Always Something to Chase
By Gerry Gesell
A month goes by and it has begun to get warmer and warmer and we have moved into tornado season, branding season and if we are lucky, the rain season. This is the time of year I would begin to move pairs closer to the house pens and start organizing my spring works. The ranch wasn’t the biggest and my herds were just enough to make two days’ worth of work. It was also just enough that the day before branding one side of the ranch, I would gather them myself because of how that side of the ranch was set up and the way the pastures were. The home place was easy, but I still spent a day gathering into my weaning trap, which was just across the caliche road from the pens. I always appreciated the help from my neighbors and I did my best to make it easy and fun for them and also encouraged them to bring their young horses and put some time on them gathering and dragging calves if they wanted to. Now, making tracks down the road on my younger horses and working on them in the arena tracking cattle around and teaching them a little more cow sense, I wait for the phone to ring. Those good neighbors that helped me know I am always ready to help and they know that it’s easier for me to break away and spend more time helping them. I have to be honest, it is an adjustment to live in town but there is a certain freedom to no longer making sure my work is done or somewhat in place on the ranch before I go neighboring. I think about those long days away from the ranch, only to come home and have a broken float on a trough or cows standing in my yard because they found a hole in a fence. Springtime feels different now and when that phone rings and they give me the dates, I start logging my green horses and sorting through bridles for my seasoned horses and I also check the tires on my trailer. There’s nothing worse than headed to a branding only to have a flat tire or a blowout. But, with no more driving across the ranch and beating up my tires, I have it a little easier. As I write this, we are getting ready to set our clocks forward and it’s raining, I welcome the rain, always. The lightning just showed me how much water is running. No more water gapping for me and my heifers in the back 40 can go a day without cake. I’ll say this—if you have 15 cows or 500 and it rains, you can guarantee getting your truck stuck if you stray off the caliche roads to feed!
A summer season has arrived and with it, one season is leaving and a couple of others have arrived. Working on ranches and being a steward of the land makes a person acutely aware of the weather and its patterns. With that comes the realization that we have no earthly idea of what we are talking about and we have no way of knowing with any certainty of what may come. Rain, wind, drouth, tornadoes, heat and/or cold. One thing is certain, we can say yes to it all. As the saying goes “it’s not if, it’s when.” Living in town has made it slightly easier in some ways. I no longer have to be so worried about the a/c working in the ranch pickup. Hell, the ranch pickup is no longer a thing. I don’t have to worry about trying to grow grass in my yard only to have the deer eating it all night. I can put a sprinkler in front of the house and hope to water grass that might exist under the ground. I have adjusted to the direction of the place and now know immediately which door or window to look out to see where the impending storms or threat of weather might be coming from. Front door equals north, which equals strong winds and rare summer storms. Back door and back porch equal the typical southern squalls and almost daily wind. If a storm looks like it is coming from due west, get ready for a tornado warning and possible touchdown. Anything coming in from the east will sneak around and come in from the south. With the weather constantly toying with my emotions, we have already seen 100 degrees in late February to 40 degrees on Easter Sunday. And, one thing I never saw on the ranch that we are dealing with in town… mosquitoes! As fast as the weather moves in and out, I will move on from the subject. Another season within the summer season is a season that flies in, under the radar, foaling and breeding season. This begins in early spring to ensure a foal born in early February or March and to give time to breed your mares back. My luck has changed a little over the seasons and now it seems to begin and end by the beginning of summer, May. This is where I talk about the new life and the adjustments my broodmare has made since moving to town. Over my lifetime with horses and managing broodmare bands, I always had the best results with pasture breeding. The natural order of things was best. I could select mares best matched with a particular stallion and sort them accordingly and turn them out. Midway through the season, I would check mares and keep going. Hand breeding might be necessary by the end of the breeding season. When I began to breed my one and only mare, she ran with the geldings and she was very obvious in her season and she was very easy to breed. By this time, I had become accustomed to artificial breeding and had made my peace with it. It was simple as long as I kept it simple. Living in town has given us some organization to the way we have our horses situated, but it also means they are not running as a herd in big pastures anymore. The broodmare no longer has her boys to influence her seasons. Experience has taught me that I do not keep mares and geldings too close together in tight quarters and net wire fences. It’s as simple as that. So when it’s time to start getting ready for breeding season, we wait for her to foal and then count the days to start trying for another successful breeding. Sounds simple enough, but not so easy. Things happen and before we know it, it’s approaching the end of the season and we have barely had the chance to get her in and get her bred. Unforeseen issues and a learning curve canceled one season and we must wait for the next year’s season. So now, it’s trips across town to the vet until we get a heartbeat. Fingers crossed that next season will be foaling season followed by breeding season.
A continued summer. Summer seems to last longer than the rest of the seasons combined. It doesn’t matter if we live in town or in the middle of a ranch, it’s gonna be hot and in most cases dry. I discovered something the other day, while making tracks down the road… when it warms up, the rattlesnakes come out. Yes, rattlesnake season knows no difference in town or on the ranch. For some reason, I thought that maybe we would not have to deal with these suckers much when we moved to town. I figured the maverick cats and the general population of people would keep the snakes at bay, but I was sorely wrong. The rattlesnake season on the ranch was expected, like clockwork, the snakes started moving when the days became consistently warm and the nights weren’t as cool. On average, we killed 35–40 a summer and in lengths from 6 inches to 6 feet long. The horses learned to smell them and usually warned us before the snakes would warn us with their buzz. They used to scare the hell out of me, but the more I encountered, the more I became desensitized to them. Rat shot in the pistol or the end of the lariat rope would dispatch one with ease. The last couple of years on the ranch, I began to see less and less. Unlike the jack rabbits, I didn’t miss them and still didn’t hesitate to kill one. They could ruin your day real fast and I hated losing one in the tall grass or cactus thicket. I found myself getting into dangerous territory trying to hunt them when they slithered away. The other day, while making tracks on a horse down the side of the road, I didn’t see one until it rattled! We had trotted right over it. I didn’t have a rope or a pistol, but for some reason I thought I needed to hunt it. The grass was tall because we have actually had rain and I couldn’t see a thing. That snake had not moved and was still buzzing away. I finally got a glimpse of it, but my horse was having no part of it. Like slick rock on the ranch, the blacktop was giving me no terra firma to stand on and between the town cars driving by and my half-hearted attempt to take this snake out, we had to retreat and leave it be. The amazing thing about it all is that my horse returned to snake mode and she still snorts and blows when we trot past that spot. On the ranch or in town, those damn things might shed their skin, but they are still a devil of a creature.
