Adventures of the Interstate Roper

05/16/2026

05/16/2026

I know, I know, it’s been way too long since I’ve sat down and fully chronicled any of my adventures. Been busy with life, show animals stuff, a little wildland firefighting, and some outlaw trucking thrown in the mix. This evening though led to some noteworthy cow catching adventures.
We hadn’t been home from livestock tag in for show animals very long and I get a text from my mother-in-law that there were cows in the neighbor’s field that she saw on her way in to town to go dancing. It’s been really dry and the old girls have been hustling to find something to eat. As Ace Ried once said, they have to graze at a lope to stay ahead of starvation.
Anyway, I was out feeding baby girl’s show animals cause she had been working the 4H spaghetti supper and setting up for prom when I got the aforementioned text. I jumped on the 4 wheeler, ran down and grabbed a bag of cubes to see if I could entice them into our fields and then maybe into the pens.
By the time I got to the end of the fields, down by the creek, there were 11 head and 6 or 8 calves in a long trot heading west up the creek. I was able to get around them and slow them down and they showed enough interest in the cubes to get them through the gate and into the field. By the time I got the gate closed they were already off towards the pens, high stepping as they were pretty dry and looking for water.
When they got there about half went in the pen and half stayed outside crowding around the water trough that is split by one side of the pens.
I jumped off the 4 wheeler and poured the rest of the cubes in the pens and tried to farmer them in. When they were all inside I tried to close the gate but one ol’ high horned, high headed h***y made a break for it and tried to hook me on the way out. We repeated this process twice more before she decided that she definitely smelled a rat and went looking for somewhere brushy to go hole up.
Since all the horses were turned out and I hadn’t even keep up a night horse, I was stuck with attempting to catch her on the 4 wheeler, an older Kawasaki that shall now forever be affectionately known as “Ski”.
Me and Ski got around her three different times before she decided that the fence between our fields was no real barrier and crashed through it.
We hauled butt up through the gate, then back down to cut her off before she tried to crash the fence on the lower end and head back into the creek.
Meanwhile, baby girl had got home from town and seen or heard all the the commotion and came down to spectate. I hollered at her to bring me a rope and a couple of pigging strings. She asked if she needed to go try and catch the horses, but since it was almost dark I told her never mind and just open the gate into the ally out of the field and I would figure it out from there.
Do you know how hard it is to run the throttle of an ATV which is on the right side while at the same try and swing a rope tied off to the front of said ATV? Well, I finally got my rhythm figured out and opened it wide up until I was bumping her hocks then let go of the throttle and had just enough time for 2 quick swings and launch a flawless head loop and caught her slick horns, pitched my slack and then thought I hope to hell we have enough weight to eventually stop her!
Ol’ Ski turned out to have just enough lead in his pants to get her stopped. Now I have to figure out how to handle my slack, turn and maneuver this green 4 wheeler without running over the rope while trying to drive her to the pens.
I would have much rather been on a green p**s head tied off because then I could have at least had two hands to work with. After several attempts I finally got her driven up pretty close to the pens when she decided to leave the country. I had had just about enough of this foolishness and was loosing daylight rapidly so against better judgment I pitched a trip on her and opened the throttle all the way up. Ol’ Ski has a lot of speed, but when everything came tight tied off to this 900-1000 lb cow we did rear up and face in one swift motion.
Good news is, we did get her tripped so down the rope to tie her and then we can take a breather. Now what? Well I go get the tractor while baby girl sets some gates. When we get to her with the tractor and start to maneuver her into the bucket she breaks the rotten old pigging string that’s been hanging on the side of the trailer for a few years. Now baby girl has to run back and get the rope off Ol’ Ski and once she’s roped and dallied to the tractor all I have to do is mug her and tie her down again. After that it was all cake! Rolled her into the bucket, short trip to the pens and now that dang high horned h***y has a one way ticket to the Alpo factory. While it’s not super punchy, we got’er done.

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.