Adventures of the Interstate Roper

01/29/2023

It’s been quite a while, but signing in as the Interstate Roper again for this post.

Yesterday we started off the steer jackpot season in Las Cruces with the Three Crosses jackpot.

Baby Girl has two steers again this year, one Charolais and one Limmi. One white, and one black. She decided to go with a Marvel theme naming them this year and named the white/blonde one Thor and the black one Loki.

Now right away I had a feeling that naming one after the bad guy in the movie, the god of mischief, might not be the best, but it was her steer so I figured it’s not really any of my business.

Now ol Loki was a little watchy and she had spent lots of time working with him, and lots of time messing with his hind legs and feet in particular to make sure when it came time to get him clipped and fitted for showing he wasn’t going to try and do some permanent dental work to Audra Lyon who graciously continues to help her out and fit her steers.

We spent a frigid couple of hours Thursday night in Thor and we’re back at it in the balmy 18 degree Friday morning on Loki.

He was a champ, for the first time in a trim chute he behaved very well, but the way things go Shayly started fading fast and by noon was sick as dog and just feeling crappy.

Ok, we’ll skip the gymkana awards tonight and rest and medicate and we will be go to go Saturday morning.

Saturday morning we’re up at four, catch steers and load up and are heading to Cruces with a sense of excitement cause these steers look pretty good and for Shayly because we promised her we would stop and get some man sized meds for her cold.

By 7:20 we are at Southern Fairgrounds, feels like we just left, and back up to start unloading, looking forward to a fun day hanging out with show friends and family and getting some experience on these steers.

When I opened the the trailer gate ol Loki was a little wide eyed but hey, he’s a genuine club bred show calf and not like her first ranch calf that lead us on a six day adventure that ended with roping on I 25.

Well, that thinking was was quickly proved wrong as we hit the ground and he spun a couple of circles with me trying to keep his head up. We danced and he very gracefully managed to smear me down the side of the trailer next to us, got his head down and pulled away and left skipping across the parking lot.

My first thought was @$$&&$$&$$$&&&$$&&&&&??!&&!?! Oh hell, now I’m going to get my I 10 roping badge.

He did slow down in the corner of the fair grounds and I trotted quickly down and slipped through the east fence. Now when I say fence I mean the two, three, occasional four strand barbed wire fence that is draped loosely along some T posts till it corners at the chain link fence on the south.

As I approached whispering what a good boy he was, and don’t be scared, Wife and Baby Girl and a fellow show dad approached from the other side. Nothing can go wrong now because he is after all a club calf, not a ranch calf and he will settle down and we will go on about our business.

WRONG!!! Living up to his name as the god of mischief he proceeded to blow through the two strands of wire leap a sand dune and nearly crash me and is now heading south east across the desert with very little between him and Mexico.

Thinking, well at least we won’t be be roping on the interstate today, I started making phone calls as did fellow show dad John Frost. We loaded back up and we’re about to head home to saddle a horse and come back, all the time I’m trying to do math in my head, 2 hours home, 30 minutes to catch and saddle, 2 hours back, probably ought to stop and get a passport because we are going to end up in Mexico, divided by the speed of a corn fed waspy steer… carry the one… add two…. Yep equals screwed.

Then enters family friend James “Shorty” Montoya. He returned my call and says “ there’s horses at the ranch, saddle whichever one you want and saddle me one and I’ll be there in an hour”. Well that improves our odds so, head south to his place and catch two horses and I find a saddle that I think I can fit my comfortable show day farmer boots in and maybe not hang up in and start grabbing ropes, tie strings, extra can of s***f, what about that passport🤔

When Shorty gets there we load up in the catch trailer and begin our recon, and as we pull into the fairgrounds I saw the coolest thing ever. Standing in the back of a pickup, leaned across the hood are two young men about 8-10 with binoculars glassing the pasture for signs of the steer. Their dad had posted them up there. ( Thanks again John Frost).

We took the time to build us a wire gate, complete with a gate post and stays in the corner, pulled out cinches tight and rode off to see if we can trail him up.

Two hours later we came to the conclusion that in that amount of country, with cows and cow tracks all over, our best bet is to call in the Calvary and come back tomorrow and gather the whole pasture and hope that he would have found some of the other cows during the night. It would be a million in one miracle if we stumbled over him in the brush and sand dunes.

I break out my phone to tell the girls the plan as we ride back towards the fairgrounds when out of the corner of my eye I spot Shorty waving frantically and pointing. I saw a flash of black calf and a halter and hang up and jerk my rope.

We managed to get him between us and I talked real nice to him, “ he buddy let’s go home, easy buddy, easy you little $&@$$, I’m gonna choke the ever loving $&&&?!& outta you if you don’t settle down “. Ya know real nice.

I got close, and took my shot…. Bounced off the back of his head!!! ( probably because it was a brand new rope and wasn’t frayed and didn’t have a baling wire burner)😂

Luckily Shorty was on his game and within fifty feet had him roped and brought to a stop. I grabbed the halter lead and then we began a mile long training session through the sand dunes and mesquite about how to probably lead.

While she didn’t get to show and was disappointed not to get to hang out with our show friends and family we considered it a win to come home with everything in the trailer that we started with.

And now I’m off to Tractor supply to pickup a nose ring to install in Mr Loki’s nose this morning so that we may continue our jackpot adventures next weekend. Thanks again to John Frost, all of our show family and friends for the help and prayers, and a huge shout out to Shorty for the horses, saddles, trailer and the round winning, clock stopping head loop!!

Interstate roper signing off…

11/16/2021

Apparently I underestimated the severity of the case of assholeitis this bull had. I didn’t get to treat him yesterday because I was fighting other cases of assholeitis in a different pasture and crawling around on the ground trying to catch my breath after getting bucked off. But early this morning I got to treat the soreness and this bulls assholeitis with a second injection of nylon.

11/09/2021

Got’em thru the gate, so it’s break time.

11/05/2021

Quite an educational day today. Mr. Bull learned that if he didn’t follow the classroom/pasture rules, there were consequences. Payaso learned than if we have a bull roped and I ask him to do something he probably should do it for the health of both of us. While not on the interstate, we did start across from the church in downtown Cuchillo. All’s well that ends well though I guess!

12/01/2020

12/01/2020

Greetings and well wishes from the Land of Entrapment and Benevolent Dictators! Amidst all this China Virus BS I haven’t gotten too much written. Not that I haven’t had some adventures, just haven’t had time to get them down what with sneaking around to underground rodeos and stock shows and such. Those take at least twice as much effort because you have to keep your head on a swivel looking for the benevolent dictator, ….. ummm the governor’s lackeys to see if you are fixing to get shut down.
However, life goes on, and as such more stories and wrecks happen. What follows weren’t wrecks per se, but kept life interesting in this time of over bearing lockdowns.
Our fall works were speeded up by the fact that we grew no grass this year, and are in the middle of a serious drought. My “good” horse was plagued by some sort of ailment that rendered him crippled and unable to use. Soooo, we have a 9 year old, kid’s horse (that has bucked me off and the Bug off and generally doesn’t act like a kids playday horse) that needs some tuning so she can be sold and go on down the road.
With my trusty crew of my 11 year old daughter, my mother-in-law, and two semi trusty dogs, we head out to gather the 17 plus section pasture, and move them across another pasture, across the highway to the pasture for the winter. What could go wrong?
As we trotted across the pasture, I dropped the Bug and her grandmother (Patches) off and said that since this half Arab half Quarter horse former playday horse needed the most miles I would take the outside circle.
All was well until I met up with a couple a pair of our cows, plus about 10 hd of the neighbor’s cows. The neighbor’s cows, aren’t inherently bad, they just happen to be mostly F1 type cross bred cattle that have only been gather with a motorcycle and have no respect for horse, fence, or human. Fun type of cows.
I got most everything headed the right way, but there was that one 600-700lbs unbranded, never been scratched bull calf that wanted to veer off and lead everyone else astray. Me and my half Arab pony were having lots of conversations about running up and down these steep canyons to keep these cattle headed the right way, mostly because she had never been asked to do more than trot around the pen for thirty minutes and love on whoever had treats to give her.
About the 3rd time this bull calf decided to go renegade, I kinda lost my patience and je**ed my rope. Just after I started building a loop, I kinda remembered that I had never “successfully” swung a rope off of this horse, let alone roped anything off of her.
But, tempers were high, all around, so we made a run at it anyway. I just had to take a swing or two on the right side, shake the coils on the left side in her face a once or twice, and that kept us running kinda straight.
When we finally got into optimum range, I fired, ripped the slack and thought, Ohh p**p. I took a couple of quick half-hitches over the horn and stepped off and snapped the heavy duty carabiner that I keep on my saddle to the bottom ring on the bit and around my rope so that Fatima the half Arab would stay facing the rope, and just kinda walked away so she and that bull calf could train on one another.
After about five minutes, both were pretty give out, and behaving pretty well so I went on down the rope and tied that bull calf down.

That is only about half the story, but I will continue later…

08/17/2020

I’m asking those who love their horses to post one picture of your horse.
No description.
The goal is to flood Facebook with positives not negativity!
Please COPY the text, put a picture on YOUR page and let’s enjoy these beautiful pictures.

08/11/2020

Articles keep being published about rural living people and their general refusal to conform to society rules regarding Covid 19.

Well, I see your Rona Risk and I raise you our lifestyle and our livelihoods.

Plenty of us have close calls every year, closer calls than any Rona. We drive hundreds of miles, at 80 mph, just to a job site and back. We get on young horses that are actually reincarnated WWII kamikaze pilots and go “cruise around” the warmup pen at a roping or a rodeo, “because he’s gotta learn someway”. We walk across grain bins, we run heavy equipment without formal training, and we loophole CDL licensing laws when we’re 16 years old.
We carry fi****ms on our personage that may or may not be registered, and all of us have looked in the mirror and asked what would happen if ourselves or someone else was under violent threat. We run through border towns and walk on foot through hot zones the Border Patrol is working, because the pipeline is under construction and that’s our job. There’s us that go out in -50 because the livestock need fed, and we who go out in +115 because the livestock need fed. We sit out on a drilling pad alone for 16 hours to watch the flare and take care of the pumps.
We don’t give a thought to hauling loads of horses or cattle cross country alone, we just get in the truck and go. Have you ever watched a crop dusting plane????? Those guys are insane. We strap up and dangle from helicopters to repair the power lines in Corpus Christi Bay, because it’s too wet for ground equipment. We hunt bears in the Rocky Mountains, with bows and arrows, for fun.
We like our rattlesnake roundups and our Brahman cow roundups (same things really), and we have the odd cousin that raises alligators.

The point is, all of us out here already take risks every day. Whether it’s driving 40 miles across ice and snow highway to the grocery store, or just walking out to the barn to doctor that mean bitch cow’s calf again. Dealing with race horses and stallions of any flavor should be considered an extreme sport. Some people then actually train those things to jump 12 foot water jumps...

We’ve seen those risks, looked them in the eye, sometimes been shaken and shocked when they’ve touched us and our own. But we’ve stood back up, acknowledged those risks, and decided to keep living our life to the best of our ability.

Living life to the best of our ability does not mean this suspended living stuff that is being demanded by people of other walks of life.

I mean, “Have you really actually lived until you’ve almost been killed by an angry bovine, while your friends catcalled you?”

Yes, we know that Covid-19 is real. We know it’s dangerous, but we’re headed outside now, and we signed all disclaimers decades ago. Like I said, we see your Rona, and we raise you our lifestyle and our livelihoods.

07/24/2020

I am very not happy right now. Trying to not digress into profanity, at least in a public forum.
A rodeo series that we were heading out to the first one tomorrow, just got served by state cops and shut down. It was going to be on PRIVATE property. It was a YOUTH Rodeo.
These kids that rodeo and show work hard, and snitches take their opportunity for fun away from them.
We show, and rodeo, so we can't afford big summer vacations; not that there is a lot to go and do right now.
But to shut down a " summer youth program", that is outdoors....😡
I know the state police officers are "just doing their job" but when is someone going to acknowledge their conscience? How proud can you be to go home and tell your family, " well I spent 2 hours harassing people at the grocery store for no masks, then I shut down a deadly youth rodeo where they respect the flag, they pray before the events start, they are outside getting physical activity, so they are so dangerous we shut them down. I respect most policeman, I understand the need for a job, trust me I truly do, but when do you say" enough is enough"? I was looking for a job when I got this one. I cannot, in good conciense, countinue to harass people for living their lives"
No one gets out of this world alive, the virus is not going away, and you cannot mandate people hide in their homes scared to live their lives forever. At some point you have to deal with it and say, " I could die tomorrow, in a car crash on the freeway, I could trip over my shoe laces and break my neck."
If people are so afraid and they feel the need to stay home then by all means, stay home, live in a bubble. But, do not try and force everyone else to. If we are truly " in this together, stop ratting on people. This isn't grade school, this is life.
Stop listening to main stream media that tells you you are going to die if you don't follow governors orders to a T. The damb governor feels safe enough to have a 200 person fund raiser, to go to the lake with her boyfriend, but us peons are just expected to bow down because we aren't smart enough to take care of ourselves. Especially us rural hillbillies that just happen to feed everyone else. I don't see a lot of agricultural production in downtown Albuquerque. MLG tries to copy Portland, Washington, California. How well did ANTIFA do at growing their own food in CHAZ?
I just am done. Leave us alone, and let us live our lives, and guess what? We will leave you alone and let you live yours.

07/19/2020