kolanuraven said:
First off....I can't put down the exact verbage Mr. Turner used in response to the posts. :shock: :shock:
But he and I did notice how ' sweet' the tenor became from Mr. Soapweed and the lovely Faster Horses and he thanks you for the invitation.
Also, said he hopes he's your neighbor one day soon and ya'll can visit across the ' back 40".
My viewpoints on Ted Turner's operation started back a few years ago, probably sometime in the late 1990's or possibly 2000. It was a good year for rain and a productive growing summer. By fall, there was a lot of burnable vegetation. One August morning, after a dry thunderstorm had passed through during the night, a big cloud of smoke could be seen off to our west. I called my cousin (JF Ranch) to see if he knew where the fire was. He said it was on the northern part of Turner's ranch, across the line into South Dakota. I had a 200 gallon fire fighting rig on its own trailer, so decided I'd drive by his place, pick him up, and we go fight fire. My oldest son also went along.
We drove north almost to Martin, then west for another dozen miles down a gravel road, and then south down through some real rough Sandhills country. We arrived at the fire location and proceeded to fight fire. JF Ranch got out and walked along the fire line spraying the flames, and my son kept the hose from tangling. There were other local volunteer fire departments also there, and some other ranch rigs. We fought fire all day, and refilled our sprayer as needed from tanker trucks. The fire was a big one, and most of it was on Turner's land.
This ranch used to be one of the finest cattle ranches in the whole countryside. Turner had purchased it a few years earlier and was in the process of fencing it to be a buffalo ranch. The perimeter fence wasn't completed as yet, and the range hadn't been stocked since Turner had purchased the place. Grass was tall and abundant, hay fields hadn't been harvested, and the windmills were all shut off with no water in the tanks. Burnable fuel was thick and there was a lot of it. The fire ran rampant and was hard to fight. About the middle of the afternoon, we had fought fire clear across the ranch to a good road. We drove about ten miles back into Merriman, filled our water tank again, put gas in the pickup, and got a quick dinner at the gas station. Then it was back to the fire line to keep fighting fire. We all did our best, and by sundown the wind diminished enough that the fire was pretty well out. We went home, and the fire stayed out for that day.
About three weeks to a month later, a dry lightning storm went through again early in the evening. There were fires everywhere, probably as many as fifty fires going throughout the Sandhills. Our crew fought fires all night, mostly east of our ranch. We got back home about daybreak, slept for a couple hours, looked around and didn't see any new smoke, except for some smoke off to the west. After finding out that it was on Turner's land again, and knowing that Ted was in favor of harvesting his grass with fires, we decided not to worry about it and go back to the hayfield. We hayed until noon, and came into the house to find an urgent message on our answering machine. It was a young lady's voice, and the message went something like, "There is a really bad fire on Turner's land. Please realize that if the fire leaves his land, my aunt and uncles' buildings and ranch will be in danger."
Peach Blossom and I jumped into the pickup and pulled the fire-fighting trailer back to Turner's place. We fought fire for the rest of the afternoon, and all night. I remember at the time, that we put eleven hundred gallons of water through that 200 gallon tank. The discouraging part was that when the tank would get empty, we'd drive until we'd find a windmill, but there would be no water to suck up into the fire-fighting sprayer. It was a long night, because a lot of the fire fighters had gone home. One time we were almost trapped between a big tall "buffalo proof" fence and the fire. Along about 3 a.m., a brief rainstorm went through, which really helped in controlling the fire. We were on the southeast part of the ranch when the fire was out, and tried to blunder back across country to get home. After a fire is "out", the lights get turned off. It is easy to get lost, especially with a cloud cover and no stars to go by. We got lost, so traveled back through the hills the way we had come, and went out by the main road, which was sure the "long way". We were both so sleepy that we had a terrible time getting home. I was trying to drive, and my wife would periodically try to talk to me to wake me up. I'd stop about every mile and walk around the pickup trying to get rid of the drowsiness. She was in just as bad a shape, so we had a difficult time. We finally made it home just as the sun was coming up, but did manage to get a few hours of sleep.
The whole point of this oration is that if Ted Turner ranched like those of us trying to make a living off the land, there would not have been nearly as much fuel for the fires. It just looked almost sinfully wasteful to me, to see all of that unused pasture and uncut hayfields just going up in smoke because nobody cared. End of rant. :shock: :? :???: