I was fuming about the cattle situation earlier today. Whenever I get to thinking about something around here that bugs me, I always end up comparing it to the things that used to bug me when I lived in the city.
Thing is, they’re all in the same category: Things that complicate my life, that I have no authority or power to do anything about. In the city, that was a fairly long list. Here, it doesn’t actually come up all that often. Oh, things happen here to complicate my life, for sure. Some of them are life-and-death important, too, while most such complications in the city were just irritants. But complications don’t get under my skin unless I’m helpless against them, and here I’m mostly not. If something goes wrong, mostly I can fix it, or replace it, or learn a way to live without it, or shoot it – sometimes I actually get to shoot it – or something. But the thing is, I can almost always formulate a plan, then execute the plan, and deal with the issue. I don’t have to just live with it, because “that’s the way it is.”
Most of those “that’s the way it is” things that used to drive me so berserk in the city had to do with laws, of course. Like the cattle. A hundred years ago some guy in a cattleman’s association slipped a bag of money to some state senator to convince him to pass an unjust law, and he stayed bought long enough to do it. All those guys are dead now, but to this day property owners are still lorded over by walking piles of meat. Only now we’re supposed to pretend we believe it’s a sacred tradition or something.
Seems like all my unsolvable problems are caused by the laws somebody else passed, without consulting me. Laws I absolutely must obey if I want any peace in my life at all, even though they’re the things taking the peace away in the first place. And that’s just the way it is.
Wyoming is also an “open range” state, and yes it is sometimes a big problem to those who don’t own the cattle. Unfortunately, that’s also the “law” regarding deer, elk, etc. They have far more right to our property than we do in many cases – and they can jump the fence. We can’t shoot them unless they actually attack us, and that would be awful hard to prove after the fact. Just not worth it most of the time.
But most of the ranchers out here do fence in their herds as much as they can afford. The cattle are extremely expensive now, and the ranchers have not got quite the upper hand they used to enjoy. Lawsuits are expensive, even if you “win.”
I look at it this way… when/if the time comes, there will be a lot of food on the hoof available here, at least for a good long while.
I’ve never considered whether or not thw open range laws here in AZ as being just or unjust. Guess I will have to think on that. I have lived in open range areas and never considered it a big problem, but I always had fenced yards, to keep kids and dog in and passerby’s out.
However, I do consider the laws allowing leaseholders to treat public lands like there own as unjust. I don’t like seeing the overgrazing that often results on grazing leases. I don’t like Being locked out of public lands on some occasion. I truly hate having to abandon a good rabbit hunt because of grumpy cattle.
Matt, if a cow got in your fenced-but-not-properly-gated property, and your dog* started chasing the cow around for laughs, and the cow’s owner came on your property to get his cow and shot your dog in the process, you’d probably think his legal right to do so was pretty damned unjust. Yet that exact thing happened near here a few months ago. Dog wasn’t killed, neighbor was liable for all vet bills, rancher was liable for bupkis.
I have a strong opinion about that.
*To be fair, we’re not talking about Fluffy the Shih Tzu here. My neighbor has a medium scary dog. On the one occasion I drove into his yard and the dog was out, I refused to exit the Jeep until the dog was under control.
When ya consider that the majority of NV is owned by the gov, whom let the cattle roam around like bosses (because they make money off the land lease) – it shouldn’t be that much of a surprise that it annoys all of the rest of us.
It’s a shame the wild horse population doesn’t get the same considerations as cattle do.
And now that I think about it, sad that cows have more freedoms than people living nearby do.
I agree the open range laws are no longer needed, but getting them removed in this state would take some doing. Had to teach my dogs not to chase cattle. It was harder than I thought but finally succeeded When mama cow kicked the crap out of my dog.