Why They Do It

by Bennett Owen

“If a rancher doesn’t have a near-death experience about every two years, he’s doing something wrong.”

            Uncle Robert       

The last time I visited Uncle Robert he was out in the barnyard butchering cows to keep his family fed for the winter. Not 12 hours earlier, one of those beasts had bolted in a loading chute, dislocating my Uncle’s shoulder. As he skinned the animal he’d wince and chuckle about “how good revenge would taste all winter long.” Robert’s closing in on 75 years old and embodies the Code of the West.

The art, the movies, the lifestyle, the celebrations…the landscape, the history…these and so many other things are what we love about the west and it’s all well and good.  But at this very moment, as I muse over a cup of coffee and stare out over rooftops, my Uncles are out on horseback a three-day cattle drive, bringing the herd down for calving. As I write this, the temperature in Polaris, Montana is four degrees.  There is no mystique in bone-chilling cold like that.

But a very rare form of freedom is their rich reward. The Mannix Ranch, courtesy the Montana Stockgrowers Association.  Check out the bull at the 4:50 mark. Nobody’s going to be climbing on to that monster’s back.