A revealing look

I've encountered a dead cow or two in my day. I've seen the remains and noticed the changes over time. I've even followed the cloud of buzzards and shot a coyote over one as bait. That gave me a general idea of the process.

But I had no idea about some of the details until Robert at Blackfork set up his Dead Cow Cam. There's more to the process than you'd think.

Going Green

Uncle saw the same commercial as Mad Ogre, and he didn't like it either.

The commercial should have ended with a guy in a big ass Ford Earthf----r that gets 5 miles per gallon with seats made from baby seals blowing past the roadblock billowing smoke. And, for effect, the driver flips them off. I’d buy that car. Not this little compliant pansy car. You appeal to Americans in an ad by showing rebellion and general orneriness. Not passiveness, compliance, or sheepishness.

It didn't take long before reports of this beast started coming in from the wild.

Being an outdoorsy type, I decided to share some of my experience with the creature, performing its namesake act.


Here we have one preparing to burn a lot of diesel. To produce even more hippy tears, the boomlift could have been left running on the trailer.


This is a good example of the Ford EarthF---er upsetting the natural preferences of hippies, not only by directly burning diesel and producing stuff to float up into the atmosphere, but also by providing 20,000 pounds of concrete to replace some of Mother Earth's grass and dirt, all just to put up a fence to prevent our animal friends from roaming as their natures intended. Notice the gray clouds, Gaia was sad.


Here we have a pair of the creatures actually making Mother Earth cry and fight back. Not only were they creating hazardous emissions, but they were also involved in the process of using our peaceful bovine friends for non-vegetarian purposes. To make matters even worse, they were subjugating our equine and canine brothers to accomplish their vile deeds.


As you can see, Mother Earth tried to ensnare the more distant Ford to prevent this tearful act. She came close, but was unsuccessful when the Fords brought in back up in the form of a John Deere EvironmentDespoiler.

Back Seat Driving

This weekend, I found myself once again hauling a four bale hay trailer through a muddy, sloppy mess. Afterwards, I unhitched and chauffeured my Granddad and uncle around. Both gave me lots of helpful backseat advice of the "This part is rough, slow down a little, not that slow, speed up or we're going to be walking" variety. This went on until my Granddad suggested a detour, and when we got around a corner reached a swamp. Seeing our situation, my Granddad said "Oh. You're on your own now Grandson."

What I Did On My January Vacation

I know it's been a while since my last post, but I've got a pretty good excuse. I've been off gathering cattle.

My family has a place in Hamilton County. The north end of the place is rough and hard to get to. The brush and terrain make it hard to drive the cattle at all. So it turns out that there is some really wild stuff living over there, stuff that has never been caught, or four year old steers that have been caught just once. We've adapted our methods to get them gathered. We put out a round bale as bait and then another guy and I drove in and darted some of the wilder stuff and then radioed in for dogs and cowboys once the herd got spooked. It worked pretty well.


One of the trailers has a winch in the front. After they get tied down, they get hooked to the winch and untied. Once they get off the ground they get drug in. From there we can transfer them to a steel stock trailer when the winch trailer gets full.



We were well on our way to getting the whole bunch taken care of when the rains came. And kept coming. The six inch rain gauge was full before very long. This lead to some complications. The creek got up and we couldn't get the trucks across to load anything. I managed to back up the muddy hill with my stock trailer and get out. Paul managed the same with the winch trailer. My brother did not manage the same.

I tried pulling him out with my truck.




That was a no go, so out came the tractor, right as the rains got heavy.

That made all the difference. Anyway, the flood was the end of our bull catching adventure.

There were some exciting mishaps along the way. Paul took his trailer over a terrace and managed to un-attach it.


Even before the flood came, the creek was slick and steep. The entire trail to the north patch is rough and involves crossing two more creeks. We made it several times, pulling gooseneck trailers. After the flood, there was still hay that had to be put out using a four bale gooseneck trailer. I know Brigid likes her Chevy and JayG likes his Dodge, but for hard use in rough terrain, neither of the two .gov owned manufacturers build anything that will stand up to it like an F250. That answers that question.

I had one occasion to draw my sidearm. Wes and I darted a black dagger horn bull and had to follow it into the thick stuff. Bulls really aren't that distantly related to Cape Buffalo, with all of the exciting Peter Hathway Capstick imagery that that brings to mind. We found him but he wasn't all the way out. We were trying to tie him down when he came to and got up quickly. I was carrying my favorite commander length 1911 in an El Paso Saddlery tortilla holster and made a nice, smooth, four point draw and had that front sight lined up and ready by the time he was up and decided on flight over fight. I was proud that practice had paid off and my draw was smooth when it mattered.

Even if the productivity did end a little sooner than I would have liked, it was a pretty good working vacation.