out of cane you know and then honey we'd have lots of honey and uh just dip our old biscuits in the beef grease and put sarum on it or honey it made a pretty good dessert you old Roundup cook used to used to keep his pot rack right directly behind the wagon there and the the area between the fire and the wagon was his territory and the Cowboys were supposed to stay on this on were not supposed to get on that side of the fire while he was cooking I've uh several times when the old cooker threatened to wrap that pot hook around him old boy's neck because he got he got in his way [Music] there it was quite a Temptation sometimes it was real hard for some of us boys to stay on our side to farm especially on a cold evening when a little of that heat fell mighty good he set up so as the smoke blowed away from him and the table yes true so the Cowboys had to smoke aside the fire to stand by they stood by it yeah that was a something that c was real particular about get out and check the wind to see which way that wind was blowing before he set up we had an old boy cooking first one fall out here op PT Coleman and he was just a shade Western that old chap was and Miss Gilbert Heaton this boy that's been here all day he got on a gray horse it was a little bad to Buck one morning just about time he come daylight and he was off quite a little ways but that old horse broke into two with him when he stepped up on him went right through camp that old PT Coleman got his shovel and he just whipped that horse over the head and everywhere else when he didn't hit the horse he had Gilbert until he got him away from that fire I'll tell you it is a pretty Western scene [Applause] [Music] [Applause] that's probably about all we'll need AIS for us [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you [Music] ready W well this morning we're going to Brand the C we have on the crow this is the really hard job about the livestock business is wrestling these wiry Cales is is rough and it's it's hard work but we uh we'll go into the herd we generally will assign one man to do the roping and uh we like a man that's careful and quiet in the herd so they doesn't get the cattle stirred up now we have a few few cattle with a different brand and the majority of the cattle have on them and we we try to to get them with their mother so that we're sure that we got the right calf or the right [Music] cow this is not too much of a problem with us because most of the C with the one brand but we uh we heat our irons in the [Music] fire uh we'll we drag the calvs up and we tie them we we generally tie three legs so that they will lay there and then we brand most of these Cals will be branded on the left ribs we put a brand we call the 7x on the ribs and this is an identifying brand any any animal with that brand on uh shows that that's our animal this is this is really a a trade mark or a mark of ownership this brand is recorded with the state of Arizona which is according to state [Music] law that any person running range Livestock on the Range must have a brand recorded with the state for the reason that if there is ever an argument over ownership you can go back to this recording and and prove ownership then we aark the Cales we we cut a certain Mark in the ears of the calf and this is a means of identification when you're riding on the Range and you see an animal with his ear Mark well that's belongs to so and so it belongs to us if it's our he Mark and this the this sometimes uh in the spring of the year like we are here some of these cattle have uh long hair rough hair and it's hard to read a brand so the first thing you look for is an ear Mark and then another thing we will do is vaccinate the C for black leg and also for shipping fever and pneumonia which takes care of any any shock of handling the Cales at at this time and then we will dehorn the Cales uh for the reason that if we you get a bunch of cattle together and if they have horns they're always hooking each other and and bruising each other and and it's really a severe thing and in a week these Catt will PR well forgotten all of this branding and dehorning that we're doing to them and they'll go right on growing one thing that uh we do that some wonder if necessary that's we castrate all of our bull make steers out of them this is a quite a severe operation if you if your cows get up five or 6 months old or older it's hard on [Music] them let old Mike get on the horse and do some roping because you're just going to work yourself to death here to try and wrestle these Cales that's a young man's job he acts like a young man yeah he does he's a good that's your way boy just drag him in close to the fire what say just drag him in close to the fire that's the way all right I'll take him up a little shorter and bring him right up there okay you got it ready to turn loose no they all got to be dehorned ear Mark you better wait a little bit on we got a lot of them here yeah about to catch up yeah don't want to work these boys too hard goad you do when you same old way you just drag him up just drag him up you to time or did you hold no just hold one man on or two men to him just Ling down generally had two branders and and uh somebody air marking and castrating all [Music] time we've done that a few times but lots of time we work kind of short-handed so we we just got the habit of doing this easier all right so yeah it's easier time [Music] down got plenty of help to hold them good we don't have any more piging string [Music] there's a lot of pleasure in being your own boss and running a bunch of cattle and I can see these young men I don't blame them I I'd stay in just as long as I could if I was young no matter how bad it was to run I'd still stay in the cow business if I possibly could well I thought I wanted to be a wild cowboy and learn how to rope and to ride I thought I wanted to kill wild Indians and hang their scalps by my side I thought I wanted to eat my meat raw and carry my pistols by twos I never once thought I'd get homesick and down to them Chuckwagon Blues but now I want to go home to my daddy and I long to see my old mall I want to tell my big sister that I ain't going to be no Outlaw I want to trade these high heel boots off for a pair old bro G shoes cuz I'm willing to walk if I have to cuz I'm just down with them Chuckwagon Blues