I can appreciate both sides of that (argument ?) having worked an open-range operation outside of Douglas Wyo, where we had to chase down newborn calves on foot to tag 'em, and record all the #'s on those little red books I carry year round anymore...

...cowboss I worked for on two separate 'tours of duty' (orig born/raised somewhere around the NM 'Turkey-Track' outfit or so he said) tried awful hard to prove his point that running a cow/calf outfit in such a way that allowing 'instincts' to take priority over 'gentle' handling of cattle.

One morning, he decided to jump in and ride 'shot-gun' on the feed route I'd been assigned to, for several months one winter...so he could see how 'my' cows were doing (his truck was in the shop with a busted tranny, from him chasing down a few 'wild one's' a few days prior don't'cha know) and while waiting patiently for my group of heiffers to gather around so I could get a proper 'head count' and know how much cake to feed (multiply number of cows per 2lbs of cake = number of 'clicks' to count from cake-feeder) he 'caught' me hand-feeding pieces of cake to some 15 or so cows who'd learned to take a liking to me, over the past few weeks I'd been taking care of this feed route.

Big 'cow-man' that he was...he runs all around the edge of the flat-bed pickup we're feeding off of..and KICKS the girls in the faces...till they run backwards in confusion, barking at me: "You'll git yerself KILLED by them bitches, when it's time to tag them calves" he says...

...I knew all those particular cows by tag numbers, and even then...I would've known them by 'face'...not ONE of those particular cows offered to give me any grief, the following weeks later while I straddled each an' every one of them calves, to give them shots, tags and run the 'weight tape' around the hairline of thier little 'hoovies'...

Guess those cows showed HIM now, did'nt they ?

I miss that outfit quite a bit...but it ain't because of the man I worked for, I can tell you that much...it's the COWS who made that job work for me...

And I'm not even born/raised in this profession...hey'l...I'm just an ex-military-brat...and those 'range cows' trusted me more than the avg cowpuncher from hell...