Fall Means Cowboys Are Out Rounding Up Cattle In Western Wyoming

Before sunrise on an early October day, more than two dozen cowboys arise in the Bondurant, Wyoming, region and begin to prepare for a full day of riding and rounding up.

The thermometer reads 22 degrees at 7,000-plus feet elevation in the Hoback Basin of Sublette County on the western border of Wyoming. The sun is predicted to warm the day another 50 degrees, but it’s not very convincing yet.

The riders get dressed before dawn to catch and saddle the horses, load them in trailers and travel to ride in groups to look for hundreds of cattle during this autumn’s cattle roundup around Bondurant. Layers, jackets with zippered pockets, snacks and a water bottle are necessities.

The roundup — getting all almost 3,000 cows, calves, heifers, bulls and steers back home that went to the mountains in June — is the essential last push before payday for these riders who represent area ranches.

Payday comes when each ranch family’s sold cattle are weighed, loaded into stock trailers and shipped east to be fed and finished as prime steaks and burgers.

Each of the cows, calves, bulls and heifers must carefully be accounted for. What they sell for varies widely. The goal is to do way better than breaking even, which is how the people in this region have been making their living for generations.

Faith Hamlin of the Little Jennie Ranch calls herself “the new kid on the block,” since she jumped into cattle ranching seven years ago on the 70-year-old Bondurant ranch.

“Roundup is the concerted effort so all our cattle are accounted for at the end of the season,” she said.

The Turnout

The roundup takes about a month. It involves riding through willows, up draws and along fence lines to bring hundreds of cattle into a relatively calm huddled mass.

It’s an annual event across the West on public grazing lands. It’s been going on in the Hoback Basin for the past 90 years.

It happens every autumn and involves a half dozen ranches that make up the Hoback Cattle & Horse Grazing Grand Teton Association, which own U.S. Forest Service summer grazing permits for steep mountain pastures and grassy rangeland overlooked by the Gros Ventre wilderness and mountains.

Their permits require cowboys bringing all the cattle off the federal grazing lands, and generations of experience go into the roundup, which involves careful collaborating with each other to make sure the right cattle go to the right ranches.

The ranches in the association running cattle this year are the Pape Family Ranch, Campbell Cattle Company, Hamlins’ Little Jennie Ranch and Gentian Scheer on the Lazy S Ranch in Farson. These ranches assemble their crews, families and friends to saddle up and carry on this historic “roundup” tradition that began with their grandparents and legendary cowboy mentors.

It is the bookend event that follows cattle’s growing season, starting with calving in April, branding in May and the “turnout” in June, when yearlings, cows and calves leave their home pastures onto U.S. Forest Service permitted grazing areas for the next four months.

Lessons Go Generation To Generation

Kevin Campbell is a born-and-raised Bondurant rancher, lifelong cowboy and longtime president of the Hoback Cattle and Horse Association. He attributes his mentors’ lessons on how to coordinate the fall roundups so nothing is left behind.

“Horseback riding is the only way roundup can be done,” he said. “I learned how to handle cattle, read cattle, sort cattle and bring them home. By the time you’re 70, you can read cattle.”

Campbell grew up learning from his elders.

“You can’t just describe how to do this,” Campbell said. “It took years of working with Stone and my dad (the late Walden Campbell) and all the other good cowboys in this country.”

The Hoback Basin is “open range” for the cattle well into October. Signs flash “Cows on Road” to warn drivers going in and out of Hoback Canyon.

Not very long ago, the Hoback Basin had no cell service off Highway 191. Ranchers, cowboys and families gathered by their horse trailers at the end of a long day to plan the next morning’s rides. Plans were firmed up the next morning, depending on who needed to ship their cattle next.

The morning plans this past Monday seem a little muddled at the “bunch grounds,” where groups of cattle are brought together.

Apparently, Verizon cell service in the area has been down for days, but that isn’t a huge obstacle for the ranchers, only an annoyance.

Campbell prefers to holler and gesture his commands across the expanse.

Each ranch has a cowboy representative on hand every day. This is where the legends and mentors teach the next generations.

Daniel fifth-generation cowboy Boone Snidecor rides this year for River Bend Ranch. His family brought cattle down the draw earlier.

Boone’s father Kent and late grandfather Harvey Stone are in the Wyoming Cowboy Hall of Fame. Snidecor, who grew up in a cow camp, began riding as a boy with his father.

“He just yelled and pointed a finger, and I tried to follow the finger,” Snidecor said. “And I do the same with my kids.”

Association rider Tom Filkins brings along his grandsons, following in his sons’ footsteps as young men.

Just like the cattle growing from calves, the next generation of cowboys are taught up and made during roundups like this.

Cutting And Sorting

This day’s cutting from the massive herd is made more difficult by its sheer size. Cutting involves separating the herd by their brands or tags for each ranch, and it takes great skill as a rider.

At the front is where the action takes place.

A dozen guest riders with fast, enthusiastic and well-trained cutting horses watch the cattle, invaluable when an errant yearling or cow races away into the sagebrush to be returned like a recalcitrant youngster.

Local cowboys’ horses edge into the herd to sort cattle by brand, ear mark or ear tag. Little Jennie Ranch cattle have red and pink ear tags. Scheers ranch’s are dark red. Campbell ranch cattle have ears slashed along the top to make a diamond.

“I certainly have mentors,” Hamlin of the Little Jennie ranch said. “I remember the first time I went in to sort cattle with Harmon (Pfisterer.) I learn from how they worked well- behaved cattle, and I try to get better every year.”

Hamlin and three other cowgirls guard a corner on the back side of this herd. They rarely change position. Their job is to hold the line and create a loose equine wall so the cattle don’t stray.

Snidecor, his phone tucked under his chin, rides his horse and sorts several yearlings at a time.

Weaving around the edge, Casey Manning sorts off Pape Family Ranch heifers and sends them down the fence toward riders to hold them until all are separated.

Manning and his crew next move Pape yearlings to the highway and a private pasture several miles away.

Next, Gentian Scheer sorts off her cattle, and that bunch moves to another pasture.

The cattle left are panting, hot and dry. Grass is brittle and 68 degrees feels more like 88 after four or five hours. These are several hundred Campbell and Little Jennie ranch yearlings, to be moved en masse down the highway and sorted one last time on Dell Creek Road.

“I like seeing the span of the ages,” Hamlin said of the tradition. “It’s exciting to gain knowledge from the older generation and sit there next to a younger generation and tackle the challenges.”

Final Push

Down to a handful of riders, the cowboys move cattle back to a cool, flowing irrigation ditch to drink their fill.

Then the herd is driven onto the highway, followed slowly by Kevin Campbell, his truck and trailer lights flashing to alert drivers.

Drivers show different emotion at being surrounded by a Wyoming cattle drive. Surprise and pleasure from some, who make videos to send home. Impatience at the delay from others. Kids waving to see a real cowboy wave back.

Hamlin reflects on the pleasure of another successful day of roundup.

“One thing to me personally that’s so beautiful about it is working together with a crew and bringing neighbors and folks together,” she says. “Thinking about this generation and the next generations on down the line.”