Steve took this photo at the TS Ranch, originally settled by William Dunphy around 1870; the ranch is now owned by the Newmont Mining Corporation and is one of the largest private holdings in Nevada. Steve and I had the chance to visit during our trip to Elko for the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering. It was as educational as it was fun, and we'd do it again in a minute.
Ranch manager Dan Gralian said the TS is a "totally buckaroo outfit," meaning it follows cowboy and buckaroo traditions. One of those traditions is known as "off the rope," whereby buckaroos select the horse they'll ride for the day from a semi-circle of horses which have lined up inside a corral along a rope -- rears facing the center of the corral, noses facing the rope -- and the horse is then roped and given to the cowboy.
The buckaroos pictured above demonstrated the technique for us. I was curious if working horses look forward to cutting cattle in the same way that working dogs look forward to cutting sheep, so I asked one of the buckaroos. He smiled and said, "Not so much." He also said he'd once worked at a ranch where the horses sort of adopted a group sway, so they'd be harder to rope.
I don't care who you are -- that's just funny.
