Colorado Roundup

THE PILGRIM · #1 04-12-2014, 08:56 PM

With all the cow action going on, I will tell you about an extremely interesting event that I saw up in Colorado.
Up in N NM - S CO we got this narrow gauge railroad called the Cumbres Toltec. It goes from Chama, NM to Antonito, CO. Out at the middle is a station and place they serve lunch called Osier. You can drive to Osier up through the National Forest and I did. On the way out I took a different route and circled over to a train station called Sublette. Named for Huguenot mountain men brothers, not a lease situation. As I headed back North toward the highway, I see a this huge number of trucks and people.
They are parked around a huge multi-pen corral arrangement. There are trucks there from 18 wheeler double Deckers down to pickups with cattle frames.
I find a parking place and look around. These pens are filled with cattle and some are being loaded up the probably 6 of so loading chutes.
I find some folks to talk to and they told me this is an annual multi ranch round up to get the cows off the a national Forest summer grazing. This area is kind of high rolling country, it's pretty high, around 10,000. So it gets colder than a welldiggers *** in Montanny.
Several ranches are involved, some large, some small. The only official truck I saw was a CO Brand Examinator. One guy told me that he wasn't a part of this lease but they did round up one of his cows. When if was put in a Pen with a chute he would backup, load and go home.
This was a fairly complicated operation. The cows were held in a large entry pen. Then they were fed down into a holding alley. Then they were turned into the loading pens with the chutes. Absolutely utter chaos!
The round up itself was mostly done. I did see a couple of really young looking teenager wranglers bring in a few cows and one sheep.
It was a wonderful experience. Working Americans in action. What's not to like? And they had some great dogs. I do love dogs.
This lady I call The Colorado Cow Woman.

Marshwheeling · #2 04-12-2014, 09:58 PM

I used to take part in the fall roundups and other events at a ranch in the Cheyenne River breaks, north of Wall, SD. The rancher was a BMW rider and dirt biker we met at the Sturgis rally one year. He invited me and some friends out to his ranch for some dirt biking. That evolved into several trips each year, for roundup in the fall, calving in March, branding in May, and some racing and general monkeyshines during Rally Week.

We did the roundup on dirt bikes, which was a pretty good way to get down into the cedar draws and drive some of the semi-wild steers out. I wasn't much of a dirt rider when I started going out there, but I caught on fairly well. We would always spend the first day or two moving cows. After that we were free to trail ride, eat red meat, drink whisky, shoot a little bit, and maybe ride across the Cheyenne. It was more play than work, to be sure, but we always got at least a little work done.

Over the years, it evolved into more of a pure motorbike weekend; instead of five or six guys, we might have 30 or 40 at the ranch for a weekend, from Minnesota, Wisconsin, Colorado, Arizona and Montana. It was a lot of fun, maybe toomuch fun, but I kind of miss working with those cows.