JALLEN wrote:Dadtodabone wrote:The thievery is getting bad everywhere;
http://www.sacpaaz.org/wp-content/uploa ... s-sign.jpg
My nephew put up motion activated cameras at every gate and guard, half of them were stolen. He replaced those with infrared units that have wireless transmitters, the thieves might get the camera but the cops get the thieves. Contrary to the perceived notion that the cows were headed south, most of the stolen cows that have been recovered were in California and Texas feedlots.
With drought you lose grazing and the weight comes off the cows, you have to buy hay or you get next to nothing when you sell, and thieves are running you ragged, idiots "out for a drive" leave your gates open on the lease or cut your locks on private range, and P
eta or other idiots are cutting your fences to "free" your cows, "hunters" take about 5 head a year as "spotted deer", "undocumented immigrants" have impromptu late night barbecues, cows get sick, cows are stupid and injure/kill themselves, predators take calves every year, idiots go "muddin' " in your stock tanks, fires caused by idiots "camping" or tossing cigarette butts out their car windows while "out for a drive" destroy range and kill cows, flash floods destroy culverts, runoff tanks and drown stupid cows. Other idiots drive around shooting up anything that provides contrast for a target, signs, shelters, gate posts, your truck and horse trailer.
Now you know why I joined the Army when I finished school.
After the aggrandizement of the cowboy life in movies and TV for the last 50-60 years, if it were easy, everybody would do it.
I grew up amongst and around ranchers here in the hill country, and I don't recall ever seeing a fat one. Most of them were leather skinned, just enough skin to cover their bones, and tough and ornery as they could be. The cows were even tougher!! No others need apply.
At least in Texas your can own or privately lease your range and protect it. As you know, west of the Rockies, in the Sagebrush States, the feds hold the majority of range as a "public trust". You can't buy it.
In Pima County, as an example, there is about 4.2 million acres of range. More than half, 2.4 million, is Res(Tohono O'odham Nation), 1.6 million in trust(State, BLM, Forest Service)leaving a grand total of 240,000 acres privately held. In good/wet years you can run about 1 cow to 35 acres, so approx. 7000 cows on private range. 7000 cows equal about 5.6 million cheeseburgers. Phoenix and Tucson eat an all products equivalent in 1 day.
Stockmen need to use public lands for range. That means you have to deal with the BLM(pardon me while I rinse out my mouth). BLM managers(may the fleas of one thousand camels infest their nether regions)are, I'm sure, decent folks outside their workplace. When at work, most seem to morph into the worst commie/pinko/tree hugging/environmentalists/tin pot dictators you can imagine, and they hold the wellbeing of Stockmen and their families, some of whom have held private range since the early 19th century, in their apparatchik hands. With every ABC fed agency creating propaganda to reduce and eventually eliminate beef consumption in the U.S. gaining and maintaining a lease can be stressful endeavor.
You can't just turn cows loose on your lease once you get it. To use it, you have to improve it. Roads, fire breaks, drainage/flood control, planting native grasses and trees, tanks and fencing all mandated by the lease, reviewed and approved by bureaucrats, paid for with private capital. It's called repaying the public for the use of their lands. Lose your lease, lose your improvements, lose your way of life.
Or you just get fed up, and sell your range to the likes of Ted Turner, and move on. The Teds never have a problem with the feds. Over-graze, introduce invasive grass species, pollute waterways, no problem.
End of rant.
