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Text and photographs by DANIEL MILLERText and photographs by DANIEL MILLER

Living a Cowboy’s LifeLiving a Cowboy’s Life

When we woke up, thepale purple skyglowed on the easternhorizon and the starsstill sparkled, thoughthey were fading fastas night turned toearly dawn. The cookissued his breakfast

holler: “Come and get it!” Soon after,the cool morning stillness was punc-tured by the slapping of saddle leather,the jingling of spurs, and the rhythmicbeat of horses’ hooves on the softground. Meadowlarks sang from thesagebrush, and from the cattails alongthe stream below the roundup camp,red-winged blackbirds were startingtheir morning chorus. Over the ridge,a pack of coyotes commenced theirplaintive howling. The sun wasn’t upyet, but the eastern Montana prairiewas already coming alive as theroundup crew of cowboys rode out tobegin the day’s work. Getting up at 4a.m. every morning to saddle a horseand trot off across the prairie is noteverybody’s idea of a good way tostart the day, but for cowboys it is apart of the job they cherish.

The American cowboy remainsa mythic icon for millions of peo-ple around the world. Their ideasare based mostly on “westerns,”TV shows and movies made in

Riding, Roping and

’Rassling Cattle

Riding, Roping and

’Rassling Cattle

Cowboys round up cattle on PadlockRanch in Montana (left). Although realcowbys still herd cattle on horseback,modern vehicles are also used (below).

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AMER

ICAN

LIFE

Hollywood about life in the Old West,when settlers established towns and set upranches, farms and homesteads in thewestern part of North America during thelatter half of the 19th century. The imageof the cowboy was used to create one ofthe most successful corporate advertisingcampaigns ever, for Marlboro cigarettes.Levi’s and Wrangler blue jeans are boughtby urban consumers who have never beennear a cow or horse, yet identify theclothes they wear with freedom and wideopen spaces and the cowboy way of life.The cowboy may be the only professionthat has inspired a writing genre, hundredsof movies and TV shows, a special type ofmusic and a spectator sport—the rodeo.

Despite all of this interest and populari-ty, the actual life of the working cowboyremains woefully misunderstood. There isalso a widespread, mistaken belief that realcowboys no longer exist, that all the work

of raising cattle is now done with pickuptrucks, motorcycles and helicopters andthat horses are no longer used to work cat-tle. The fact is that real, working cowboysstill do exist throughout the American West,they ride horses, and they use the word“cowboy” as a verb as well as a noun.

For many years, I cowboyed on largecattle ranches in the state of Montana, inthe western United States. I rode onroundups, where a horse-drawn chuck

wagon was still pulled out to make campjust like 100 years ago. In the winter, I fedhay to cows with a team of big, Belgianwork horses pulling a sled. I also packedmules into the mountains along theContinental Divide for an outfitter whoran a “dude ranch.” A number of summerswere spent on a “cow camp” where I tookcare of 1,500 cows and their calves spreadout across more than 40,500 hectares.Those cattle were worth more than $1.5

Right: Inside the cook tent, showing the back of the chuck wagon where theroundup cook stores his supplies.

Below: A chuck wagon with supplies.

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million and I was responsible for them,despite only being paid $500 a month!

The work of a cowboy is regulated bythe life cycle of cattle. Calving normallytakes place in late winter and early spring,February through April. This is a time ofmany sleepless nights as cows have to becontinually looked after in case they havetrouble giving birth. First calf heifers (cowsgiving birth for the first time) require spe-cial care and are often separated from oldercows so they can be observed more easily.

Summer roundup takes place in May andJune when the cows and calves are gath-ered. The calves are then branded, vacci-nated and de-horned.

Hay, to feed the cows in the winter, iscut and baled in the summer. In the fall,another roundup is undertaken to weanthe calves so they can be shipped off tofeedlots. Also, at this time, cows that arenot pregnant are usually sold. By lateNovember or early December, dependingon snowfall, cowboys begin feeding the

cattle hay to keep them alive until springgrass appears on the plains.

Early summer roundups are the bestpart of the annual cycle of work. When Iparticipated in six-week-long roundupson Tullock Creek in eastern Montana inthe 1980s, one of the outfits I worked forwas the Padlock Ranch. There we herdedcows and branded calves the old-timecowboy way, pulling out a horse-drawnchuck wagon and making cowboys sleepin tents on the prairie. With more than

The American cowboy remains a mythic icon for millions of peoplearound the world. Their ideas are based mostly on TV shows and movies.

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Topt: Padlock Ranch roundup camp set upwith bedwagon and tent for the cowboysto sleep in and the chuck wagon and cooktent. Wagons are pulled by horses andthe tents are used much like they were bycowboys 100 years ago.

Above: Cowboys are not embarrassed toconfess that they talk to their horses. Above right: Cowboys keep a sharp watch on the herd.

3,000 cows to gather, a roundup crew of12 cowboys branded 100 to 200 calves aday. Each cowboy was provided four orfive horses to ride, but had to have hisown saddles and gear. During theroundup we might get a few days offwhen it rained, which provided an oppor-tunity to go to town for a shower and acold beer. The rest of the time we wereout there with the cows ridin’, ropin’ ‘n’’rasslin’, that is, “wrestling” the cattle.Cowboying can be hard, dirty, often

lonely, and sometimes, dangerous work.Branding calves on a roundup is an ardu-ous task and requires multi-tasking. Youhave to be able to rope calves from ahorse and wrestle them to the ground forbranding.

When a cowboy messes up, his pridecan be hurt by ridicule from other crewmembers, or worse, he can be seriouslyinjured by a bucking horse or a kickingcalf. Feeding hay all day long in the winterin a blizzard when it is minus 28 degrees

Celsius is no fun no matter how you lookat it. Life in a cow camp, with no electric-ity or running water and the nearest neigh-bor 16 kilometers away, means you spendlots of time talking to your horse.

When I cowboyed, wages were about$500 a month and included room andboard, but “room” was a tent pitched onthe prairies and “board” was chuckwagon grub: lots of meat and potatoes,beans and bacon, washed down withstrong coffee. These days, the cost of anew working saddle starts at about $1,500and it is hard to find a good pair of ridingboots for less than $200. You’ll never getrich cowboying, but we are getting paid todo what a lot of people pay to do on holi-days spent at “dude ranches.”

There are also a lot of other benefits thatcome with the job that I can’t put an eco-nomic value on. The country in easternMontana where I worked on roundups isthe kind cowboys dream about: wide open,rolling grasslands that rise up out of the

bluffs along the Bighorn River and stretchacross ponderosa pine-covered hills to theLittle Wolf Mountains in the east along theTongue River. It is some of the best grasscountry in North America. In late May, thehigher elevation slopes near the headwa-ters of Tullock Creek will be plastered withthe big, bright yellow flowers of arrowleafbalsamroot and the bright blue blossoms oflupine. Wild rose bushes are in bloomalong with choke cherries, wafting theirfresh fragrance as you ride past. The smellof crushed sagebrush mixed with horsesweat and saddle leather is like rareincense or a cowboy cologne. Being ableto see the sunrise and sunset every day andto watch the stars come out at night isanother simple pleasure.

And any cowboy who is observant(most are) will notice unique things aboutthe animals he works with, such as “baby-sitter cows” that look after a group ofyoung calves as their mothers trail downto water a mile or more away. Only after

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From left to right: (1) A silver bit connects to the reins, allowingthe rider to direct the horse. (2) A cowboy’s saddle has attachedbags for carrying food and water. (3) The foot must rest in thestirrup. This cowboy is wearing boots under his jeans and chaps, or

leather leggings, to protect the skin from rubbing and weather. (4) Shown here is a cowboy boot with a spur at the back, used tomake the horse go faster in an emergency. (5) A bedwagon forcarrying cowboys’ bedrolls has a horse harness hanging on it.

Despite adaptations over time, many items used by cowboys today,such as chaps, saddles, spurs and bits, have their origins in Mexicoin the 16th century when it was under Spanish rule.

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those cows come back will the babysittergo down to drink.

Roundups are a time to discuss with othercowboys the different ranches and how theyoperate, to observe the various saddles andtack and talk about their merits. There isalso the quiet contentment that can comewith being told by the boss that you did agood job roping, or overhearing fellowcowboys say, “He’s a good hand.” That’sabout the best compliment a cowboy couldhope for. There is also the satisfaction thatcomes when you help out neighboringranches, maintaining the spirit of ruralranching communities working togetherand those altruistic values that helped definethe cowboy in American culture.

This past summer, while on homeleave after working in Afghanistan fortwo years, I visited a friend I had cow-boyed with over 20 years ago on thePadlock Ranch. David Workman, the sonof the cow boss who ran the roundupwagon, was in college then, studying ani-

mal science at Montana State University,but went out on roundups with me. Now,he is managing a large ranch north ofRoundup, Montana. As I drove along thegravel road up Flat Willow Creek andentered the property he was managing, Inoticed that the fences were new andwell built and that the rangelands were ingood condition; little indicators that theranch was well-managed. As he drove mearound the ranch in apickup truck, showingme new solar poweredpumps he had in -stalled in wells to pro-vide water to the cat-tle, and activities toeliminate troublesomeweeds in the pastures,our conversation fo -cused on strategies hewas working on toimprove the rangelandand increase economicefficiency in his oper-ations. Ranch man a -gers these days notonly have to be able totake care of cows, but

they must be business-minded and ascomfortable working with Excel spread-sheets as they are with a rope.

Still, as the sun set over the prairie,what David and I talked about were thehorses we had known and the cowboyswe had worked with.

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Horses are rounded up so cowboys can select the next day's mounts. Each cowboyalternates among four to five horses to give them a rest.

Daniel Miller is a projectdevelopment officer in Indiawith the U.S. Agency forInternational Development,which he joined in 2003. Hewas raised on a dairy farmin Minnesota and spentmany years working as acowboy in Montana. Hereceived a master’s degree inforestry from the Universityof Montana. Miller hasmanaged agriculture proj-ects in Afghanistan andworked on livestock develop-ment in Bhutan, China,Mongolia and Nepal.

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