LMD Feb 16

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Riding Herd

“The greatest homage we can pay to truth is to use it.”

by LEE PITTS

– JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

February 15, 2016 • www.aaalivestock.com

Volume 58 • No. 2

BFF By Lee Pitts

I

don’t get it. Admittedly, there are a lot of things in life I don’t understand, but one of the more puzzling phenomena is rancher’s support of the NCBA while the organization is doing everything possible to hurt American ranchers, including killing COOL. At the same time those ranchers seem to despise R-CALF who has had the cattlemen’s back every step of the way. People will flock to an NCBA convention in San Diego in droves while R-CALF could hold theirs in a meeting room at the Ramkota Best Western in Rapid City. Is it the pursuit of a swag bag full of free stuff at the NCBA trade show that sucks cattlemen in? Or, is it just a social club whose members want to party like there’s no tomorrow in a goodtime town? Sadly, for NCBA’s cattle-feeding members, there will be no tomorrow because they went from boom times to bankruptcy faster than you can explain the convoluted and complex relationship between the NCBA and the Beef Board. It can’t possibly be NCBA’s policies that keep people coming back for more.

Curious Coincidences

NEWSPAPER PRIORITY HANDLING

I’m not a big believer in coincidence. For example, I don’t think that the two most profit-

able periods in the cattle business during the last 40 years occurred, first, during the time that R-CALF got our northern border shut to incoming Canadian cattle while Canada dealt with her mad cow issues. The second boom occurred during the time period after R-CALF led the effort to get country of origin labeling made mandatory for beef so that the American consumer might know, for instance, that the hamburger they bought at Walmart came from a dozen different countries. When both of those R-CALF supported measures ended we witnessed major market meltdowns and in the latter case, cattle futures at the end of last year when COOL was cooked, suffered their biggest drop in 34 years. Beef futures dropped 16 percent at end of 2015, a percentage decrease not seen since 1981. Oh, and

The best way to appreciate how another person rides is to get on their horse. after COOL was killed in cold blood and the NCBA was worshipping at the alter of globalization, our exports of beef went down 12 percent while at the same time our imports were increasing by another 20 percent. Ask an NCBA supporter why cattle prices were high and they’ll point to exports as the reason. I don’t know if they’re just gullible or they really don’t know that the money we bring home through beef exports is dwarfed by the dollars we pay out to producers in 32 different countries we have graciously let tap into the richest beef market in the world. That would be us ... as in the U.S. If you don’t believe me about R-CALF and their role in helping ranchers pad their

wallets get a calendar and your checkbook and see for yourself. It’s fact, not coincidence.

Bolder Than Bandits While the NCBA was busy selling trade-show booths and giving sustainability speeches, R-CALF was asking a Senate Judiciary Committee to investigate the 2015 cattle price collapse. Specifically, R-CALF asked the Committee, “to investigate 13 specific issues including the cause for the dramatic, unprecedented collapse of U.S. cattle prices in 2015; whether there are structural problems in the U.S. cattle market that contributed to the price collapse in 2015; and whether dominant meatcontinued on page two

Do You Realize Now What You Have Done? BY RENA WETHERELT

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was there as a witness in the famous Montana Hunting District (HD) 313 standing above Deckard Flats, the first weekend of hunting season 2015, imagining the largest migrating elk herd in North America funneling en masse from their summer home in Yellowstone National Park, north to the alpine meadows of southern Montana, the winter range of the Northern Yellowstone Elk Herd. I saw the vacant animal trails furrowing down the ridge from the horizon worn from the elk streaming single file in jagged rows, shrouded in a cloud of steam and spreading out across Deckard Flats like ants from a hill. My friend, Robert T. Fanning, Founder of Friends of the Northern Yellowstone Elk Herd, described how it was twenty years ago. Horsemen decked with orange riding in as the minute of pre-dawn came and the first shots of the season brought down the first bull elk of a hunting culture passed down since the earliest days of the western frontier. We were alone, except for a Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks (MTFWP) Warden, there as a matter of bureaucratic habit to make sure no shots were fired before thirty minutes before sunrise-his presence unneces-

sary. There were no elk to harvest, no swarms of hunters to fire. When MTFWP announced the closure of Deckard Flats to hunting a few days later, it was the most drastic bureaucratic admission yet of the failure of the experimental introduction a non-native species of wolf into the Northern Rocky Mountain ecosystem done by a public/ private partnership twenty years ago. The recent question asked by Russian President Vladimir Putin crossed my mind. “Do you realize now what you have done?”

Background The Northern Yellowstone Elk Herd numbered over 19,000 in 1995. 2990 Antlerless Permits were issued in HD 313 that year. The District was a General Tag area, home to moose, around 300 bighorn sheep, abundant mule deer and antelope. People came from around the state to fill their freezer with wholesome, nutritious wild meat, crowding the roads and parking lots with horse trailers. Trophy hunters and adventurers from around the world converged on Gardiner and Jardine, Montana. Outfitters with pack mules and horses took paying visitors continued on page twenty

New Age Brandings

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anch brandings in the future will take on an all new look thanks to squeamish animal rightists who get ill just thinking about all the despicable things we do to our animals to keep them healthy and safe. PETA and their ilk want you to treat your cattle like humans. No, on second thought, they want you to treat your animals better than the typical human in need of medical care at the ER. Which is not that high of a standard really. Here’s how I see a typical branding 20 years from now. A USDA inspector will be on hand to insure that there will be no ear notching, hot iron branding, mugging, dehorning, wrestling, or roping. Which explains why all the neighbors stayed home. Instead of calves being roped a bunch of twelveyear-old computer geeks will sit in comfort back at the ranch headquarters maneuvering drones over calves and gently dropping soft nets over them. A GPS will automatically inform the medical team of the calf’s location. The surgical team will consist of the following: an anesthetist, surgical veterinarian, nurse, vet tech, cowboy A, cowboy B, an ambulance driver and two PCRA certified rodeo clowns. (Not to be confused with USDA or EPA clowns.) All participants by law must be gowned and wear sterile gloves. When the mobile bovine hospital reaches the calf two cowboy paramedics wearing those cute little booties that doctors wear over their $1,500 shoes will jump out of the ambulance to gently retrieve the calf from its net. They will attempt to place the calf in the sterile surgical theater in the ambulance, without the calf’s mother killing them. This is where the PRCA clowns come into play. If the calf’s mom displays extreme anti-social behavior it’s the clown’s job to distract the crazy cow long enough so that Cowboy A and Cowboy B can transport the calf in a loving manner without being gored or trampled to continued on page five

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LMD Feb 16 by Livestock Publishers - Issuu