In Lonesome Dove, as Gus and Call are riding down the
street after a dustup in a local saloon in San Antonio, Gus says, “Call, I
guess they forgot us. The reason is, we didn’t die. If a thousand Comanches had
cornered us in some gully and wiped us out, like the Sioux just done Custer,
they’d write songs about us for ...
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With apologies to Randy Lewis, I don’t care what any ranch
rodeo announcer has ever said over the loudspeaker. Wild cow milking is not a
common, everyday occurrence on the ranch. While every other sanctioned event in
the WRCA has strong roots in ranch work, the idea that cowboys rope and milk
wild range cows regularly ...
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One of the biggest challenges of ranching and cowboying for
a living is the variety of tasks one must be proficient at in order to keep a
ranch going.
The list of necessary skills on a ranch is not short: range management, advanced accounting, market analyzation, doctoring, horse training, nutrition, roping, stock ...
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Have you ever considered just how unique the cowboy tools of the trade are? Take the saddle alone. Only stockmen use this tool and only the American cowboy uses one with a cantle, swells, and a horn. Drill down a bit more and there are myriad styles even within that narrow subset: Wade, Will James, Association, Buster ...
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Have you ever noticed that it seems like someone is always taking pictures at a branding? Or just how many photographers are either on assignment or freelancing at the World Championship Ranch Rodeo in Amarillo?
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“What a blessing it is to love books as I love them; to be able to converse with the dead, and to live amidst the unreal!”– Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay was not
a cowboy. He was an English writer, politician, and historian in the 19th
century. But his idea of what makes books special hits ...
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Work for nearly any ranch and one of the benefits will undoubtedly be free beef. If there’s one thing a ranch can usually spare, it’s home-raised, nutritious protein.
There are few other professions wherein your employer
basically provides you a perpetually full freezer of food. And, if you’re a
self-employed ...
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Ever since the average American left the field to
participate in the Industrial Revolution—and the subsequent fallout of a more
urbanized economy and society—we’ve been trying to get back to the country.
Think about it: where do many average Americans go on vacation? National Parks. They spend 50 weeks cooped up ...
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There’s a universal human drive—especially here in
America—to make our mark. We want to matter, we want to make a difference, and
we want to be remembered. Some build multinational companies, some seek
political office, some create art.
Ranchers brand their cattle.
The National Cowboy and Western Heritage ...
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As we head into the 25th Anniversary of the World Championship Ranch Rodeo, it got all of us thinking here at the office on how far WRCA has come since the very first idea of this organization, and how many people have been with us from the beginning. We would like to take this opportunity to thank those who were ...
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