Cowboys across the country recognized the Day of the Cowboy last weekend.
In Wyoming, some of those cowboys were out on their horses, chasing cows, checking the open range.
Steve James of Daniel is one of them – and he’s been riding and checking cattle in the Hoback Basin since he was seven years old – a span of 65 years, even though he’s been riding for almost all his 73 years.
In October he will be inducted into the Wyoming Cowboy Hall of Fame.
Steve was born was born in 1950, in the southern end of Jackson Hole, where his family had a ranch. Even as a child he helped his parents and his aunts and uncles move about fifteen hundred pairs of cows and calves, through the town of Jackson to and from a forest permit in the Moran area.
At age seven his family purchased a ranch near Daniel, just east of the Wyoming Mountain range and west of the Wind River Mountains. Along with other relatives, they continued ranch work.
Steve grew to love ranch horses and cowboying, riding through the mountains, valleys, and meadows in Sublette County. Growing up, working for his dad, Carroll James, his main job was breaking colts and moving cows to and from the Hoback Basin. By the time he was in high school his interest in cowboying and horses was obvious.
After high school, Steve continued to break colts and cowboy for his father and the neighbors. He rode some bareback horses in rodeos but quickly found he loved just cowboying on his ranch horses on the family ranch.
(Cowboy State Daily Staff) 
(Cowboy State Daily Staff) 
(Cowboy State Daily Staff) 
(Cowboy State Daily Staff)
Cowboying is not just a job for fair (or semi-fair) weather, and during the winter Steve used work horse teams to pull a sled filled with hay that was needed to feed the cattle.
“Steve generally used a four-horse team. When the snow got really deep, he would use a six-up team,” Kent Snedicor, a member of the Wyoming Cowboy Hall of Fame recalled. “Remembering back to the winter of 1976 or ’77, the temperature dropped to 65 below zero in Sublette County, and stayed that cold for three days.”
There is a story that the whiskey froze in the Boulder Bar that year.
“It was so cold you wore everything you owned,” Snedicor added. “Steve and I had a burn barrel on the back of the hay sled to burn the 70-pound hay bales bailing twine. That is where we took turns warming up, and of course, breathing all that nasty burning twine smoke.”
They fed one part of the herd in the morning, took a break at the house to eat lunch, and then fed more cattle in the afternoon. “We usually got done feeding by about 3:30 in the afternoon, unless some catastrophe happened. The distance travelled was around 5 miles round trip. The daily work demanded that you stay in shape (and not party much).” (Maybe it’s a good thing the whiskey froze).
The James cattle were managed along with other stock in the Hoback Stock Association. Each fall the association riders would round up the cattle and herd them back to home ranches.
“It was huge country with high, wind-blown mountain peaks, and many drainages,” Snedicor said. “The country was such that it required a hell of lot of riding. It required ten to fifteen cowboys riding for 16 days or more to gather the bulk of the cattle, comprised of permits of twelve or more ranches.” There were 2,500-3,500 head of cattle on that range , including yearlings, bulls, cows, and calves.
When the roundup was complete and after the first snow of winter had fallen,
Steve and the Association cowboy would fly over the back country, looking for missing cattle.
One year Steve and Snedicor spotted a small group of cattle, snowbound up a drainage called Claus Creek. To get to them, they rode all day, bucking chest high snow with their horses.
The cattle “were standing under a tree, nearly starved to death. The temperature had dropped and it was damn cold,” Snedicor said. “The cattle followed us out of there, and if there was even a twig poking out of the snow, they would devour whatever was available. They all survived and we got them to their prospective owners.”
With determination like that it didn’t long for Steve James to earn respect from all the old-timers in the Hoback Stock Association.
One rancher Lennie Campbell stated, “Steve James always rode the best cow horses in the Basin by far."
He rode a big sorrel horse named Padro, who also made a name for himself. When it was time to work the cattle and take them home during the fall roundup, Steve would work their pairs of cows and calves out on Padro. Even though he had not started professional cutting yet, when a yearling or an old dry cow would try to duck past Steve and Padro it is said that old Padro would jump 15 feet to the side to stop her. And they usually did.
Steve naturally developed an interest in working cow horses, leading into cutting horses which became his primary business as a trainer for himself and the public. He used his cowboy skills within the cutting world by knowing how to read a cow and using it to his advantage in the cutting pen. He has taken these talents and passed them on to his children who have become nationally recognized in the horse and cutting industry.
But ranch cowboying is in his blood, and he still rides for the family ranch. Inside and out, he is the definition of a Wyoming cowboy!
Candy Moulton can be reached at: Candy.L.Moulton@gmail.com
