Range war on the mountain

Range War on the Mountain
Copyright Andrea Heyser 2009

Though I have never met a cow boy who was not a perfect gentleman, they seemed at times to have a dark and ugly side concerning grass. There was no crime a cowman would not commit to get more grazing for his cows.

The Paiutes used to have a public meadow near Tip's place. It was about a thousand feet on each side, was fenced and had grass that was thick and lush. Folks on the mountain could bring their horses or cows to live during the summer, the deer and wild life in the meadow were plentiful.

Nick, a cowman, wanted his cattle to graze in this little meadow when his cows were moved off his pasture so the grass could go to seed. Nick's meadow was French Meadow which was about eight miles long, had a river in it and it cost only one hundred dollars a year for the lease.

Nick complained that the gate to the public meadow was kept closed and his cows could not get in. The gate was kept closed so that the horses and milk cows would not leave, get lost in the forest and die when winter came.

The county ruled that the gate and fencing were to be removed.

Now Frank King had a horse in the meadow he used to plow his garden and Tip had a milk cow there. The cow wandered off and Frank's horse Pasco joined two wild horses, a mare and her colt, a little pinto stallion.

The wild horses taught Pasco to jump the cattle guard to Nick's meadow and the three of them would eat Nick's grass and drink form his river. Nick and his cowboys warned Frank to keep his horse out of his meadow and of course they quarreled a number of times.

Once when Frank was driving his old pickup down the county road he met a cowboy on horse back. They both stopped and had a few words. The cowboy tried to open the truck door to pull Frank out of his truck when Frank picked up his sawed off shot gun, pointed it at the cowboy and said, "Did you calculate on this?" Every one on the mountain knew that Frank always carried a sawed off shot gun on the front seat of his truck but the cowboys kept pretty much to themselves and so did not know.

A few weeks later Pasco, the mare and little stallion were found dead, shot. A month later Joanne and my mother found two dead bulls, cost thirty thousand each, dead at the onion patch. They had been shot in the eye so that after the buzzards took out the eyes you could not tell how they died.

The little meadow is now dead and no animals live there. The grass was eaten down to the dirt too many times by a cowboy who ran too many cattle for the mountain to support.

Years before this happened several cowmen got together to get rid of the wild life that eats seed which grows into grass. They rented an airplane, loaded it up with poison grain, flew all over the mountain and spread their deadly grain. The pigeons all disappeared, the quail survived and the grouse disappeared.

When I was just a little kid I used to sit on a rock looking over the meadow and once I heard the tom tom sound of a grouse in the distance. I didn't know then that it was a grouse, but I found out laterand after that I never heard one again.

I don't eat beef anymore, it is too expensive, in my opinion it's time has past for a kinder and more gentle time.