blog: ON RIVERS AND RANCHING

The Move

By Bryce Andrews, 7-28-08

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Four-thirty a.m. is dark, even in the middle of July, and so I drive the moonlit frontage road to Ted’s house where light spills out of the stable door and the horses stand with their heads low.

Ringo is a big paint whose only job for a while has been increasing his girth. His unshod hooves are rough-edged and massive. To get around his belly I have to let my latigo out as far as it will go and haul hard on the cinch to reach the first hole.

With the horses in the trailer, we drive through Deer Lodge and up the road toward Orofino. There is a campground at the end of the line, and when we get there most of the others are waiting in the brightening light of dawn. We make fourteen in all, from four different ranches, and an assortment of dogs jog switchbacks around the legs of our horses.

After crossing into the pasture we spread out and begin to ride through the forest. Although I cannot see more than a dozen yards into the curtain of young trees, I know there are riders on either side of me. I can hear Ted off to the left—can recognize the loud way he whistles at cattle. When I come to a small bunch of pairs I start them moving by riding close and saying “Hey—hey—hey!” They trot away obliquely.

We gather the pairs in a creek bottom before starting the drive to our next Forest Service pasture. The cows mill and look for their calves. They bawl under what threatens to become a very hot sun. With the riders zigzagging behind them and the dogs nipping at their heels, a couple hundred pairs start heading for the saddle east of Orofino Mountain.

I don’t stay with the main herd. With two other riders I head southwest around the far side of the mountain. We walk together for about a mile and then split up. Julie and Travis ride downhill to dislodge a bunch of cows hanging in the trees around a spring. I head Ringo up, toward the top.

Orofino is looks like a gentle mountain from the valley, a humped swelling of the earth. It catches enough snow on the north side to grow trees, and elsewhere has accumulated soil enough to grow grass. Although there is no peak, Orofino is mountain enough that as I climb the steep, cobble-scattered slope it gets hard to imagine a cow hauling herself up here to graze, especially when the nearest water is so far below.

I remember, though, how Julie told me that the top of Orofino was broad, gently sloped and covered with good grass. “Make sure you ride all the way up,” she said, so I do.

Ringo soaks himself with sweat. It runs, darkens the cuffs of my jeans and smells like wet dirt. On one of the steeper pitches he remembers how easy life was before I climbed on. He balks. I kick him forward. He breathes hard through his nose and shifts weight to his hind legs. I am ready when he rears. Though it must make quite a picture from below, the actual motion is gentle. Ringo stands up and I lean forward. When we come down he’s tractable enough to go on. 

Fifteen Red Angus pairs loiter on Orofino’s highest nob. Half the hill is forested, and the cattle graze along the tree line. The nearest cow hears something, maybe Ringo’s hooves clattering against stone, and raises her head. I have just enough time to recognize the high-headed mien of an obstinate cow before she turns and bails into the trees with her calf and the rest of the bunch in tow.

The cattle are walking down the wrong side of the mountain. To head them off I trot Ringo in a big circle thought thick timber. I pick the best path I can find, but it isn’t very good. Dead branches snap explosively against us. Low-hanging live ones whip me in the face. Ringo plunges over deadfall.

When the going is miserable like this, I take comfort in the fact that I can follow these cattle anywhere. A horse and the skill to ride it make me their equal for crossing country.

The chase ends when I come even with the lead cow. She stops and stares as I ride a little farther to approach her head on. She turns awkwardly on a little game trail, and then starts back the way she came. The other cows follow suit with their calves in tow, and I herd them toward the edge of the forest. As I listen to their hooves thudding on pine needles it strikes me as strange and precious that no motor has found its way up here. We sometimes use dirt bikes and four-wheelers on the open pastures of the lower ranch, but the mountains are too rough for wheels.

The pairs emerge one at a time into the sun and begin descending the grassy side of Orofino. Behind them I sway with Ringo’s smooth walking rhythm. I hear grass swishing as we part it. I am glad that there is nothing better than a horse for this work.

I trail my little bunch off the mountain and mix them with the rest of the herd. It’s impossible to get a reliable count, but I’d estimate that more than three hundred pairs are on the move. The allotment looks different from behind a herd this big. Noise prevails where there was silence. A dull stink replaces the tang of pine. We cross little streams that I remember being picturesque, finding the grass around them beaten into mud and the water thoroughly fouled.

At the top of a hill, we funnel our herd through a gate into the North Fork pasture. I know it’s gorgeous country—a string of small hillside parks, shady draws and nameless springs that culminate in a massive grassy bowl just below the continental divide. These places were quiet, verdant and empty when I walked the fence a week ago. I wonder how the cattle will use them, and how the North Fork will look when we move on in a month.

Week 9

“On Rivers and Ranching” is a blog by a ranch hand working on the Clark Fork Coalition’s Cottonwood Creek Ranch to unite conservation and ranching practices in the middle of the nation’s largest Superfund complex—the upper Clark Fork River. Click here for more.

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