Soapweed
Well-known member
GETTING LOST
By Steve Moreland, Originally Written January 23, 1999
This morning the fog was so thick you could cut it with a knife. Our original plans were to get up early, saddle three horses, and haul them and one other for our ranch-hand, Bill Steinmeyer, to a neighbor's place 26 miles by road off to the northeast. Our yearling heifers had been trailed up to Forrest Stewart's ranch a year ago, wintered there, and turned out with grass and bulls in early May. Now they are nearly two years old and ready to have their first calves, starting due-date being February 19th. We had planned to drive the heifers back to our ranch, a distance of 15 or 16 miles across country. With the morning being so foggy, we decided to post-pone the drive. For one thing, it would be hard to round-up the pasture and to know for sure we had all 235 head. And another reason was it would be difficult to head the cattle across big hilly soapweedy pastures and not get lost. This "getting lost" in these Sandhills of northern Nebraska and southern South Dakota is no fun, and although I've never been completely lost to the point of suffering on account of it, I've darned sure been "misplaced" enough to cause great concern.
One time that comes to mind was in the summer of 1982. At the time, my wife, Carol, and I were ranching south of Merriman, Nebraska. We lived eighteen miles south on Highway 61, and one mile west. That summer I had leased a two-section pasture (1280 acres) from Stan Sasse, manager of the Sasse-Vinton ranch. The pasture was two miles east-and-west and one mile north-and-south, and had three windmills in it. The far end of the pasture was sixteen miles across the hills to the southwest from the buildings where we lived. Our plan that year was to summer 140 cows there from May 15th until October 1st, then bring them home and wean the calves. I wanted to turn the five bulls out on June 1st, so decided not to let them walk down with the cows and calves. That was my first mistake. The country is extremely rough and sandy, and it is almost impossible to pull any kind of a stock trailer through those hills. In retrospect, I should have taken the bulls with the cows and just started calving two weeks earlier the next spring.
To fully appreciate this part of the Sandhills, you must realize that it is mighty big country with human inhabitants few and far between. It is good hilly summer pasture but there are almost no hay meadows, so hardly anyone lives in the area. Cattle are summered there and trailed elsewhere to established hay ranches to be wintered and for the cows to have their baby calves. Carol and I were the only two people living in one township (an area six miles by six miles encompassing 23,040 acres) and there were other adjoining townships with no-one living in them.
Carol and I had hauled two bulls down to the pasture one sunny morning and ended up at her folks' townhouse in Gordon for the annual Memorial Day McGaughey family reunion at noon. We had used our six-foot by ten-foot Chief stock trailer, and it worked well for two bulls. It wasn't big enough for the next three bulls, so I borrowed a six-foot by sixteen-foot bumper-pull trailer from my dad to haul the remaining bulls down a day or two later.
That particular day was foggy and drizzly, and I'll be darned if I didn't get clear down in the hills and meander off the faint windmill-checking trail that I was following. The fog was so thick I could hardly see the front of the pickup hood, and although the wind was blowing, I had no idea which way it was blowing from, as I hadn't studied the situation when I still had my bearings. By the time I had circled around several times looking for landmarks, my pickup tracks were so messed up I couldn't even "back-track" and follow my own tracks to where things looked familiar.
Well, it was beginning to look like I could spend a week in those hills, or however long it would take for the sun to push away the fog so I could get oriented. Hunger pangs were starting to settle in just thinking about it. Carol wasn't along this trip, but she always indicated that the "more lost" I get the faster I drive. The pickup and I, and the trailer and three bulls were starting to make pretty good time. We didn't know where we were going but we were traveling at a pretty good clip to get there. Over hill and dale, soapweed and swale, through a gate or two, and out of the fog a windmill appeared, and beside it an old cattle "back-rubber" with a raggedy blue dust bag hanging from it. Ah! Glory, Hallelujah! Familiar territory once again. Another mile or two dragging along the bull-hauler and my mission was complete. When I unloaded the bulls, I took a good reading on the wind direction from a straight north-south fence, and certainly kept my wits about me as I traveled back home.
Night Ride to John Burton's Ranch
My sister, Sybil, came down to our Spearhead Ranch south of Merriman to help me one day. I had several projects to do that day in preparation for weaning calves. Those October days were short, and darkness "snuck" up before we quite had everything accomplished. My second cousin, John Fairhead, had summered about 150 cows and their calves with John Burton in a pasture with the Niobrara River running through it. John Fairhead had made arrangements for Sybil and me to help him trail cattle about fifteen miles north to his ranch on the following day.
Our plan was to ride the nine miles to the Burton Ranch and spend the night so we would be on hand to help round-up cattle early the next morning. Well, darkness was upon us. I told Sybil we just as well eat supper before we started our nine-mile ride to Burton's, as it certainly wasn't going to get any darker. My wife, Carol, fixed a good meal, and Sybil and I bid adios' to Carol and my one-year-old son, Will.
We got aboard our horses, and headed west down the valley. We should have taken a flashlight, but heck, that's for sissies. Besides the two horses we were riding, I was also leading an extra horse for John's wife, Ingrid, to ride the following day, as her horse had gotten a bad wire-cut. We got to the end of my hay meadow and started to look for the gate going north into Nielsen's summer range, the old "Annett pasture." Right then we should have realized we might have trouble, as it took twenty minutes to find that gate.
The night was blacker than the ace of spades, and I couldn't see my horse's ears. By this time light rain was beginning to fall, and Sybil and I had donned our slickers. A landmark down in that country was the ETV tower, which stands 1029 feet in the air. It was located a mile east of the house where Carol and I lived. The lights from the tower would have been a good beacon to hone in on had we been going towards it, but knowing we had to travel away from it didn't do all that much good. I thought we wouldn't have too much trouble finding a well-traveled windmill checking road going north, but I was wrong. We groped around for quite awhile, riding back and forth, trying to find the road. There were no stars shining to get a "fix" on the north star. It was beginning to look like we might have to spend the rest of the night out in the middle of that big old pasture. Finally, I found the sandy ruts, and the next six miles were covered without mishap. By the time we arrived at Burton's, snow was coming down heavily, and the lights of the nice warm house looked mighty fine. It would have been a cold night out.
Ardith Burton was not home that evening, but John gave Sybil and me a nice late-evening snack and found us beds for the night. By the next morning a blizzard was raging, and an early phone call from John Fairhead cancelled the cattle drive for that day. John Burton fried eggs and bacon and fed us well. We left the spare horse in his corral eating hay, and Sybil and I loped back the nine miles to the Spearhead Ranch. At least the wind was at our backs. She helped me feed hay to my pairs, we had dinner with Carol and Will, took a good afternoon siesta, and rode back to Burton's. This time we allowed plenty of daylight. The cattle drive went off as scheduled the following day.
By Steve Moreland, Originally Written January 23, 1999
This morning the fog was so thick you could cut it with a knife. Our original plans were to get up early, saddle three horses, and haul them and one other for our ranch-hand, Bill Steinmeyer, to a neighbor's place 26 miles by road off to the northeast. Our yearling heifers had been trailed up to Forrest Stewart's ranch a year ago, wintered there, and turned out with grass and bulls in early May. Now they are nearly two years old and ready to have their first calves, starting due-date being February 19th. We had planned to drive the heifers back to our ranch, a distance of 15 or 16 miles across country. With the morning being so foggy, we decided to post-pone the drive. For one thing, it would be hard to round-up the pasture and to know for sure we had all 235 head. And another reason was it would be difficult to head the cattle across big hilly soapweedy pastures and not get lost. This "getting lost" in these Sandhills of northern Nebraska and southern South Dakota is no fun, and although I've never been completely lost to the point of suffering on account of it, I've darned sure been "misplaced" enough to cause great concern.
One time that comes to mind was in the summer of 1982. At the time, my wife, Carol, and I were ranching south of Merriman, Nebraska. We lived eighteen miles south on Highway 61, and one mile west. That summer I had leased a two-section pasture (1280 acres) from Stan Sasse, manager of the Sasse-Vinton ranch. The pasture was two miles east-and-west and one mile north-and-south, and had three windmills in it. The far end of the pasture was sixteen miles across the hills to the southwest from the buildings where we lived. Our plan that year was to summer 140 cows there from May 15th until October 1st, then bring them home and wean the calves. I wanted to turn the five bulls out on June 1st, so decided not to let them walk down with the cows and calves. That was my first mistake. The country is extremely rough and sandy, and it is almost impossible to pull any kind of a stock trailer through those hills. In retrospect, I should have taken the bulls with the cows and just started calving two weeks earlier the next spring.
To fully appreciate this part of the Sandhills, you must realize that it is mighty big country with human inhabitants few and far between. It is good hilly summer pasture but there are almost no hay meadows, so hardly anyone lives in the area. Cattle are summered there and trailed elsewhere to established hay ranches to be wintered and for the cows to have their baby calves. Carol and I were the only two people living in one township (an area six miles by six miles encompassing 23,040 acres) and there were other adjoining townships with no-one living in them.
Carol and I had hauled two bulls down to the pasture one sunny morning and ended up at her folks' townhouse in Gordon for the annual Memorial Day McGaughey family reunion at noon. We had used our six-foot by ten-foot Chief stock trailer, and it worked well for two bulls. It wasn't big enough for the next three bulls, so I borrowed a six-foot by sixteen-foot bumper-pull trailer from my dad to haul the remaining bulls down a day or two later.
That particular day was foggy and drizzly, and I'll be darned if I didn't get clear down in the hills and meander off the faint windmill-checking trail that I was following. The fog was so thick I could hardly see the front of the pickup hood, and although the wind was blowing, I had no idea which way it was blowing from, as I hadn't studied the situation when I still had my bearings. By the time I had circled around several times looking for landmarks, my pickup tracks were so messed up I couldn't even "back-track" and follow my own tracks to where things looked familiar.
Well, it was beginning to look like I could spend a week in those hills, or however long it would take for the sun to push away the fog so I could get oriented. Hunger pangs were starting to settle in just thinking about it. Carol wasn't along this trip, but she always indicated that the "more lost" I get the faster I drive. The pickup and I, and the trailer and three bulls were starting to make pretty good time. We didn't know where we were going but we were traveling at a pretty good clip to get there. Over hill and dale, soapweed and swale, through a gate or two, and out of the fog a windmill appeared, and beside it an old cattle "back-rubber" with a raggedy blue dust bag hanging from it. Ah! Glory, Hallelujah! Familiar territory once again. Another mile or two dragging along the bull-hauler and my mission was complete. When I unloaded the bulls, I took a good reading on the wind direction from a straight north-south fence, and certainly kept my wits about me as I traveled back home.
Night Ride to John Burton's Ranch
My sister, Sybil, came down to our Spearhead Ranch south of Merriman to help me one day. I had several projects to do that day in preparation for weaning calves. Those October days were short, and darkness "snuck" up before we quite had everything accomplished. My second cousin, John Fairhead, had summered about 150 cows and their calves with John Burton in a pasture with the Niobrara River running through it. John Fairhead had made arrangements for Sybil and me to help him trail cattle about fifteen miles north to his ranch on the following day.
Our plan was to ride the nine miles to the Burton Ranch and spend the night so we would be on hand to help round-up cattle early the next morning. Well, darkness was upon us. I told Sybil we just as well eat supper before we started our nine-mile ride to Burton's, as it certainly wasn't going to get any darker. My wife, Carol, fixed a good meal, and Sybil and I bid adios' to Carol and my one-year-old son, Will.
We got aboard our horses, and headed west down the valley. We should have taken a flashlight, but heck, that's for sissies. Besides the two horses we were riding, I was also leading an extra horse for John's wife, Ingrid, to ride the following day, as her horse had gotten a bad wire-cut. We got to the end of my hay meadow and started to look for the gate going north into Nielsen's summer range, the old "Annett pasture." Right then we should have realized we might have trouble, as it took twenty minutes to find that gate.
The night was blacker than the ace of spades, and I couldn't see my horse's ears. By this time light rain was beginning to fall, and Sybil and I had donned our slickers. A landmark down in that country was the ETV tower, which stands 1029 feet in the air. It was located a mile east of the house where Carol and I lived. The lights from the tower would have been a good beacon to hone in on had we been going towards it, but knowing we had to travel away from it didn't do all that much good. I thought we wouldn't have too much trouble finding a well-traveled windmill checking road going north, but I was wrong. We groped around for quite awhile, riding back and forth, trying to find the road. There were no stars shining to get a "fix" on the north star. It was beginning to look like we might have to spend the rest of the night out in the middle of that big old pasture. Finally, I found the sandy ruts, and the next six miles were covered without mishap. By the time we arrived at Burton's, snow was coming down heavily, and the lights of the nice warm house looked mighty fine. It would have been a cold night out.
Ardith Burton was not home that evening, but John gave Sybil and me a nice late-evening snack and found us beds for the night. By the next morning a blizzard was raging, and an early phone call from John Fairhead cancelled the cattle drive for that day. John Burton fried eggs and bacon and fed us well. We left the spare horse in his corral eating hay, and Sybil and I loped back the nine miles to the Spearhead Ranch. At least the wind was at our backs. She helped me feed hay to my pairs, we had dinner with Carol and Will, took a good afternoon siesta, and rode back to Burton's. This time we allowed plenty of daylight. The cattle drive went off as scheduled the following day.
