Cattle, Coyotes and Cowboying in the Painted Hills with Will Homer

We sit down with Will Homer, CEO of Painted Hills Natural Beef based in Fossil, Oregon, to talk cattle values, rancher values and the hazards that face a calf born into this harsh world. Coyotes, wolves and golden eagles all get their piece of flesh. Will grew up shooting a 270 Winchester; he recalls the 6.5 Swede, confesses to a 6.5 Grendl and reminisces about rodeo, football and shooting sage rats before the blight. Visit https://natural-beef.com/

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Transcript

Gary: You have found a podcast called Gary Lewis Outdoorsman. This is where we talk about rifles and ammunition, big game hunting around the west, around the world.

We are going to talk about food Today. We're going to talk about food, Everybody's favorite subject.

We sit down with Will Homer, CEO of Painted Hills Natural Beef, based in Fossil, Oregon. We talk cattle values, rancher values, where the beef comes from, the hazards that face a calf born into this harsh world.

Do we talk about the.270 Winchester, the 6.5 Swede, and all the 6.5s that come after it.

Rodeo, football, shooting, sage rats.

If you want to catch Frontier Unlimited, our television show, you can watch it whenever you want or wherever you are, you click on HuntChannel TV.

It's also in the show notes. We're going to make it real easy for you. If you want to watch it on your phone. If you want to support free speech and good hunting content in the Internet age, look for our coffee and books and wildlife forage blends@gary Lewisoutdoors.com

we appreciate our sponsors, Nosler Camp chef Warren Scope mounts, Carson Procure Bait Sense, the Dallas area Chamber of Commerce, TNST S. Ford in Madras, Bailey seed and smarts.

Let's talk about food.

Will: Food.

Gary: Bacon, ham, apples, quick salads that the.

Will: First lady will make along with. Along with the second lady, they'll make some salads.

Gary: The most beautiful piece of chocolate cake that you've ever seen.

Will: And now here's Gary Lewis next. Next on Fox. Guy's mental state. I've said it for years now. He's cogent. The East Biggs unit and the fossil unit. So. Yep, we can kind of hunt both sides of the highway here.

Gary: Okay, well, we're. We're rolling now. We're recording.

Will: Yeah. Catch me while I'm gone. Fire. You know.

Gary: Yeah, yeah.

So, yeah, some of my early mule deer experiences were in the East Biggs unit a long time ago. And so I know some of your neighbors and maybe some of the neighbors that you don't have anymore.

Cause they've timed out.

Will: Yep. Yep, that's exactly right. Exactly right.

Gary: Well, thanks for coming on the podcast.

Will: You bet. Thanks for having me.

Gary: Painted Hills Natural beef. And you and I have this. This conversation has been a long time coming. And when I say that, I mean like 15 years. Long time coming.

Yeah. Because you guys helped out at a fish camp down at Peach beach on the Columbia a long time ago. We were. We were in the same camp there for.

I don't know how long you were there, but that was probably the night Joe Brennan locked his keys in his F150. And. And I had to help him with a clothes hanger and all that.

Will: Oh, goodness. Actually, I wasn't down for dinner.

Gary: Yeah, I wasn't help. Right. I wasn't helping him. I know that. I was mocking him.

Will: That's perfect.

Gary: But anyway, you know, you're an Oregonian.

You have a company. You're the CEO of Painted Hills Natural Beef.

Why don't you explain real quick what the cattle industry looks like and who the players are, you know, the. The guy, the. The cow calf guy and et cetera, and where it all goes and ends up at your place?

Will: Well, there's a.

We are an alliance. We are. We are seven ranchers who basically tried to change the system 27 years ago when we started this program. And at that time, the cattle business was really sick and we needed to do something different.

And I actually wasn't involved directly. My father and mother and some and these other ranches were involved and they got started doing. What is the trend today? And.

But we basically.

Producers produce cows and calves, and these producers produce cows and calves, and then they. They can consolidate and as they go up the chain and. And calves, Calves come off ranches and they become yearlings.

And yearlings might be on grass or they might go strictly in a background lot where they're fed a good ration and controlled. And then. And then those calves are grown.

What I. Sometimes I call it junior high. And then we turn them into high school and we put them in a feed yard to give them a high, high energy diet and.

And really grow the muscle and the beef that we eat today and we enjoy in the store. And Painted Hills, what they did was they actually took away two efficient efficiency tools, took away the hormone implant and took away the.

An. An antibiotic that's fed as a low grade.

Basically, it's a feed additive that allows an animal to eat more and grow faster. And we took those two things away because we believed the consumer didn't want to be exposed to those things.

And that. And that is true. When you talk to a consumer and you tell them what you're doing, they. They say, thank you for that. They like that. But what really happens as at the same time is the beef is a better eating.

It eats better, they like it, you like it, it tastes better, it has better flavor, it has better consistency. And so that's kept us in the market for 27 years.

So.

Gary: Okay, I'm gonna stop you right for a second question. I gotta Ask.

When I eat prime rib, sometimes it's just the greatest cut and I really enjoy it. And then other times I'm eating it and I notice a allergic reaction to it and is it something that the beef has been eating or is it one of these hormone things or an additive or something?

Will: Goodness. You know what's funny about that comment is that I have on my email today a lady who is allergic to soy, and she is. She can't eat chicken and pig and pork because soy is a by.

Soy meal is a byproduct of the soil soy oil program in the Midwest. And soy meal is a very important part of the animal diet. You know, cattle are up cyclers.

Right. We use cheap feedstuffs that are not humanly consumable, and we put those in the ration for the cattle. They can consume them and. And do just fine. So in the Midwest, soy is a big thing.

Out here in the Northwest, we don't have a soy crushing plant, so we don't have a soy market. We don't have anybody growing soy.

But that's just one thing.

Gary: That's one possibility. Then.

Will: Okay, I'm going to tell you something terrible that I know a lady that is a butcher in a butcher shop in Klamath Falls who just flat can't eat beef that's been fed corn either.

Gary: Yeah.

Will: Can't eat any corn fed.

Gary: Yeah.

Will: So I. It's. It can be, but I think it is. I think there is something to the reaction to what the animals have been eating. And.

Gary: Yeah. Okay. All right. That. That's what I suspected.

Will: That's a hard one. I thought maybe you were going to just say sometimes it's good and sometimes it's bad. I like to hear people don't have a good. Have a reaction.

Gary: My cousin raised a steer at his place and then he liked that little steer so well that when he butchered it, turned it into little packages, he couldn't eat it. So he goes to the store and buys other beef or, or he'll eat a deer or an elk or whatever.

And that really, really good beef that he finished, you know, he. He gave me a whole bunch of it.

Will: Nice.

Gary: I had that is for lunch just now.

Will: Yep, that's the story. I grew up with my dad, you know, as a rancher and as a kid and as a rancher, we didn't. We didn't have a lot of money.

And nobody, nobody really has any money. Ranching, it's not about the money, it's the lifestyle and such until suddenly here recently, you know, But. But you. You create a crop of calves.

You put the calves on the truck, you send them to market and send them away. And. But you do. You always have a rotation of cattle. Cat. And typically a heifer that loses a calf in the.

In the spring, her first calf or such, and then the green grass gets on her and she looks good. You take her to the butcher, and then you have. Two months later, you have your beef in the freezer.

And my dad would literally have to take those heifers to the sale and buy one of yours or someone else's and take it to the butcher, because he saw the picture.

He saw that cow's face in the plate when he did his thing. So. And that is. That is it. That's the lifestyle. I live in a. I live in a very strange.

I call it the black hole of the industry. I can talk to a cowboy and a cattleman, and I have to talk about live animals and keeping them alive and.

And all those things, because that's important. And that. And that. And that's what we do, right? That's what we do as our life. But then there's the process of turning cattle into beef.

No one. None of them really know how that happens. Then I go out on the street and I talk to your retailer and your grocer and your. And your butcher, and they know that there's a black hole somewhere where the cattle are created and they turned into beef.

But all they know is the box and the yield and the product that showed up in the box. And whether it was cut right or cut wrong or it was oversized or undersized or whatever it is.

And it. It is a. It's a crazy industry.

Gary: Yeah. Okay, so when that calf is born and. And we're trying to keep it alive, what are some of the things that are threats to that calf?

Will: Weather. Weather. Weather. We just. We. We had the most beautiful January ever.

Fifty degrees, you know, a little bit of chill at night. Wonderful. And the calves weren't ready to come yet. And now the calves are ready to come in February. And what did it do?

Snowed. Put a foot on the ground. We have a young lady here that ranches with her family, works in our office three days a week. She's an accountant, and. And.

And she loves to be on the ranch. And my wife talked her into coming to work with us because she's a. She's great here, too. And. But she's at home now struggling with those calves coming out on the ground in the snow and the cold and, and it could have been three weeks earlier, they'd have been perfect.

But typically it goes well. Typically it's fine. But sometimes they're, they're a little higher up there in the fringe of the Blue Mountains here they, they live in the timber.

It's beautiful there.

It's a little. That brings a little more difficulty in the cold and the, and the birthing of calves. Now you know, Wheeler county where we are, we have it just, you know, 15 miles of crow flies.

You fall down on the John Day river. You, if you're having calves down on the John Day river, you have no problem at all. We don't have any snow down there.

We have great.

Gary: Nice and warm.

Will: Yep. Yep. Just like that.

Gary: What for somebody who might be listening from Portland or somebody who's listening from Seattle, what would you tell them about Wheeler County?

Will: It is. It.

I grew. I've grown up here. I got here when I was 4 years old and it was. It's getting kind of stale until Covid hit and then we realized what kind of treasure we have.

Gary: Yeah.

Will: To be able to get away and hide out and mind our own business and be our own people and, and but Wheeler county is the least populated county in the state of Oregon.

We are not in the high desert country of the southeast. We are right dead center north in the northern half of the dead center. We're 60 miles off the Columbia River.

We are a bit of a. We're a great environment. Can have our harsh moments.

You can't have a maple tree. I tried to grow maple tree twice in my yard. And you'll have an April freeze or something. That'll, that'll make things a little difficult.

We're at 3,000ft. We can't quite grow. I can grow a corn plant about 3 inches. About corn. Ear of corn about 4 inches long. On a good year, you know, we're pretty.

Just a little bit harsh.

Gary: I I It's not the soil. It's the lack of rain.

Will: It's lack of rain and at. Right. And the lack of, of season. Right. It's just a little too. Gets a little too cold too late and a little too cold too early.

And but, but, but it can be anything. I mean this year in 2020, let's start in order in 2023. The summer broke in September and we had rain. And by the time we got to October, November we had 4 inches of green grass for cows to go into winter on.

It was. That's a, that's a cowboys dream this year we. 24. I'm sorry, 24. We had a dry, dry summer and it stayed dry all the way through. And I, I believe we had a little bit of rain.

The first green up I saw was on the 21st, I believe in November. And we're talking just green up, not enough for a cow to grab yet. So that kind of severe change difference, we're okay.

We had a great spring and we, we made hay to hell. Wouldn't have it in the summertime, a barn full of hay. Everything's good there. It's just, it's just, it's just what you deal with in the weather.

You deal. Weather patterns we deal with. And, and it's just, and it's dry. It's 8, 18 inches of rain is a great year.

Gary: What about coyotes? What's the coyote?

Will: Oh yeah, that's. My brother is. My brother works on the ranch permanently. He takes that kind of position of this thing. I work in this office for the most part. And, and the coyotes in the wintertime as the pressure comes on the best, most deer in town, you've probably experienced that, that we call them the town deer.

They're all hiding from the coyotes in town.

Yep. In fossil. That the turkeys are hiding out in fossil.

But just recently snow came hit them coyotes too. And they will come down and the new calves on the ground, they're a bit dangerous. They'll, they'll. You'll come in, you'll kind of, you'll kind of.

What happens is you kind of get comfortable. Well, we might have seen a coyote. We can hear them every night, whatever. But then pretty soon you find a deer carcass or a calf carcass that's, that's been killed and eaten in the same night.

And when that happens, you know, you got a problem and you kind of got to get after them.

So my brother, he puts, he, he, he toys around with that stuff and stays after him. I.

Gary: Okay, so he's got his little tricks.

Will: Yeah, he's got his tricks. Yeah. I, I go out but you know, I, I bought a side by side a little too early. It doesn't have all them fancy windows and all that.

It has windows, but they're plastic, you know, and if you've ever been around, you can't see out. So I swear to God, them coyotes are out there. I just can't see them out of the buggy windows.

Gary: Oh, I know exactly what you're saying because the new buggies right now, they are so nice and modern and so you got an early one and yep. And you gotta use it.

Will: Oh man, it's great. And it's not bad. I got a Lexan window on it. It's pretty good. But the cats like to slide down it in the summer, in the wintertime and you just, you know, it works great.

Keeps the winter off and all. But doggone it, I know them coyotes are out there. I just can't quite make them out through the plastic.

Gary: Do you remember Joe and Evelyn Fitzgerald?

Will: Yes.

Gary: I happen to be at Joe's place on the day he killed his 243rd coyote with his 243.

Will: Oh my goodness.

Gary: And so if you think about having a Ruger M77 I think is what he had and oh wow. It was a beat up gun, you know. Oh yeah.

And I think he had just killed the 243rd coyote with that rifle, if I remember right. But you know, who cares? I mean it's my story, so yeah, I'm telling it.

Will: But awesome.

Gary: But he was death on the coyotes. And. Yep, they will pull a calf out of a birthing mother.

Will: Yep.

Gary: And yep.

Will: That's why they get pretty brazen when it gets a little snowy and they get. Yep. They get pretty tough. They do.

Gary: So I have a few sheep and I walked out, I think it was a Sunday morning. And I just looked over at the sheep and they were all gathered up in one corner and the, the boss, you, she is smarter than all the other animals in the pen.

She was looking sideways and then she ran at something and it was a coyote and it went up and over the berm in our pen.

And of course I was, I was, you know, 50 steps away from a rifle at that point. There was no way I could respond to it. So I went over there and I checked around the pen.

I found where it got in at and I closed that up. And that was a month and a half ago. We just had a little lamb born today. So that was our, our first lamb of the season.

Will: How many do you have?

Gary: We have. That would be seven sheep. We have now we have American black bellies.

Will: Oh yeah. They're.

Gary: They're efficient little lawnmowers.

Will: Are they big? I, I don't know that brand. I don't breed.

Gary: They're a hair sheep so they're not woolies. We don't have to cut the, take the wool. And people tell me they taste good, but I'm not going to have one.

But they're pretty good lawnmowers.

Will: Good, good. Perfect. Good deal.

Gary: So coyotes, wolves, what about eagles?

Will: Oh, that's a problem, that one. Now they, they.

I have a different view of eagles. Once you go to Alaska, you'll get a, you get a different view of eagles. When I get, you see one, you just think, oh my God, it's so majestic.

I see a bald eagle.

Gary: But you go to Alaska, you see 150 eagles.

Will: You saw a crow because they're. Yeah, right. They're just like crows.

But, but, but they do, they get smart. They get to eat in the afterbirth and the things involved with cows and calves and, and they will get, they'll get greedy sometimes.

I've heard of you. You're going to get a little graphic, but I've heard of them coming down, pick the eyes out of a birthing calf.

Gary: Yeah.

Will: Before it's completely out so that it's basically dead. Right. So it's basically set itself up for dinner. And yeah, they've gotten more brazen here in the last couple of years. They need to learn to eat turkeys.

But yeah, yeah, that's right. We've got turkeys to hell and have it. Yeah.

But yeah, the end. Yeah, the eagles are seasonal, but they come with the, they come with the weather and I think they, they tell me they come with the weather and the low pressures when, when they come in here, but I think they come with the fish.

I really, the guys get all jacked up to go down on the John Day river and go steelhead fishing. And the next thing you know, I see a golden or a bald eagle.

Gary: So I think what's going on right now is the steelhead run. Yeah, we shouldn't have talked about that. That's. I'm sorry to my friends.

Will: You can cut it. You can cut everything. It's okay.

Gary: Okay. So you're the seven families, ranchers that are associated with Painted Hills natural beef. Is anybody having trouble with wolves?

Will: Yeah, actually, the young lady I mentioned here that lives up in the timber, they have a, they had a bit of a kill problem and they got their camera, got the fishing game or.

Yeah. Worked in there and they got some pictures of this wolf. And the problem is now they knew what. Know what track they're looking at and they're starting to see that track get closer and closer to the house.

And it's just they're not scared of us or they're not scared or they're not timid. And there's just too many. There really is too many.

We saw a wolf. I was just thinking of this. My niece is 26. I believe it Is. And I think we saw our first wolf. All they had to do was mention them back 20 years ago.

And we saw one here on the ranch to a month later. And my brother had her on his lap on an atv, saw something down a ridge and said, what is.

That's not a cat. What is that? And he took off down that ridge and he got close enough to realize he looked down at his little girl and said, this is not the right place for us and left.

And the next year, in the fall. It was in the fall and the next year about the same time, one of our other owners here actually was riding his horse back horseback with his dog and, and such.

And he looked, watching around, looked over his shoulder and there's a wolf pacing him. And so he turned his horse back like he was gonna scare that wolf off. Right.

And kind of climb the hill towards it. And the wolf just laid down.

Gary: Yeah.

Will: And he said, you know, that's not the right reaction either. And he turned around, went back down with the cows. And so, you know, there we've got just enough pressure that we're aware.

I don't know other than that I try to mind my own P's and Q's, you know, I take my ATV and I take my dogs and we go **** around and we have just a little bit of this timber here.

You know, Wheeler county and Fossil were there on the very end of the Blue Mountain range. And we were actually had a, you know, Kinzu, the logging town here. So we're right on the end of these.

This timber. And, and this is where they kind of tail out. This is where they kind of pinch off out in the Blue Mountains on their way to Salem. So you know that, that's.

Gary: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, when you think about predator hunting or big game hunting as you've practiced it in your life, what are your. What's your favorite caliber? And. And what's your.

What's your rifle?

Will: Well, I grew up in the world of a 270. My dad was a 270 guy and he made sure we had a 270 and everybody had a 270. And so that was pretty much we did what we did.

We didn't shoot for fun. We just, we just shot when we hunted.

That we did. Now we did.

We do live on the edge of. Are what we call our sage rats. Right. And you've probably experienced those are miniature prairie dogs as you would. And our ranch I grew up with the privilege of.

We were inundated with them. And so Every chance you had, you had a 22 and you were popping sage rats. And. And in fact, we went through the 80s there.

My mom and dad put an ad in Oregonian. It was no more than an inch that people could come for $20 a day and shoot sage rats. And we had mattress money for 20 years.

Guys slap $20 in your hand and you'd stick them out on the mountain and quit, you know, two or three years in, quit putting that ad in there. You just had people coming.

And then here. Oh, about the time my kids were born, we had some kind of blight. And in the canyon we live in, we don't have enough sage rats now to.

To even bother going looking for them, which is a shame because there are other parts of the county still have them, but.

Gary: Right.

Will: It's a. It's not a. It's a shame because you can't. You don't have that fun. But it's. It's a great thing to not have that damage.

Gary: Right.

Will: So.

Gary: Yeah, yeah. The damage is something else.

Will: Yeah.

Gary: What. What about badgers? You know, in the cyclical nature of badgers, have you seen those numbers come up or follow the.

Will: Is it. Badger is a weird thing. I. You would see a little bit action with a sage rat population, but not bad.

But bad. But you know what? Badger's funny. It always seemed to me like if you saw one, you saw them all that day. I don't know what it is about where I was or when I was out, but that day you'd see three in that day and you're like, wow, this.

What in the heck is going on? But you might not ever see another one for a year or more. But. But we don't. No, we don't have. Well, like I say, sage rats are gone now, so I don't know what those guys in other areas where they got sage rats, I never.

You just never really noticed too much of that. It was.

It was a weird deal. But I know, I know one time specifically, I got two in one day and got a shot at another one. And it was just one day.

And it's like, what is. This is the strangest day ever.

Yeah, but that's more my brother. See, he's the guy on the ranch. I just go on the weekends and **** around. But. Yeah, yeah, you were talking about calibers and guns and.

Yeah, my. My father in law. This. I think this is kind of funny because. I don't know, I mean, I grew up in the 270 world, right. I don't know any better.

And my father in law, he's got a. He's. He's now 86 and he's a gun nut and he's got all kinds of things and he's a six, five Swede guy.

He got. I think he's got three of them. And he, and he taught my sons to start shooting with that to start, you know, and that was fun and all and, and I didn't know the gun from Adam.

He's telling me all about it, this, that and everything. And then we went into Covid and they came out with this 6, 5 Creedmoor and this 6, 5 Grendel and his 65 this and the 6, 5 that.

And I'm like, oh my God, this is. These guys are all bragging about the stuff that my father in law has been telling me all this time. You know, I thought that was pretty cool.

So I built a 6,5 Grendel, but I shoot. I haven't shot it enough to. To do much with but.

Gary: Is that in an AR platform?

Will: Yeah, just, just because it was. I have a friend who's kind of into that and you know, and he says, well, you know, this is Legos for adults. Right. So. Yeah.

So way we went playing.

Gary: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's cool.

Will: Yeah.

Gary: Did you know you were going to go in the cow business when you were young or.

Will: No, not really. I'm a child of the 80s and in the 80s the cattle business was very difficult. We went through the 20% interest rate, you know, and the cattle business was a highly.

It still is highly leveraged, right. A cattle and until here just recently, in the land values like they are and the. I like to say the plumber, right. The plumber can make a little money in the city and he comes out here and buys a ranch right now.

But it used to be that land value wasn't a lot on a rancher, didn't have much and he basically borrowed the. He had the cattle and he had the land, but he had me cash to pay for food.

So he went to the bank, borrowed the money so that for on the crop he was going to create and raised the cows and paid the bank at the end of the year and somewhere in between he had a steak dinner and he got to go to the state fair and.

And so when I was a kid, I was, I was an athlete and, and we had some fun. Went to a school, small school and had some great times there.

I went to Oregon State and I walked on as a football player. Thought I was Going to be a big jock, you know. Well, that didn't work, but I was going to be an engineer.

Well, that didn't work, but anyhow, the point was you're going to get an education and get out of here because ranching didn't have any money in it. And so I was privileged enough to my parents when I graduated from college.

I didn't have a plan. I didn't have more plan than I did when I went. And I. And so I got to come home and we worked on the ranch, me and my brother.

My brother's three years younger than me, but he beat me home. And. And my parents. You're going to. This is. This is pretty crazy. I don't maybe, you know, but my.

My brother. When my brother went to college, my mother thought she was going to go insane because there's no kids. So my dad bought her a fuel jobber and put her.

And. Which is a. Which is a small business here that was hauling fuel around to ranches and heating oil. Every. Every house here has a barrel in the ground for heating oil, you know.

And. And so when we both came home to the ranch, my parents, at that time, the cattle business was terrible. And my parent. But my parents had this fuel business, so they had a little bit of cash and they worked with these other producers to create this natural beef thing that.

Just trying to get more value out of their cattle. But they had the time to go run the wheels off two cars to Portland and Seattle and such and do demos and talk to consumers.

And their two flunky kids were home running the ranch and the fuel business at the same time. Timing is everything. At the same time, that kinzu country that we were talking about for the.

The timber changed hands and Boise Cascade, I think, bought it first. And they had five logging crews out there. And what happens when there's five logging crews out there? You go through a lot of fuel and a lot of hydraulic oil.

So there was cash in the fuel business to fund a broke beef company and a flunky's running a ranch. And so my parents got to drive and work. Work through the.

The hardest part of the beef industry to get to where we could get to a bigger. We had a great idea. The customers loved it and the. That we got to a bigger packing house, bigger facility.

And once we got there, we got into offal credits and better cryovacs and all the things that make you a real beef company. And then from there we. We managed to get to where, you know, the chaos we are Today.

So yeah, it was pretty, it was pretty crazy. I've been thinking back of that. I'm thinking how in the world. But that's how that all came together. So. So then as we got farther along, my mother did all the things we do here in the office.

We have, we now have eight employees where we've shrunk some since.

Kind of the highlight of 2020 and 2021. When we, when beef was really valuable.

Well, actually cattle were cheap. It wasn't beef's value.

But we have eight employees in our small town of 350 people and we get the privilege of living out here where the phone, fax, Internet, the brains. We don't do anything out here with the beef itself other than grow the cattle.

So yeah, yeah.

Gary: When somebody wants to buy Painted Hills natural beef, what's the way they do it?

Will: Well, the real way they do it is to go to their local grocer in the Northwest. We have the privilege, and this is another lucky thing. We have the privilege of having a lot of independent grocers or smaller grocers.

We have all, all of the Thriftway branded stores in the Seattle market. All want to have a natural beef like Whole Foods, but not be Whole Foods. And so we're in all of those.

Most of the little butchers in the Seattle, the western Washington, Western Oregon market, they, most of those have a natural beef or are familiar with Painted Hills natural beef because they can't, they can't toe to toe with Safeway, right?

They got to do something special. So, so they, so they found us and put us in there like that. And then we've just started to try to get into the online thing.

But I'm going to tell you what it, the, the UPS and the shipping and the ice and the freight, all the stuff involved in that is way more difficult than you can imagine.

And, and consumers are a little bit difficult in their expectations.

Gary: Expectations, yes.

Will: So online works. You know what's funny about online though, I gotta tell you, this is crazy. My wife manages that side and keeps an eye on it, does a great job with it and all.

And, and, but what's crazy is an order comes through from online and it's like they don't have a budget, which is awesome.

But I know that they're buying for long term, right? So an order comes in, it's $400 somewhere or it's $600 somewhere, and you just think, wow, that is, that's nuts.

But they did, they did us all a favor, them and me Both. Let's get it all out there. Let's get it all in the box. We best we can and let's get her done.

And they're doing a great job. But it's. But you just, you just. You choke a little. You $400 worth of stuff. Well, that freight didn't look so bad at $400.

Gary: That's right. Yeah, that's right. Okay, so what if somebody lives in Bend? Local Acres?

Will: Yes, Local Acres is a great opportunity. They do a great job. There's.

There's a few restaurants. I can't really tell you the restaurant business. I don't stay in touch with that. Great. But it's terrifying.

What's that?

Gary: It's on the menu in some of the places I've been in.

Will: Good.

Gary: Yeah, good.

Will: Well, I need to spend more time over there. My distributor, actually, there's guys that live there tell me to come over and bring my cowboy hat and tell the story and I just don't get myself over there.

My gosh.

Gary: But yeah, you know, I was in the cow business. When I was six years old, I rode a motorcycle for the first time. And this was on one of our friends ranch.

And, and down in the feedlot. I'm trucking through the feedlot on this motorcycle. I'm six years old and I went down and I, I. When I get back up, you know, I'm just covered in cow ****.

That was what I got into the, into the cattle patted your fall.

Will: Yep.

Gary: Okay, let's see. Did you go to high school in Condon?

Will: I went to high school in Condon, yep. You see my little paraphernalia flying around here?

Gary: We, I do.

Will: We had the privilege. I had that. I went to school in Fossil right here in Wheeler County. And, and I played baseball in little league and Babe Ruth. And Babe Ruth was with the Condon boys.

And in high school they played baseball in Condon, but they didn't play baseball in Fossil. So we live just north of town. So we just rented A. It's 20 miles to Condon.

I think we have the best highway we have the best highway in the state of Oregon between Fossil and Condon. We have a great crew in Condon.

Gary: We.

Will: We have a highway with fog lines all the way between the two. I sent my kids drive themselves to Condon. I sent them to Condon too. I think it's. I think it was.

They had the same opportunity. A few more kids to play and a few more little more participation and. And I had the privilege of. We had four, 50 kids in the school, I think total, And I think 22 boys on the football team.

Everybody participated. Right. So we played football and then we played basketball and we won a state tournament because we had some real talented young men with me. And, and it, and it worked.

And it was, it was fun. It was a great growing experience. And so I got to, I got to put my boys back in that same experience here. And, and, and I was a coach.

I, and I didn't. It changed. It was not like this when I was here, but now it turned into, you know, a parent, an interested parent needs to be the coach.

And so I coached him football and I coached some other things there. So that was a good. That was great. That was a blast.

Gary: And if you send the kid to school in Condon, they're spending a lot of money driving up that hill.

Will: Yeah.

Gary: When. If they run out of gas at school, they can coast all the way back home.

Will: Almost. I'll tell you what. Yeah. Or there'll be somebody driving by. It knows you now. There's. There's a lot more people on that road today than there used to be. I could tell you.

We used to put cows out in the road and, and move them up and down because that highway kind of cuts us off right here, you know, and, and we have to think about it a little bit now.

We still do at times, but we don't do it like I did when I was a kid. We put cows in the road and shoot. When I was a kid, dad put cows in the road and then go home, have lunch.

Say he's, he was, he was eating the, eating the long pasture, you know. And today's world with these darn cell phones, they. People are on the phone in 10 minutes.

You got a cow out? You got a cow out. Yeah, cow out. Doggone it. You ever owned a cow, you'll know why you cow out. You know.

Gary: That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Just let me ask you a few questions. This thing I do sometimes, number one is low and number 10 is the best.

Will: Okay.

Gary: So this is. I'm going to ask you just a few questions here.

How do you feel about electric bikes for working on the ranch? Okay.

So one being no use for them and ten being for sure. You want to use electric bike on the ranch?

Will: Well, I think probably pretty low because you're going to, you're going to ride a bike. You got to be kind of skilled and, and if you're going to get a bike off the road, you're going to be **** Skilled.

I mean we, we do use an atv. We use four wheelers and we, we use horses. We get where we use side by sides. We, we're getting too old.

The only good horse is a well rode horse. And we got to the point where we weren't riding horses much and we were riding ATVs too much. And then pretty soon you get on an old horse and he shakes you loose and that's no good.

And so but a, a bike would be.

My brother has four of them and they're just for riding on the back of his motorhome for when he gets to his parking ground. But, but I, but I have thought about.

Honestly, when Elon wanted to sell the truck for $50,000, I put my money on it because they said well geez, who's going to own a truck for $50,000? First of all.

Which he didn't do right. So, but then the other thought is if my ATV was electric, I don't ride it that far. I go to the top of the mountain back wouldn't be loud.

It's nice and quiet.

You know that that's not a bad electric golf cart type use, right. And, and so I don't know. But bicycle. All I can think of is a bicycle. And the rocks.

We do the lava rocks and all the ****. You'd be upside down on that thing in the rocks and.

Gary: Okay, how about using drones to find lost cattle?

Will: You know, I hear that's a good thing. That that's probably an 8 or 9. I. We don't use them yet.

We're not real confident on how far where we're. We're not in flat ground. You know, you've been here pretty hilly kind of stuff. But I know that Lisa's again up in the timber.

She's used it some. I know a guy over in.

We don't use individual IDs or tags and, and tag cattle individually. On the ranch you can do whatever you want to do, right. It's very. But I know a guy over in eastern Oregon who's using them for.

And, and he can fly out. This is kind of cool. He can fly that thing out over his heifer pasture and the, and the heifers are hiding under the willow trees or whatnot.

But the limb leaves aren't on them. In the, in the spring, you know, he's checking calves, right. And them cows will look up at him and then he can look down through the camera and zoom in on the tag and figure out which cows which and which one's Got and read the number.

That's pretty trick. That was. That's pretty neat idea.

Gary: That is pretty good. What about feral cats? One to ten feral.

Will: Oh, I actually like those we got. I don't like mice, so not that I'm afraid of mice, but I actually have six cats at my house. They're all outdoor cats. Well, one of them's talked my wife into the house.

But anyhow, I like, I like those kinds of cats. But I hear that up at my feed yard now we have a, we personally have a feed yard in Hermiston and I hear we got a cat problem up there now.

Our cats are fixed, right? Our cows are house cats, but not in the house. But the cats are, but the cats at the feed yard at least we don't have a rat problem.

Cats don't eat the feed the cow feed, the rats do.

Gary: Oh yeah, that's true. That's true. Okay. Artificial intelligence.

Will: I don't know how you know what?

I think that Sam, there's a reason that guy's name Sam and the first Sam was a fraud. And I think the second one is too. I don't know what it's supposed to do yet.

I asked it the other day what the chuck roll price was going to be three months from now because somebody better know and it couldn't even, it didn't have a clue what I was talking about.

So I don't know how it's going to help. But I can tell you this. The cattle business from, from conception to beef box is the most difficult, most convoluted model on earth.

There are 10,000 ways to get it from one end to the other. And I don't, I think we could cause AI to break, but I, I'm interested in finding out.

Gary: Okay. Barbecue sauce.

Will: Oh, I'm trying to teach myself a little. We, we, we, we create such a delicious product. We never even put salt and pepper on product when we demo it in a grocery store.

But I do, I have tried to teach myself to do a little better job with barbecue sauce for some pork ribs and barbecue sauce on day two. So if I, if I have some leftover steak in the fridge or something, I barbecue sauce on day two.

But on day one, I'm not a, not a sauce guy.

Gary: All right, now, do you watch, do you watch NFL football?

Will: Oh, yeah.

Gary: So what about metrosexuals talking football on TV? Yeah, 1 to 10.

Will: I'm not even sure what a metrosexual is. That's one of them new guys, right?

Gary: I, I, somebody Who's never played football for sure.

Will: That's, that's not Pat McAfee, is it?

If it's Kirk, Herb street and Pat McAfee, I'm in. But these other clowns, they don't hold my attention. But I am a huge college football fan and in fact, I'm, I, I love college football and a Beaver fan, of course.

And by the time I get to Sunday, I have to pick which game I'm going to watch for the NFL because I'm, because I'm kind of burnt. The college guys play with so much more energy and heart and they're not as good.

Right. So things can happen. It's like watching rodeo. Right? We love watching rodeo because it's man against beast and it's not a fixed deal. And so I do like that.

Gary: Okay, so then I've got really only one question left for you then.

If you could only go to one rodeo in the state of Oregon next year, what rodeo would you go to?

Will: Well, I just watch the rodeo on the tv. I don't actually go. I haven't been to Pendleton in forever. But I would if, if I was to have, have my option.

I'd probably go to St. Paul once.

Gary: Yeah, right. Okay. Yeah, I agree. I went, I went been to St. Paul.

Will: I have never been and I've always heard of St. Paul and we used to have, when I was a kid, we grew up here with a, we have a big Fourth of July party in Condon.

Right. And there used to be a rodeoist part, so never was there. But St. Paul, probably a pretty big name.

I wouldn't go, I've been. Oh, I wouldn't go to Redmond and Pendleton. Pendleton's probably getting pretty. I, I had a really. And I, and I hinted to this earlier when I told you about my one great, my one great time and then I quit.

I got to go to Pendleton and the first year after I graduated from college, a friend of ours was going to, was working up there and he. This other friend from the valley called me up, said, hey, I'm picking you up.

We're going by right. Picked me up, we went up there, had a one hell of a day and we ran back down get more clothes and went back for three more days.

So I don't think I can duplicate that at 50 plus years old.

Gary: Okay. Do you have a Dallas Dalzell story?

Will: A Dallas Dalzell story? Oh, actually, no, I don't.

I know who he was because he was the, he was the, he was the stepfather. Right. Of some Girls in my class in school. But you know what?

It was just in passing. I don't have a.

Gary: He was. When I knew him, he was a good guy and a good friend. He would call up and we would talk for a long time about rifles and rifle building, and he wanted to go to Africa with me, but by that time, his health was failing.

Will: Yeah, that's cool.

Gary: I met him down on the John Day river one time. I mean, that's how I met him. He was camping with his wife and. And I was camping with my daughter, and the river was 4,000 cfs and.

Will: Oh, wow.

Gary: We couldn't even camp where we wanted to. We had to camp up on the road.

Will: Oh, man, that's awesome. Holy smokes.

Gary: Okay. Well, Will, how can people find you. How can people find Painted Hills natural Beef?

Will: Well, we are. Do pretty good job online, so we do a paintedhillsbeef.com or paintedhillsnaturalbeef.com or we actually do natural hyphen beef dot com. We are. I. I talked to a guy one time, and he's a.

He's a.com or big.com guy, he says. And. And we had just added those Painted Hills ones recently, but we were always natural-beef.com because natural beef got away. And I. He says, well, why are you that, Will?

And I said, well, you know what? We're almost older than the Internet.

Would you search for us? You'll find us. And. And we are. And you know what? I always have to tell everyone, you know, if you're interested in such. That butcher, that.

That guy behind the counter, he wants to satisfy all these customers. You ask for us by name, they'll figure out how to get product in the store. They really do.

So.

Gary: All right, well, fascinating.

I apologize that it's taken 15 years to have this conversation, but I'm glad we did it. And I'm happy that we have mutual friends and that one of these days, you know, maybe I'll stop in and see you when I'm.

When I go through fossa, I always try and stop and get some coffee while I'm there. And then I drive by Steve Fleming's house to see if he's outside, and he's not.

Will: Yep. Yeah, he's. He's on the river. Man, that guy's a hard worker. You bet. Well, I sure appreciate you reaching out to me. I do. I've thought about doing this podcast thing, but I'd rather be the character on this end than the guy putting it on.



Speaker C: On our website Sullivan glove dot com. You can, you can look us up on Instagram Sullivan Glove co or Facebook Sullivan Glove. And yeah, that's, that's the easiest way to get to us.

Gary: Yeah, very good. And the types of gloves I, I use your gloves for upland bird hunting. I use them when I need to go get firewood out of, you know, the various places I have it stacked around the property.

Speaker C: Yeah, me too.

Gary: Especially last week when it was so cold. So what are some of the lines that you guys sell into?

Will: Sure.

Speaker C: Well, I mean, it's like kind of like you said, you've got a lot of gloves and you know, gloves can be used for a lot of different things. But what we try to sell people on is really the hide being what determines what you can and should do with it.

So while we've got like our roper lines and our motorcycle lines, gauntlets and things like that that are a little more specialty, the differentiation is really that, that hide. So you know, our, our deer skin is a nice thin deer skin, right.

And then if you have a deer skin roper, you can wear it to church. You can wear it somewhere, you know, for fashion purposes. But you know, you can also keep yourself warm and you can go out and do chores with it.

But the thicker the high that you get, so you bump up into like the elk, you know, you're almost double the thickness and the durability there. So you know, our elk lined ropers, our unlined ropers, our shorties are all great for things like, you know, working outside, bucking hay, doing chores, that sort of thing.

And then we've got our buffalo, our, our buffalo and goat. Other, other specialty hides that we use as well. But yeah, it's all, it's all kind of across the board.

You can use it. You can use an elk glove. And like I said, you can go to church with it or you can go and do, you know, some serious chores with it.

Gary: That Sullivan Glove Company.

Will: Sullivan.

Gary: Sullivan glove.com.