Pulling on Loose Rein, Heeler; Brent Cole ©Richard Collins
NORDFORK BRANDING: EASIER ON CALVES & COWBOYS
EXCERPTED FROM "COWBOY IS A VERB: NOTES FROM A MODERN-DAY RANCHER" BY RICHARD COLLINS. COPYRIGHT © 2019 BY UNIVERSITY OF NEVADA PRESS. EXCERPTED BY PERMISSION OF UNIVERSITY OF NEVADA PRESS. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. NO PART OF THIS EXCERPT MAY BE REPRODUCED OR REPRINTED WITHOUT PERMISSION IN WRITING FROM THE PUBLISHER. PHOTOS BY RICHARD COLLINS AND JAY DUSARD.
“What’s the final calf count?” I asked Ian. “Two hundred and sixty six,” he replied, folding his tally book. It was a little past eleven at the branding corrals and the bright sunlight had Jay Dusard grumbling about too much contrast. “We sure could have used some cloud cover,” lamented the photographer. The ground crew had opened the gate and the branded calves were scampering back into the pasture to mother-up. “Let’s see. You started branding three hours and fifteen minutes ago,” I said, whipping out my cell phone. “That makes it forty four seconds per calf.” “Does that include the time we took getting in the second draft of calves?” Manuel asked. Manuel Murrietta was the foreman for Sands Ranch division of Ian Tomlinson’s Vera Earl Ranches that sprawled over 150,000 acres of southern Arizona’s high desert grasslands and ran 2500 cows. ‘Yep,” I replied. “That’s from start to finish.” “It helps to have three heelers and good ground crews.” Ian replied. “Especially when one roper is Harvey Jacobs,” I allowed. “Any southpaw who heels that good ought to be banned from the rodeo. Except when he’s partnered up with me.”
PG. 14 :: SUMMER 2019
“I got some good shots of Manuel and Harvey while the light was tolerable,” Jay added. He had seen and photographed dozens of brandings from Sonora to British Columbia, but today he was seeing the Nordfork in use for the first time. In 1999, I stumbled onto the Nordfork on a horse-buying trip to the Reeves ranch near Eagle Butte, South Dakota. Every fall, Dean and Jim Reeves had a sale of three-year-olds raised on their Cheyenne River country. Every spring Jim branded 7500 calves, all dragged to the fire on horseback. “That’s a lot of calves,” I said. “You must have a big ground crew.” “Big enough, but we also use Nordforks,” Jim replied. “What’s a Nordfork?” I asked. Jim reached in the back of his pickup and pulled out a metal frame that looked like two skeletal toilet seats, hinged in the middle and made from half inch diameter rod. One end tapered smoothly into a V with a two-foot-long handle welded to the apex. The other end was a broader V that opened wide to let the calf’s head pass through. The two Vs were hinged together in the middle. A fifteen foot long rope, broken by bungee cord, attached the broad V to a heavy spike hammered in the ground.
