Shaq and Carmen

                                                                                By

                                                                       Mike Capron                     

I was impressed how many of these cattle were so hard to herd and pen.  It all related to their past experience. They had many bad manners when it came to being herded and moved. I thought I would do some experimenting and see if I could gentle them some to people. I couldn’t see any other reason for their bad manners other than human experiences.  I decided to try feeding them out of the pick-up . Maybe getting rid of the man and horse would make it easier. I went to the house and got a load of cake and my flat bed truck . I returned to the North Pasture and couldn’t find Shaq or any other cattle. I found some cattle in the Rock House pasture and it was in a nice big open flat. I started honking my horn and got their attention, they were inquisitive but not sure of my intentions.  At least they didn’t break and run.  I drove right up to them, got out and got a sack of feed. I started walking down the road scattering the feed. I noticed a maverick bull in the back of the bunch that was coming to me with his head high and not acting like he was coming to a feed sack.  He came right through the herd and hooked the feed sack out of my hands and then was intent on hooking me. I had my dogs in the back also and they were looking at me like what can we do to help out dad..???  I was outrunning the bull around the pick-up, but every time I passed to dogs they had that look, like you sure you don’t need some help dad…???  I finally gained enough ground on the bull that I could get up in the back of the truck.  While I was grasping for air, I was trying to figure out what got under his hide. All I learned out of this deal was don’t get a foot-back around these little darlings.

I went home and got my horse and returned the next day to find Shaq. I found him several times but from a long distance. He spotted me and was on the run immediately. I couldn’t get close enough to put the dogs on him. He was a master at running and finding a new hidden hole to get in.  I was learning a lot about tracking in this country, but it was slow going.  My dogs were not good hound dogs. I needed some good tracking dogs. I called my friend who had good dogs and told him my dilemma…    He said I have just the dog you need.   He showed up in a couple days with Carmen…It was a border collie, basset hound cross.  I said, what do you want to do with him….????   He said just take him with your dogs and let him be a member of the pack. I did and we went after Shaq.  It wasn’t long until Carmen figured out the routine and was doing a fine job of trailing the bull we were looking for. We got close enough for the dogs to work on Shaq and it didn’t take Shaq long to get the hang of things and he got a lot more reasonable. But we were never close enough to any pens or other cattle to put him with. I just waited for the chance to pen him at some shipping point . We worked on some other country close by with cattle that we could work and ship some of the barren cows and younger maverick bulls. I was sure getting used to Carmen and leaning on him more and more. We were doing good and Shaq was very respectful but still high up on the rim and close to the Wind Tower project.   The boss was showing up down at HQ and I had to load up and go to the HQ. Things were going good but the boss said he needed a bunch of hamburger. I said I just happen to know where we can get a bunch. He said good go get it .  I called my good friend and neighbor and told him the story and my idea of how to kill two birds with one rock. I thought Shaq would make wonderful hamburger. He was fat, big and in good shape. We could get to him with a pick-up and gun and then haul him to HQ where we had a walk-in cooler and all the meat cutting equipment and a good meat grinder. He was also close to the wind tower construction and there were several big front-end loaders that we could borrow to load him in a pick-up after we had field dressed him. We split up and Mac my neighbor got his gun and went after the meat. I went to get some things at the Rock House and move camp for a couple days to HQ. We met back at the meat house and walk-in cooler. Mac had Shaq dead and loaded in the back of his pick-up. Shaq was a pick-up load. Mac said he thought Shaq would weigh at least 2500 lbs. before he was field dressed.  It took us a couple days but we got him ground up into hamburger and frozen into packages. The boss was happy and we were sure glad to have made a smooth package out of Shaq.