The Life & Times of Big Boy
Big Boy and Zee on a horse named Trousers, July 14, 1973
The V6 ranch is a mountainous piece of central California and most of it is grass covered and it’s where the cattle graze and hang out. I’ve been a middleman in the cattle business all my working life. I buy all the steers for the upcoming winter, spring grazing season, usually in October and November. Upon arrival the cattle are branded and vaccinated for a variety of diseases then turned out on the mountain to be found the next May or June, usually in bunches of ten to twenty. So checking on their well being is mostly done from the back of a horse and if you find one with a problem and it’s a several hour drive to move this sick steer to our headquarters corral, it’s much easier on the steer to rope him around the neck and then your partner on horseback will catch the two hind feet tie off his rope around Saddle horn, get off and take care of the problem. Then he’ll mark him with a piece of marking chalk so the next time we see him you know he’s been cared for. It brings to my mind a time when you might be watching a rodeo and the next event is team roping. It sprang from ranches like the V6. Its origin goes back to the Mexico Vaquero of the 18th century when his rope was made from the hide of a cow. Long thin strings were cut from a dried hide then braided into what was called a Reata that served the Vaquero well. Today’s ropes are made from Nylon and have replaced the Reata.
So how did Big Boy find his way to the V6? Our four children Katy, Lillian, John and Greg were growing like weeds and thanks to my wife Zee they were growing like weeds on the backs of very reliable horses. It was time to put a rope in their hands. Throwing a rope is no different than throwing a baseball, only the wind up is different. Once they had learned to build a loop and throw it at a dummy steer they were ready to get on their horses and rope a live moving Mexican roping steer. I was able to buy 5 well used team roping steers that would be just the ticket for our children to learn on. I think that Katy was about 7 or 8 and Lilly was 2 years behind, both big enough to rope from their horses.
Big Boy showed himself right away to be an honest and reliable steer that wasn’t going to ruff up one of my kids after he had been roped. He would mostly just walk when Katy the oldest would throw her rope at Big Boy. With time and practice and with some parental urging he would break into a trot and if Katy or Lilly happened to catch him he would stop and then they could sidle up to his head while he would wait to have the rope removed. John and Greg were still practicing from the ground. With school starting in early September I turned Big Boy out to graze for the winter green season.
With the arrival of Spring it was time to go find Big Boy who left the roping arena the previous September weighing about 500 pounds. When I found him up on the mountain he was 200 pounds heavier but still seemed to know he had a job and trotted off the mountain to find what it might be. His job was again going to be to teach my four children how to rope. Big Boy was ready for the job. He was a patient teacher so by the end of Summer all four of our children were much better with a rope than at the start. I think he knew that if he did his job each summer he would be fed good tasting Barley Hay which was way better than our summer annual dry grass.
I can’t quite remember how many years Big Boy was our children’s teacher but I know he was now as tall as a saddle horse and probably weighed 1300 pounds. So it was time to turn “Old reliable” out to pasture. But it turned out this would not be the end of Big Boy’s career on the V6. The following June it was time to gather up all our stocker steers to be sold. After gaining about 200 pounds they were ready for a feedlot operator to buy them and fatten them out at which time they would weigh about 1,200 pounds ready to be turned into steaks and hamburgers.
Big Boy came out of retirement the first year I left him up on the mountain. I remember as my family was coming down to the ranch with several hundred head of stockers Big Boy came from out of nowhere and picked up the lead, a job he would continue to do each spring that of leading our stockers down the mountain. I think he really liked his position as senior lead steer and all the seasonal stockers were glad to follow as they recognized this leader, knew where he was going, and they were happy to follow.
Big Boy forever immortalized in Jack and Zee’s living room
Age has an irreversible way of changing things. I think that’s what happened to Big Boy. One spring in the early 1970s instead of his usual joyful trot off the mountain with a big following gliding off the mountain behind him, old age and sore feet, I think, caused him to take a right turn with his following into a big brush patch that took all of us about an hour to get them all out and back on the trail. I left Big Boy in the brush patch as the best place to soothe his sore feet. The next year it happened again and I could see the writing on the wall. Big Boy had to go. I know some of you are saying he deserves to live his life out free on the range. But that’s not reality. In the animal world there are three types of animals, each one very important to the survival of the other two. There are the grazing animals, necessary for the health of our rangeland’s, then the predators like the Mountain Lion, the Eagle, and Coyote to keep the herbivores populations in balance and healthy and last comes the scavengers, like the Buzzards and Racoons all the way down to Earthworms and Dung Beetles. They are the clean up crew that keeps everything clean and tidy.
But when you call upon our modern Veterinarian science of today to do whatever it takes to keep your old friend alive. That’s when I believe that it’s cruel to rob your pet of the dignity to pass on because you don’t want to feel the pain of losing your animal friend and that is selfish. To take this selfishness one step further, it’s the same way we treat our old folks by making them live past their right to die and enforcing it with a whole bunch of laws. So we deny someone the right to say “I’m ready to leave now, please give me a loving shove” without their families or doctor being charged with a crime.
Big Boy hangs on our living room wall much like your parents’ gravestone shows themselves in a cemetery. So Big Boy, I say “my hats off to you and thanks for your years of service, helping the V6 Ranch keep the Cowboy Side of California alive and well.”
See Ya,
Jack