trouble with rounding up cattle is you've got to have ones that are afraid of dogs and horses. a wild bull that size will climb right on top of and stomp a horse, kills dogs and coyotes for exercise. if you've not seen a bull that will charge a person or horse anytime anywhere for no reason then you're fooling yourselves. they are totally different animal than one that will drive till he gets mad or tired. this kind stays mad and won't stop stomping you until you stop breathing. think of them as a cape buffalo on drugs that ignorant people think of as pets. you could dart them maybe and drag them in a trailer if you're a good enough hunter to track one and get close enough. but what would you do with it? tame it? horse hockey.. there are not one out of a hundred pens would hold one. take it to a packing plant? ha ha ha , it'll tear the walls out before you get it killed. you could make dog food, if you could get it out of the brush after you shoot it. used to be REAL cowboys would shoot these without even trying to catch them because they kill range bulls for sport. truly wild cattle are like wild dogs, they have no fear of man at all. used to have hunts on the big ranches to kill these, ranch hands were and are killed every year by them while out working fence and stuff.
Gila National Forest, New Mexico: Wild cattle to be shot from helicopters
- Thread starter RugersGR8
- Start Date
Nah. I heard of fully semi auto weapons too.
Remember the Burnham Brothers of game call fame? Years ago, they sold hunts for wild cattle along the Rio Grande in South Texas. They claimed it was akin to hunting Cape Buffalo. I seriously thought about doing that before I ever believed I would get to go to Africa.
Before it was James Collins WMA it was the White Ranch. When that was going to be handed over to the wildlife department, there were a lot of feral cattle on it. They brought in some cowboys to round them up and my neighbor was one of the brush poppers brought in to do the job. Before it was all over and done with, he said there were about 7 steers that they could never get so they were given the instruction to shoot them. He said they were as wild as deer. Said you would be pushing through a thicket of wild plums or green briars and would see a head pop up with big eyes and ears, then the steer would bolt. Said it took several weeks to hunt down those final steers.
You know, if you can't get most of them rounded up and marketed, selling hunts to folks who wanna put a beef or two in their freezer would be a great idea. $100 a pop, everyone makes a little money and you have the most organic-ist beef you could get, lol. I bet they'd sell out and clear all of them.
Do you know what the cost of that would be on a large scale? Not to mention what was said above about the dangers. Unless it was hunters doing the killing, removal and processing all themselves. Processing plants wont take a dead bovine, and I aint shooting and hauling a 1000 pound cow out.
The meat is likely not desirable to eat either.
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Had an old cow once born and raised on our place, that was as crazy as a loon. Had her out on 80 acre pasture and if you stopped at the gate in front she would go through the fence in the back. Calves were as crazy as her. Dad finally got tired of it and hired three "cowboys" to catch her. She wasn't mean in the least just skittish. Guys finally chased her down and one of them roped her she turned his horse over and drug it till the cinch broke. Finally she couldn't run any more and decided to fight had both horses bloody before they finally got her choked down. Ran a couple of ropes through the front of trailer and drug her in with a pickup. When we got to stock yards she was graveyard dead. Never did figure what made her so wild.
Catching wild stock ain’t for the faint of heart and most if not all the team ropers seen on tv and at the rodeos don’t have the knowledge and horsepower to do it. I’m arguing in favor of something that won’t happen because those in charge have no knowledge of what is possible and probably didn’t seek advice from anyone with knowledge. Anyhow there’s lots of scary stuff being talked about and most of it I’m pretty sure was the result of inexperience. An experienced cowboy can manage his slack and angles and that coupled with sitting on a horse that really understands what is going on will prevent all this getting flipped and stomped stuff. Then, this experienced cowboy and horse should have experienced help. That help should be just as gritty. A bovine can only look or run in one direction at a time and once cowboy one is attached to one end then cowboy two should shortly be attached also. Gotta know what you’re doing. I don’t care if you’re the world champ of the world in the nice manicured arena. If you ain’t gone fast in the grass and taken a tree branch to the teeth then you won’t be successful catching the bad ones. Anyhow, it doesn’t matter anyway I reckon. It just gets under my skin when opinions get formed based on fake news or misinformation or even ignorance. It’s never good to see a horse drug down or the fella riding it getting a rope wrapped around himself or under his horses tail whilst a rank bovine is on the other end but those are all preventable. Y’all have a good one. Just know that I ain’t skeered of all that stuff and I’ll keep doing it as part of my living.
Good luck capturing the wild cattle there.
For those that want to learn a little something.
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