Stolen On The Range

When spring roundup comes, few ranchers expect to find every head of cattle at once. Some are bound to stray; others might have fallen to illness or predators. But when Bart and Lilly O’Toole gathered in their stock from winter grazing in Nevada’s Reese River Valley, they were dismayed to find 20 cows missing from a herd of 200. When none turned up on neighbors’ lands or in Nevada stockyards, the O’Tooles knew that 10% of their herd had been rustled. Says Lilly O’Toole, 43: “I’m sure they’re slaughtered and made into hamburger by now.”

Cattle rustlers are as much a part of the mythology of the West as hanging judges and gunslingers. Unlike the other characters, though, rustlers still flourish. So much so, explains Bill Slagle, a special investigator for California’s Bureau of Livestock Identification, that “there are more cattle stolen today than at the turn of the century.”

According to the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association, the number of cattle reported rustled in Texas and Oklahoma annually has climbed from an estimated 5,300 in 1977 to approximately 6,750 last year. But that figure may not even begin to convey the size of the problem. An estimated three out of four thefts are never reported because ranchers know that the rustlers have probably been gone for weeks before the loss is discovered. In California 1,773 head of cattle were reported missing in 1987, but state officials estimate the actual loss to have been about 6,200 animals, worth about $2.5 million. Since the price of cattle has risen sharply, from $429 for a 650-lb. yearling feeder steer at the beginning of 1987 to a near record $543 today, ranchers and law-enforcement officials are bracing for more and more thefts on the range.

Modern, motorized rustlers are much more efficient than their Old West predecessors. A 20-ft. gooseneck trailer can carry 15 or more yearlings and transport them to stockyards more quickly than any hard-riding band of desperadoes on horseback ever could. A pair of California ranch hands who were arrested for rustling two months ago — Buddy Goodman, 46, and Benton Demaree, 38 — allegedly used trailers to ship 45 head of cattle from an area southwest of Fresno to livestock auctions nearly 100 miles miles away in San Luis Obispo and Kern counties. Only when a state cattle-brand inspector spotted a telltale marker hidden within a steer’s ear were the suspected thieves nabbed.

Many of the culprits, especially in economically depressed Texas, are small- time operators who may grab one cow at a time and load it into a trailer. Says Steve Westbrook, one of 32 private field inspectors hired by the state: “Used to be cowboy types would steal cattle. Now it’s everyone, from a person trying to support a drug habit to an unemployed person who is behind on house and car payments.” The victims of many of the Texas thefts are city dwellers who have weekend “ranchettes” of about 15 acres, where they relax and keep a few cows and perhaps a horse or two. With no one minding the place during the week, the cows are easy targets.

– The main method used to discourage rustling is still branding, though not all states have laws requiring the practice. Texas, the largest beef producer in the U.S., has no such regulation, and many ranchette owners are squeamish about putting a hot iron to their cattle. California, by contrast, has stringent branding and inspection laws, but even they do not stop rustlers who haul cattle across state lines to markets hundreds of miles away.