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Welcome To The Bullpen
Retrieving the Bull
Claine Tanner
It was one of those afternoons when one would like time to stop. It was warm and the combined smell of leather, a sweating horse, as well as sage and cedar filled my nostrils. I had trailered my horse to the mouth of the cedar draw where the jeep road narrowed. Buck stepped out of the trailer and swept the country with his eye setting his internal God given GPS. We headed up the untraveled road. Cedars and sage crowded in along the road but thinned a little as we gained altitude. From my deer hunting days I automatically scanned the pockets of quaking aspen and scrub oak. The choke cherries were in bloom and I took a moment to remind myself of my boyhood outings with my family to gather choke cherries…..little red berries that juiced out to make the very best jams and jellies on the planet.
Buck was one of our best ranch mounts. He was buckskin in color and a descendant of mustang heritage. My father and grandfather had ranched the area for more than a hundred years. They interbred foundation brood mares and a stud or two with select mustangs caught off the high desert of northern Nevada. This unsophisticated breeding program along with rough ranch use produced some very fine offspring. My father has many stories of how they selected and captured the best of the wild herds that roamed the high mountain range of the ranch.
Buck and I were out that day looking for a bull that had not come in with the herd in the fall. He had been seen by another rancher after I had thought that he had winter killed.
I never ventured out on Buck but what I marveled at his natural and un pedigreed abilities. He was maybe a little over 14 hands at the withers and probably weighed about 1100 lbs when he was not being ridden hard during the spring and fall round ups. He had black hooves that did not need shoes and he had all the senses of a mustang along with that of a very good cow horse. His training had been rough and short with perhaps too much force but over the years he had been treated kindly and had come to respect my soft touch and manner. He still had the fire in his belly to lay his ears back on an ornery cow that had a new born calf and he could blow a snort at a buck deer in a thicket that would shake the berries off a cedar tree.
This Angus Hereford cross bull had been seen on the back side of Copper Mountain hanging around the springs. I had a couple of choices to get there. One was the long and easy route around the jeep road and the other was by way the crow would fly on a much shorter but rougher route. I decided to take the thick sage and the deep ravine route. I had my shotgun chaps on and they felt good as we pressed through saddle horn high sage brush. I never got into the high brush but what I thought of my dad. He knew just how much water each big ole sage brush robbed from grazing grass. He would check the wind and look the situation over and if he thought he could get away with a “controlled” burn out came the matches and soon the sage was ablaze. Several times the controlled burn got out of control but it just created even more green grass a year or two later.
I worried about the wash in the bottom of the ravine. There were only a few spots where a horse could get down the bank and then back out again. The willows and bushes along the bank were too thick to easily find a crossing spot. I rode out on a little ridge to see if I could tell where I wanted to cross and then headed into the thick brush again to that spot. It was as good a spot as any and Buck hesitated a little and stepped off the bank and sat down to slide down the bank into the creek. I rode up the creek a ways and spotted where I thought he could come out. I climbed off and tied up the reins and slapped him on the butt with the hope that he did not understand that I was sending him home. He lunged and pawed his way up the bank and slipped back a couple of times to start over but on the third try he made it to the lip of the bank and lunged onto solid ground. I yelled, "woe Buck" and he stopped and looked back and realized I was coming to join him.
The decision to take the short route was good and soon we were urging the big ole bull down the grown in road headed for the ranch. He did not want to go very bad and so we took it slow. I have had enough experience to know that I would rather be pushing him easily from behind rather than have him turn and start pawing dirt, daring me to come closer. Buck had dodged a few bulls and cows with calves in his day but with some space to do so. The narrow jeep road gave the bull the edge in a fight and I was satisfied to let him meander rather than annoy him into turning on me.
It was nice to enjoy the sunshine and the solitude of the area and be reminded that one must enjoy the little pleasantries of life as they rarely but naturally come.
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