A Working Cowboy Shows What Real Range Life Looks Like

Nevada ranching is not a postcard; it is wind, distance, rock, and hard decisions that most people never have to make. Tonight, we sit down with Cory from Roobuck Nevada, a day-working cowboy who hauls his own horses, takes short jobs wherever he is needed, and documents the real thing on YouTube without staging a single moment.

We get into what separates a working horse from a performance horse, why half draft horses are getting popular out West, and how a tough old Mustang can still be the kind of partner you trust when the country gets mean. Cory also lays out the unfiltered mustang conversation: what feral horses do to springs, fences, and rangeland, why some ranches restrict mares, and how the public perception often clashes with life on the ground.

From there, we talk desert grazing and the surprising nutrition hiding in scrubby plants like winterfat, plus the make-or-break reality of western irrigation and water rights. Cory explains how reservoir water, acre-feet, and water shares shape what land is worth, then shifts into calving season, Foothills Abortion, and everyday risks from predators to hunter conflicts on open country.

We finish with money and mindset: cattle prices, cowboy wages, diesel costs, and practical advice for young cowboys and cowgirls who want a real start. If you like straight talk about ranch life, horsemanship, and the modern American cowboy, hit play, then subscribe, share this with a friend, and leave a review so more folks can find the show.

Check out Cory's Website - https://roobucknevada.com/?srsltid=AfmBOooWlGlLYnQrtTxPYLtAQJK3E14J_eIRwvTS-YZtSS5Wkh6K5LqU

Subscribe to Cory on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXz6p19rq_rMVuaomZOIxXg

Transcript

Welcome To Harness Up

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Welcome to Harder Stop with Hate Draft Horses and News, where we talk all things related to these magnificent animals. From their history and usage to train and care, we cover it all. Join us as we chat with experts and enthusiasts in the field, share stories and tips, and explore the world of craft horses and mules. Whether you're a stage developer or just curious about these different guys, this podcast is for you. So harness up and join Ace Craft Horses and Mules for some lively discussions about these God-given creatures.

Meeting Corey In Nevada

SPEAKER_02 1:13

How's everybody doing? Guys, it's a wonderful Saturday night here in Kentucky, and the guest on the other side of the screen, right there, is all the way across the United States in the great state of Nevada. And super nice guy. Guys, I want to just introduce you to my friend Corey. How you doing, Corey? Good and yourself, Stephen? Buddy, I'm great. We've had a great day. It's just been a good, wonderful day, like 70 degrees here, and amazing.

SPEAKER_01 1:39

That sounds good. It's it's about that here. We've been warm and dry all winter. It's actually been the warmest and driest winter that even the old timers around the area here remember. So we're supposed to be in the 80s next week, and I've lived in northern Nevada my whole life, and I don't ever remember 80s in March. So that's crazy. Where are you at in Nevada? About an hour, hour and a half east of Reno, little town called Fallon. There's basically some farms and ranches and a naval air station here.

SPEAKER_02 2:16

I sold some horses, a lot of horses in Nevada, but here recently we sold a horse to a lady in Pioch.

SPEAKER_01 2:23

Pioach, way down south.

SPEAKER_02 2:25

Yeah, southern Nevada.

SPEAKER_01 2:27

Yep, I think that's probably about an eight-hour drive from me.

SPEAKER_02 2:32

I've been out there a lot. We used to sell a lot out there. When I was on the road trucking horses, we'd come to Nevada and bring loads all the time, and um I did not know it, but there is a horse motel in Vegas.

SPEAKER_01 2:45

I've heard about that. I've never never needed it, but I've heard about it.

SPEAKER_02 2:50

It's really cool. And uh we stayed there and uh one night I slept all night at Area 51 in my truck with a load of mules.

SPEAKER_01 2:59

Yeah, yeah, I completely probably was that would that be Highway 95 or on Highway 6? 95. 95. Yep. Between uh Vegas and Toonapah there is to the east of Highway 95, is where the test site's at. And you're climbing, you're climbing elevation that whole way, and the wind there likes to blow to the south. So you're driving north, the wind's blowing the south, and you're on the super gradual climb. When I was in high school, I had a a GMC pickup that had a 454 in it, and I remember I got about five miles to a gallon climbing out of there one time.

SPEAKER_02 3:41

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 3:42

And it was that stretch is always notorious for for people running out of fuel because they don't realize they're you know they're climbing.

SPEAKER_02 3:52

There's a barbecue restaurant in Winnemucca that is great. It's called the Pig. Yep. And every time every time I'm through there, I go there and eat every chance I get.

SPEAKER_01 4:06

You might double check this. I was in Winnemucca about a month ago and they didn't look open. That ain't good. I don't know what happened. I remember we were looking for someplace to eat, and it might have been a little bit too late at night, but I remember we we pulled up in there because they're they're right there by that used to be uh used to be a grocery store and now it's a hardware store or something. But we pulled in there and there wasn't any lights on or nothing. But if you if you're in Winnemucca, though, the place to go is the griddle for breakfast.

Day-Working Cowboy And YouTube

SPEAKER_02 4:38

Okay, I'll remember that. I'm gonna I'm gonna jot that in my little brain here and make sure I can remember. You got a friend, the empty most buds. I want to talk a little bit about what you do and why we're doing this. Tell the folks your day-to-day life, what you do, and how you would fit into harness up podcasting like the agriculture and Western world.

SPEAKER_01 5:00

Yeah, you bet. So I'm a I'm a day working cowboy, which is somewhat common on this part of the world when ranches need an extra guy for a couple days or a day at a time, they'll call me. Usually spring and fall are my busy times of year, processing, branding, turning cows out, gathering, all the big works there. I do work full-time for a ranch here, and I got a really, really cool, unique arrangement. I live in ranch housing, and the agreement is that they'll work me when I don't have day work. Because on my YouTube channel, which is how we met, day working is all the content that I post. So they understand that I'm I'm doing that and trying to build my horse herd and build this YouTube channel into something that can provide for my family. So they're they're good people. They let me just kind of run with it.

SPEAKER_02 5:52

You know, I was talking, I did a podcast earlier this week with uh Luca Fapani. He's a Rainer, super, a really nice guy. And um, we was talking about how the YouTube channels really people watch other people's lives because some people do stuff that other people don't get to see. And like this ranching world, do you know how many people is in a high rise in the city somewhere just wishing they could live that ranch style life? Your YouTube channel gives them a glimpse, and once they keep watching that, man, they feel like they know you and they're with you every day. It really works.

SPEAKER_01 6:31

That's one of the weirdest things about the YouTube channel is people will talk to me like they've known me for years and I just met them. The first couple times that happened, it was I was almost taken back by it because it was weird, honestly. But I've gotten more used to that now, and I get a lot of people say, Well, I like your channel so much because Yellowstone, the TV show, got me interested in in cowboys and ranching and all that. And then I see your channel and it's the real version of it. It's no Hollywood drama, and that's kind of what I I try to bring to people is the just the reel of it.

SPEAKER_02 7:09

Yeah, just real life ranching and footage. I watched a few, I watched your videos. I mean, I was watching the other day like hay off the back of the trailer feeding the cows. And uh, you know, I do that every day too. We feed horses every day, probably the same square bell alfalfa type hay you're feeding. We order all of our hay from the west in 4x4x8 square. And um, you know, I felt I feel like I know you when we're talking because I watch you on YouTube, you know, and it's it's just a crazy thing. It is.

SPEAKER_01 7:40

Yeah, I I've watched a couple of your videos, and I've never been around mules, and I've only ever been around a team once. So there's definitely a gap in in my knowledge for what you do, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 7:57

Well, we can change that, you know. We sell horse and mule teams. So we can we can help you out a lot. Yeah. No. How long have you been in the ranch life? Is it something you grew up in or is it something you got into or uh yes and no?

SPEAKER_01 8:16

I was probably let me think here, probably in the fifth grade when we moved, when my mother and my stepdad and myself moved on to a ranch. And to make a long story really short, he was a housing developer that was building houses on the ranch. So we moved on to the ranch, and the end result of it was my junior year high school in 2008. We were leasing what was left of the ranch from the housing company, and there was a loophole in our lease, and we lost it all. And it was real tough on my family. So I graduated high school in 2009 and went to Iowa Central Community College. They were the first place that offered me a scholarship, and it was a long way from the desert and everything that had just unfolded here. So I spent two years in Iowa, came back to Nevada, did not go right back into ranching. I guided dude rides for a summer, and then spent some time working in town. And it was it was 2015 before I hired back on full-time cowboying again.

Building A Half Draft String

SPEAKER_02 9:24

And I've been doing it since. You mentioned building your horse herd. What horses do you have? Like what's your what's your go-to horse?

SPEAKER_01 9:35

So my my horse herd and and my using string. It's kind of a two-part answer here. The horse herd and what I'm building are half draft horses. I got a quarter horse mare that I'm Ben crossing to a Clydesdale stud. Battle River Inc. is his name. He's actually these days, he's close to you. He's over out of Forsyth, Georgia. So, yeah, been been doing the draft crossing for a couple years. My oldest one is a five-year-old this year. I have a four-year-old Philly, and then a two-year-old Gilding. Last year, I lost my full. He had the failure of the passive transfer of the clostrum, and of course, his joints went septic, and he made it about 10 days, and we had to put him down. If the tax returns are good this year, I'll breed that same mare back to that same stud again looking for another one. My go-to horse right now, lately, it's been a Mustang that I call Luke, and he's closing in on his mid-20s now. So he's going into kind of semi-retirement, and I've been leaning a lot heavier on a little quarter horse gelding that I call Henry, and he's out of my wife's good paint mare. So for my using string right now, I got the Mustang, Henry, the four-year-old half draft I call Rush, and the five-year-old half draft I call Rush, and the four-year-old half draft I call hot lips.

SPEAKER_02 11:06

Half drafts in the West are popular now, ain't they?

SPEAKER_01 11:10

They're growing real popular. You know, most guys just got so tired of how fine-boned and fragile the quarter horses started getting to be. So you're seeing a lot of guys, and they're not all using Clydesdales. There's, I mean, gosh, you might you might see a little bit of every kind of draft, but they are guys are wanting horses that are going to hold up with the investment that they are today. A guy needs to count, you know, 15, 20 years out of a horse where like the quarter horse world, because the reigners and the cutters and the show people breeding for strictly for performance, which it's amazing how those horses can perform, but they can't trot a t ac across a desert without coming up lame. And you can't have that here.

SPEAKER_02 12:00

There is a difference between a performing horse and a working horse. Absolutely. Major difference. And I see it all the time. I mean, all the time. What blows my mind is though the difference in the desert and here. Like a horse working out there in that desert, I've been there, it's harsh.

SPEAKER_01 12:24

Yeah, it doesn't take anything in the desert, whether it's I mean, just a long day or steep country or a badger hole or the rocks or you know, that's why that's why I got along with that Mustang so well is he's he's kind of a little bit bigger than your average Mustang, but he is just double tough. I mean, it's been very seldom a days where he told me something was hurting. You know, I'm sure if if a really good lameness vet looked at him, they'd they'd probably flip over backwards because I know he's had the the war stories and the scars that that he's earned. He's you know, that toughness in a horse out here goes a long way.

SPEAKER_02 13:05

Are Mustangs pretty popular out there for people using?

SPEAKER_01 13:11

But that's a can of worms. The Mustangs, uh they're feral horses, is all they are. And the city people out here think they fart rainbows. They Stephen, it's they get stupid over them. They don't even want you to drive a car too fast past them. And back east there, you guys got white-tailed deer that are a nuisance. And the Mustangs out here in their most basic form, they're they're a nuisance. I mean, they'll they'll like a new housing subdivision, they'll just pack off with the sod. I mean, it's just a buffet of them. They they're hard on the springs, the groundwater out here. When a horse steps down, they have that solid hoof, so it it creates a lot of compaction where a cow's hoof spreads out when it hits, and you'll see that mud squish up between their toes. It doesn't compact as much. I've heard I have heard of Mustangs totally sealing in a spring to where it doesn't produce water anymore. So that's a big problem. The numbers that's reported by the Bureau of Land Management, the BLM, in my experience, are always a lot less than the number of horses that are actually out on the deserts. You can try, how do I say this? It's almost like if their quota, say, is is in one area, a hundred horses, they'll drive through an area, count a hundred horses on, put their blinders on, and leave the area as fast as they can rather than going and seeing what's really out there. So that that that creates a lot of hard impact on the rangelands here. They can be real hard on fences. A lot of ranches out here won't allow you to bring a mare. They'll want you only to bring geldings. And if you're staying at a at an isolated camp out on the desert, the stud horses will come in and they'll fight with your geldings and cripple your geldings to to get at your mares if you have any there. If you have a bunch of geldings sent in the pasture, the stud horses, they're they're not too interested typically. Those events are a lot a lot more common the further out you get. I've had a little bit of issues with them when I've been living out at camp. I I've been fortunate that I've never had any big issues that way. You hear the stories though. In terms of using the Mustangs, there are some cool programs. There are there's that's the name of it. I think they call it the Extreme Mustang Makeover, which is where you've heard of it, it looks like. I've had some friends that have competed in that. There's an area up in I forget if it's very, very Northern California or very, very southern Oregon, but it's called Devil's Garden. And that is one of the biggest rock piles in this country. And the Devil's Garden Mustangs, if you get one out of there, he's gonna be dirty tough and he's gonna go all day and he's gonna make a good using horse.

SPEAKER_02 16:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:17

You can kind of just flip a coin though. You know, people say you can't ride papers. You can flip a coin with the papers just the same as you can flip a coin with the Mustangs. Same principle. Yeah.

How Cows Eat In Desert

SPEAKER_02 16:32

What yeah, I mean, we're digging into real, real desert life, ranch life here. Even myself, I don't see that. Like I've not lived it. I've not slept on the desert and been a cowboy and ranched on it. I've been there a lot, and it blows my mind like I'll just be driving down 95, for instance. How in the world does a cow or a horse live out there and eat?

SPEAKER_01 17:01

Their feet, they travel for everything. One of my favorite scenes is a cow has to work for a living. There's a lot of brows, and there's there's a lot of plants in the desert that to an untrained eye, they just look like a scrubby little brush that you would just walk over and not think about it. The prime example, I don't remember if it was in the video I posted yesterday, or or maybe it's in the one that that is coming out this next Friday. But the prime example is a little sagebrush-looking plant, eight, eight, ten, maybe twelve inches tall, kind of a bluish-grayish color, and it's called white sage. A good nickname for it is winter fat, and it's got a protein content higher than alfalfa hay. So it never gets much taller than that. It it is totally unimpressive to look at, but they call it winter fat for a reason. You'll bring cows off of that, and that's all they've had to eat all winter, and they're fat and they look good. There's all sorts of native grasses and imported grasses. A lot of the mines, when they get done mining in an area, they will reclaim an area, they'll put it back to maybe not the exact topography that it was prior, but close to it. And some of them I've seen have like a wild alfalfa growing on them, some of them have like a crested wheatgrass growing on them. There's plenty of feeds out in the desert, but yeah, a cow has to work for it. Well, if you take if you take a cow that's lived in a 40-acre pasture her whole life and always had grass under her feet and put her out in the desert, she's gonna starve to death.

Irrigation And Water Rights Reality

SPEAKER_02 18:44

I don't understand it. Like it just blows my mind. It's just to me, you know, it's just way different. But you know the difference in here and there. I mean, here we got grass growing. It's March. It's about time to mow the yard. Our cattle's eating grass. You know, it grows like wildfire.

SPEAKER_01 19:03

You know, here does it get real washy or does it stay pretty nutrient dense all year? It stays good.

SPEAKER_02 19:12

Yeah, a lot of people here in my area cut hay three or four cuttings a year with no irrigation.

SPEAKER_01 19:18

That's amazing. We the valley I live in now, Lahauntan Valley, we are flood-irrigated. Our reservoir, Lahaunton Reservoir, is filled by the Carson River, which is runoff from the mountains around Reno and Tahoe. We can divert some water out of the Truckee River, which flows from those same mountains through Reno down into Pyramid Lake. They have a diversion dam, and I don't know the exact numbers of how much and when they can pull out of the Truckee River to fill our reservoir, but we're figuring on being able to order water here next week. And because we are on the opposite end of the valley from the reservoir, we might be a week behind the top end of the valley before the water gets to us to use. And then we're allowed so many acre feet of it on each acre of property, is how it's measured.

SPEAKER_02 20:17

When I was in Utah, like they had certain amounts of water, like everybody had bought water shares, like water rats.

SPEAKER_01 20:24

Yep, that's the exact same thing here. If you go to buy a piece of property here and it doesn't have water on it, it's not worth very much. Where an irrigated acre is about$10,000 here, roughly. That was in 2020 when I I was trying to buy a piece of property, so it's probably come up since then. I had. If you don't have don't have water and you can't put water on a piece of property, it's it's gonna grow what's there and nothing else. And it's you know, it there are areas of the state, like you get in the mountains, and of course there's finger meadows running down the mountains that are sub-irrigated, and you don't have to spread water across those per se. But yeah, down in this valley, the water's everything, and a lot of so the Great Basin, our rivers don't meet the ocean, they sink back into the ground eventually. That's that's why it's called the Great Basin. And there, I forget exactly how many individual water basins make up the Great Basin. In this basin, it's full. There are all of the water rights somebody owns where you might get into another water basin and there's groundwater rights available. If you can afford it, you can drill a well, it pumps good water. You file with the state for how much water that well pump, how much you're gonna use, and it's not a problem to get it, just takes money.

Doing Every Job On Ranch

SPEAKER_02 21:49

So the ring the ranch you're working on now. Do y'all do y'all raise hay and everything? You have to help with all that too. So you're pretty much full. Everything. You're doing it all.

SPEAKER_01 22:02

I do it all. Yep. I this is the people I work for I've known since I was in high school, and they they treat me so good that without trying to sound proud or cocky or anything like that, I do a lot of jobs for them that I wouldn't do for somebody else. If I were to leave them, it would be for a soul riding job again. But yeah, come hand season. I'm in the swather, the rakes, the baler, stacking. I work right alongside them. Irrigating season, we all take turns irrigating on years where there's excess water. We can get mostly daylight irrigations. On years where the water is tight or short, you're gonna get it when they tell you you're gonna get it, and you might end up irrigating overnight. And that that poses its own challenges. You you need to get enough water across the field to be sufficient, but you don't want to waste any, of course. So it's it stinks you're easier in the daylight. Come wintertime any projects, we've built a couple set of drill pipes, drill pipe corrals over the last couple years. The ditches, the way the ditches work for the irrigation water, if it's in the district's ditches, they'll do the maintenance on it. But once it's through your headgate onto your property, the ditch maintenance falls on the rancher. So that that always takes a lot of work keeping those up. Just today we were filling some, I guess you could call them little retaining walls that we'd put some cinder block in for where the water spills out of the ditch. It was starting to eat back into the bank. And it was it was pretty nice. It was sunny and there was a little bit of a breeze. But yeah, it's Jack of all trades, master and none, they say.

SPEAKER_02 23:44

How many acres is that ranch you're on?

SPEAKER_01 23:48

I'm not at liberty to to say that because it's not my property. I understand. It's enough that that they can justify having a full-time guy, so I'll say that.

SPEAKER_02 23:59

Acreage out there, what I was trying to compare to, like here in eastern Kentucky where we're at, if you've got 50 acres, you've got a nice big farm.

Desert Allotments And Camp Life

SPEAKER_01 24:12

Sure. Sure. So this this this ranch is all private ground. It's all inside ground, we call it. So these cattle, with the exception of one little tiny allotment, it's all private ground. So the cattle will graze grass pastures all summer. We'll put up alfalfa hay, or you know, if we got something rotated into some weed or something like that, we we'll put that up too. And then last year we didn't take our third cutting of our grass alfalfa mix. We just let it grow up and turn the cows out on it for the fall. Then we can graze the alfalfa once it's died in the in the winter. So the irrigated ground, yeah, you can you can raise quite a bit more cattle per acre. Now, one of the ranches I worked in the past, the desert allotment, which was my responsibility, was 800,000 acres, and we could run 1800 mother cows on it. So you do the numbers there, that's that's a lot of acres per cow.

SPEAKER_02 25:15

Yeah, that is. So how many how often do you have to go out and camp? You was talking about camping in the desert and going out like that. Is that a normal thing?

SPEAKER_01 25:26

Depends upon the outfit you work for. I worked for an outfit. We turned out on the desert March 1st and had to be off of the desert November 1st. So I was at a at a camp that was 40 miles from the pavement, another 20 miles back to the ranch from March 1st to November 1st, six days a week.

Calving And Foothills Abortion

SPEAKER_02 25:48

Are you on is it calving time right there where you're at now?

SPEAKER_01 25:56

Yeah, this ranch I work for now, we are about 75% calved out right now. So a lot of a lot of folks here will spring calves like we do. However, there is a good amount of fall calvers, especially if they have outside cattle that go out on the deserts. In in northwestern Nevada and northeastern California, kind of that area, maybe probably up into southern Oregon just a touch. There's a disease called Foothills Abortion, which is caught, it's it is carried by the Pawelo tick, which lives in the juniper trees. Cow beds down in her first trimester, just lays down to chew her cud beneath the juniper tree. That tick will smell the CO2 that she's breathing out. It'll drop off that tree, usually onto her bag, and bites her on the bag. That gives her the disease, and it it kind of stays quiet until the third trimester of pregnancy. She'll fever bad enough that she'll abort the calf. If she gets bit by that tick every year and keeps getting bit, she'll only abort that first calf. If she misses a year, she has to abort another calf to get the immunities again. Well, the easiest way, well, let me back up just a tiny bit there. It's been really hard for the veterinary medicine world to create a vaccine for this. I don't understand it super well, but they had a hard time creating that immunity because the virus or the whatever it was kept dying as they were trying to build that. So they do have a vaccine now. I believe it's in like the closing phases of its testing phase. It it might even be commercially available now. But for years, up until real recently, the practice against foothills abortion was just to change the cycle of your cow. So when those ticks are active in the summer, if she's not in that first trimester, she's not going to be affected by it. So fall calving was the best fight against it.

SPEAKER_02 28:05

Okay. It's way different. We don't deal with any of that here for sure. But I'm not an expert on cattle. We don't deal in many cattle, but I do like cattle. I was raised on a dairy farm and uh milked cows my whole life when I was young. But are you all mainly doing just commercial cattle like Angus?

SPEAKER_01 28:44

Yeah, this ranch has a red Angus herd. There's a lot of there's pretty good amount of beef master influence out here. Kind of a lot of a lot of desert cows are just kind of mutts, I guess you could say, the little hybrid vigor in them. There are some guys that are real strict with how they breed, but there are some guys that get, you know, they kind of get a mix of everything. They you know they need a a little bit more milk so they might bring something in like that, or you know, their cattle are maybe a little bit too gentle on the desert, because you don't a desert cow shouldn't she shouldn't be totally gentle, so they'll bring something in that's got, you know, a little ear and get a little bit of flight into them, stuff like that.

SPEAKER_02 29:28

What are the predators you have to deal with out there, like your wolves, cows?

SPEAKER_01 29:34

We're fortunate. We're not fighting the wolves yet. The wolves are bothering some of my friends and places that I've worked in the past, and that is that is a curse set upon us by the U.S. government, is what that is. She can't do anything about it because everybody's watching them all the time. The normal predators, yeah, mountain lands are are about the biggest concern. The two-legged, the two-legged predators are always a concern too. Especially when the economy gets real tough, it seems like you see more people that might mistake mistake a bovine for maybe a deer, I guess you could say.

SPEAKER_02 30:15

Do you run into that a lot? Like people shooting people trying to shoot cattle?

SPEAKER_01 30:21

I haven't personally. I've heard stories the ranchers and the hunters out here kinda how do I say this? There's not a not a disrespect. That's not the right word. It's a tough subject there because a lot of the ranchers do like to hunt and they understand why people like to hunt, but when you have that much land that's public land, you you know, you might let's just imagine a place, we'll call it 100,000 acres for simplicity's sake, and it's divided into five pastures. Well, the the and the rancher can create a grazing plan for that year. So come October, which is usually when deer season, rifle season starts around here, you might have to have your cattle, say, in in pastures three and four of your allotment. Well, the only thing stopping them from going to the other pastures is a wired gate. Hunters will come through, leave the wire gates open, your cattle are drifting. Now the BLM's right and you trespass because your cattle are where they shouldn't be. Or the another thing hunters do that's really causes a tough spot is they all want to camp on water, which I get it. That's the prettier campsites. That's you know, there's shade there, there's of course, I mean, water. So I understand that. And I've I've done it too when you know when I was young, but that's private ground, and that might be the only source of water for a cow to drink in a couple mile radius. Well, if somebody's got a got a camp right there, those cows aren't coming in the water for you know a three-day weekend, and that's hard on them. So there's there is some friction between the ranchers and the hunters out here. I I would say though, most of the hunters are good people and they are very respectful, but it does unfortunately just take one bad apple to ruin the bunch there.

SPEAKER_02 32:17

It's definitely a different world. You know, here in Kentucky, it's not called ranching, it's farming. It's just a different, it's a whole different world. But I know what you're talking about, desert cow muts, because I seen them, especially in Arizona and all over. They are. There's a difference.

SPEAKER_01 32:36

Yeah, they're they're a different creature. Even in even in Nevada, you get up north, like Elko County or or Humboldt County around them. That's cool, that's high desert enough. It well, it's high desert, and there's enough feet up there, they can support a bigger frame cow, where you get like south of Tonopah, and that that cow, she might look like a cow crossed with a gazelle or something because she's she's more of an athlete than she is beef cow.

Where To Find Rhubuck Nevada

SPEAKER_02 33:04

Yes, it's crazy. Well, let's talk about you a little bit more. Uh, you started this YouTube channel, you're digging in, you're wanting to promote your YouTube, and guys, it's cool to watch. If you're on my YouTube here, hey, strapped horses and mules, get on and check him out. Tell the folks how they can find you on YouTube.

SPEAKER_01 33:22

YouTube channel is Rhubuck Nevada, R-O-O-B-U-C-K Nevada. Just click on there, watch whichever video looks interesting to you, leave me a comment, tell me you're new to the channel. One thing I always try to make sure that people new to my channel know is I welcome any questions you can ask, and I won't answer them to the best of my ability because I am out there to show the real of what the American Cowboy is today. You know, 50 years ago it was a little bit different than it is now because trucks and trailers are so popular that, like I said, I think I just turned my taxes in yesterday, and I think I had nine or ten different 1019s, which is these days, you know, I I will load up in a truck and trailer. Some of the places I go are 10 hours away, 12 hours away. I get over more actually fairly often, I get over on on the coastal mountain range in Northern California because guys ranchers need guys that can load a trailer load of horses and go get a job done. And I've been blessed enough that I've been able to put myself in that position, and it's the the stayers we call them, which are the cowboys that'll stay at one ranch for years and years and years, and they they never have a desire to go anywhere else, they have knowledge about that particular ranch that it'll make you. I mean, they know they know it just like the back of their hand. And day workers like what I am. Well, last weekend, last Saturday, I was in Hurricane, Utah for that Bundy Ranch Rodeo. Thursday night, I spent down outside of Pismo Beach, California, hauling some horses. In another week, I'm leaving for the coast in California. Come back from that, I'm headed to Winnemucca for a week. So I yeah, I I burn the diesel fuel cowboy in wherever I'm needed. And it's it's a lot of time away from home. It really is.

SPEAKER_02 35:35

So you'll go you do traveling, cowboy.

SPEAKER_01 35:39

Oh yeah. Yep. This this valley here, it's a it's a good sized valley. I've only got, I think, two or three people that I'll help out here. Other than that, yeah, I'm loaded up. I'm a couple hours away from home. Minimum.

SPEAKER_02 35:57

So You get to missing your children and wife. I know how that is.

SPEAKER_01 36:04

Yeah, you you miss 'em. I've got a two and a half year old and a two month old. And I won't say they've slowed me down any, but it does take me a couple extra minutes to say goodbye, and I do miss them when I'm gone. I'm trying to with my little girl, my my two and a half year old, and we're doing the counting thing right now, so I always make her count. You know, daddy's gonna go be gone three nights, count with me. And that way I think I think she kinda understands that, but the good Lord, He blessed me with an amazing wife who she just rolls with the punches. She she's she says, Are you going anywhere this week? Oh no, no, not this week, but I'm leaving Sunday for five days, and she just says, Okay, it doesn't bother her in the slightest. So the only time it's ever really bothered her, last year I went up, I had a I think it was just a three-day job. It was a short job. Most of my most of my are say between three and seven days. They just had a little three-day job, go gather some, gather some heifers off the desert and get them put on a private ground pasture, and then the regular ranch job was we're gonna trail them home. Excuse me. And the second, I believe it was the second morning of that trip, I got up on a ridgeline where I had phone service. So I called my wife just to check and see how everything was okay. And she says, Well, it was it was a really long night. Wait, were you sick? You know what happened? She says, No, she says, I laid down and I heard a noise coming from the hall, and I thought maybe it was the dog sleeping in the hall, but he was out in the front room. So we have a box fan set in our bedroom doorway to move some air around. And she says, I was leaning over into the hall looking. I realized the noise was coming from my side of the box fan. She says, I looked down and there's a like a two and a half, three foot bull snake curled up hissing at me right there in her bedroom. And she says, I jumped back on the bed and I didn't know what to do. So she ended up getting the trash can out of the bathroom and scooping him into the trash can of the bathroom and hauled him into the brush outside the house in the middle of the night and got rid of him. But that was about the only time she's been worked up about me leaving.

Rodeo Days And Rope Collaboration

SPEAKER_02 38:21

Man. Do you compete in any rodeo sports now or did you ever?

SPEAKER_01 38:28

Yeah, I rode bareback horses and team roped in high school and rode bareback horses in college. I cracked my rigging out again last year, got on a couple head, had some fun with it, and kind of realized that that's not where not where God wants me to be right now. We just last weekend went to the to the Bundy Ranch rodeo down in Hurricane, Utah, which yeah, that's set up a bit different than your average ranch rodeo, but it's a ton of fun. And then last year, and I plan to again this year compete in the Braneman Pro Am of Acaro Roping.

SPEAKER_02 39:05

Okay. I noticed I was scoping out your website and stuff. Don't you make ropes?

SPEAKER_01 39:13

I have a collaboration with 310 Ranch Life selling ropes through them.

SPEAKER_02 39:18

I thought it was something like that. Let's tell let's talk about that and tell the folks about that and how they can find that.

SPEAKER_01 39:24

Yeah, so my website is rubucknevada.com, R-O-O-B-U-C-K Nevada.com. Last year, about this time, kind of realized that YouTube was starting to take off. My channel is getting subscribers, and I'll be totally honest, I don't watch any cowboy content on like I come home at night, as honest as can be. If I watch anything, it's either mass reruns or it's internet video gaming. I know that sounds just crazy, but I I don't know, I live it, so I don't need to watch it, but I did once I realized that my channel was actually kind of doing something, I thought, well, I'll click around and I'll I'll see you know some of the other guys and what they're doing. And I found 310 Ranch Life's channel, and they have a a lot of really good advice on how to rope and some horsemanship advice, and they've gone some cool places and done some cool things. So I I watched some of their stuff for a while, and then Dalton Darnell, he posted a video saying, Hey, I'm gonna do this little series where I'm gonna react to videos you guys send me. Well, I just posted a video where I doctored a I think she was a wiener heifer for foot rot in the feedlot, and I I roped her and tripped her and showed how I tied off to my saddle and talked through tripping her and showed how I doctored her and all that, and it now it's close to 100,000 views, but I think then it was close to like 20,000 views and it was doing really good. So I sent Dalton an email and said, Hey, this is my YouTube channel, this is the video. I think I sent him a link for it. It says, feel free to use it or not, whatever. And it was within a couple hours, he emailed me back. He's like, This is gold. This is you know, this is everything we're looking for. He says, So I'm gonna do an episode on you. And I was like, Hey, that's cool, that's great. You know what to bring me some subscribers, my channel will grow a little bit more. And he did that, and it was great. And he emailed me again and he says, Would you want to be on my podcast? That says, sure. And that was the first time I'd ever been on a podcast or anything, and I feel bad for Dalton. I really do, because I sat there like a cardboard cut out for the first 25 minutes or so. And I finally loosened up and we had a had a good chat and all that, and it was good, and it got some more attention to the channel. Then Dalton called me one day and says, Hey, I got a business proposal for you. I says, What's that? He says, We'd like you to sell ropes for us and take a cut of all the ropes you sell. And he said helped me and myself, Michael Clausen, and Mark Bosser are the three YouTube channels. Michael Clausen is with Bucking K Horsemanship and Mark Bosser. I'm sorry, let me go, I forget the name of your YouTube channel. Dang it. He's out of South Dakota, I believe. He's gonna give me a hard time about that if he watches us. Anyways, the three of us got the collaboration to sell these ranch ropes, and they're primarily poly ropes. I do offer a poly-nylon blend. We call it the tracer. We do offer wax cottons, and I specifically will offer dry cotton ropes. Cotton ropes are kind of a unique animal. No two cotton ropes feel exactly alike. Their biggest benefit is they're extremely durable. For I'm I'm sure you've heard of working cowboys' wages, they're not the greatest. So, you know, if you can buy a 65-foot cotton rope, costs$100, and it lasts you three or four or five times or ten times as long as a poly rope does, the average working cowboy is going to find that value worth it. But you do have to treat them either with linseed oil or house paint or Dalton and 310, they sell a waxed cotton rope. So I think I'm the only one that offers them dry, but I before I got to know Dalton and all them, and and to be real honest, before I had as many poly ropes as I have now, I just used cotton ropes and I figured out how to get along with them and how to treat them and how to treat them, how to treat them both in the sense of what I put on them, whether it be linseed oil or paint, and how to treat them in terms of physically treat them. So I posted some videos on that, and it's kind of just grown now to where. It's helping. It's not making a ton of money for me yet. It helps with a tank of fuel every now and then, which is I'm super grateful for. But it's been a learning experience because I've never had to try and be a salesman and it just still feels awkward.

SPEAKER_02 44:15

Well, I can't say that because I that's my normal life. I sell every day, you know. But I do know one thing. I mean, it's the Lord's blessing you with a lot of things right now. He really is. And uh Amen. As long as you stay close to him and you know you follow him, put him first, it's gonna keep you're gonna keep getting blessed. And uh that's awesome. I hope your channel go blows up clear out of the water. I hope you're not thinking I hope you don't even have to ranch cowboy anymore. I hope you can just make that YouTube check. I really do.

SPEAKER_01 44:48

That's kind of the the beauty of my channel, is is I I have literally never done anything for my YouTube channel that I wouldn't have done if I had never started a YouTube channel. I just take my camera with me and go.

SPEAKER_02 45:04

What's your what camera? Do you just use your phone or are you using a camera yet?

SPEAKER_01 45:08

No, I've got a GoPro Hero 9 and a GoPro Hero 12. And we start the day, I just put it up on my head, and that okay, that's the only thing I have changed for the YouTube channel is I started wearing ball caps because the way the camera sits on a cowboy hat, it made my head sore. So I started wearing ball caps. But that's uh I've had a lot of people that I was working for before the YouTube channel say, Well, I don't know if I I want you filming for your channel. And I said, That's fine, it's up to you. He says, because we don't we don't really want filming slowing down the work. And I said, if that's your only concern, let me film for a day. If you feel like it slows the work down, I won't film again. And I've never had anybody ask me not to after that. Because I I don't set any shots up, I don't so it's uh one thing that I that social media drives me crazy about, everybody wants to do cowboy stuff, they want to get out and they want to rope. And I'll tell you right now in front of the Lord and everybody else, I have never roped an animal specifically for YouTube. So there's a lot of videos I have where it's a full day's work and I don't even get my rope off my saddle, but that's that's the reality of it for me.

SPEAKER_02 46:20

So it's you know what else I think would be cool? Show your trip from leaving home all the way on the road. You know, if you meet somebody along the road, get some interaction with people, and show the whole trip and coming back home. I think that'd be a cool, some cool video series.

SPEAKER_01 46:39

I surely need to do better on that. But and I'm sure you you've had it with your channel. You go to carry a camera around and talk to it, and people look at you like you're a six-legged alien. I used to be that way.

SPEAKER_02 46:55

But now I need to get over it. I'm telling you, it don't even phase me no more. I'll go in the gas station with a camera. It don't even phase me. It don't. It's crazy.

SPEAKER_01 47:05

No, you're absolutely right. I I have a trip coming, and I have a real good friend of mine that's going on that trip with me. We're going over to the coastal mountains, so in in California. So I okay, Steven, you put me up to I will film more of the trip itself for you there.

SPEAKER_02 47:23

Dude, that's gonna be good. You and your friend talking back and forth the whole way. People will eat it up. I guarantee you. You do it, and title it something like a cowboy's life on the road, and I guarantee you it'll blow up. I guarantee you.

SPEAKER_01 47:38

Well, I'll try it. I uh last year I was headed to the same ranch, and I have a I have two pickups. I have a 2002 Dodge Cummins and a 2002 Ford Power Stroke, and I was in the Cummins, and that's a three both of them are 300,000 mile pickups. The Ford I did fight with for a while to get it right, but the Dodge has been, it's never given me any problems. And I split the radiator in it with like six horses. I'm outside of Reading, California, it's like 95 degrees, and I split the radiator, and they're I mean the coolant and steam and everything, and I pulled off in this logging turnaround, and I did show that I said, You guys want to know the realism of cowboying? Like, this is my entire profits for this trip. It's gonna take to get me to where I'm working, and I didn't didn't make a dime on that trip because of it, but yeah, I I showed that and I did have some comments on the video. Hey, you know, it's that's life, you know, tough luck, this and that. And so they did engage with it, and I should have ran with it a bit more, I think.

Cattle Prices Cowboy Pay Diesel

SPEAKER_02 48:42

Yeah, definitely. Let me ask you this the cattle industry right now is at an all-time high. I mean, cattle is high right now, beef is high. Are you seeing that out there too as well?

SPEAKER_01 48:57

Well, yeah, Fallon livestock marketing, Jack Payne, he's just a couple miles down the road, he's right in the middle of Fallon, and they have set several records for a price per hundred weight just in the last couple weeks. It's a it's a great time to own cattle. It's not a great time to be trying to get into it. I think I try to stay out of politics. How do I say this? I think that there's a lot of things that are gonna come up here for a little while, and then I think it's gonna simmer down. If you look at it cattle prices historically, they're the peaks and valleys, but it's always climbing. So I don't think it's gonna stay this high for an extended period of time. We might get another year out of this market, maybe, and this is my opinion, and it's not a very educated one. But when it does fall down again, it's not gonna crash all the way down to you know where a cow is only worth$800. I don't think we'll ever see prices that low again. So it's it's I focus myself more on the cowboy side of the beef industry rather than the owner or the rancher side. And I should try and learn markets in the beef markets, I should try and learn those a lot more than I know now. Because the end goal for my wife and myself is we do want to own our own ranch and raise our own beef someday. That's that's the ultimate end goal.

SPEAKER_02 50:32

Are you seeing is the working cowboys seeing their checks raise now? Or is it how's that going?

SPEAKER_01 50:41

Like economy for the say four years ago, I asked for my day wages to be 150, and today I asked for my day wages to be 200. And if it's less than 200, there needs to be something else that helps there. And then when somebody calls me where I'm more than you know, more than an hour or two from home, I do talk to them about diesel, whether it's it's a flat rate, you know, hey, give me your X amount of days' wages plus, you know, a couple hundred dollars, three or four hundred dollars for diesel. Or I have some guys like over in the in the California, the Central Valley of California, they take and my first, how did he do it? My first 60 miles of that trip was on me to pay for, but then he paid me mileage after that. We did use my truck and trailer for some of that, which is, excuse me, some guys are really they you know, they don't want to use their truck and trailer. I don't mind using my truck and trailer. I have an aluminum trailer, so if it's highway miles and it saves us several hours, I'll say, yeah, you know, we can throw some cattle or extra horses on me or whatever. But when it comes to beating across the desert, yeah, I won't drag my aluminum trailer across the desert because it'll beat it up. But wages are wages have come up a little bit in the last couple years, not in any direct response to the beef market coming up, though.

SPEAKER_02 52:13

Yeah. Maybe it will soon. That'd be nice because with diesel going up as much as it has in the last two or three weeks, you're gonna have to have a little more.

SPEAKER_01 52:23

I and one that's just it. Like this trip coming to California. I told them flat out, I says, Look, California, there's six and seven dollar diesel over there already. It says, I know it hurts you, but you gotta pay my diesel because I would take all my profits and put them in my diesel tank, and I can't make the trip. I could stay here, work for the ranch I'm I live at here, and that would be smarter. And and he was really cool about it. He says, That's not a problem. He says, keep your receipts, I'll reimburse you for it. Because they the guys that hire day work, they know that essentially we're just gypsies and that travel's not free.

Advice And Cowboy Image Culture

SPEAKER_02 52:59

Exactly. What would you have any advice to some young boys and girls out there wanting to get in to be working cowboys and cowgirls?

SPEAKER_01 53:07

Pray about it. Pray endlessly, pray ceaselessly. Don't think that you're gonna get anywhere without the Lord. That's the first and foremost, most important for worldly advice. Ask all the questions you can to anybody that's better at anything than you. And whether that's horsemanship or roping or doctoring, I mean any aspect of it. If you are around somebody that is handier than you, ask questions. If they're worth learning from, they'll give you the information. So many guys are starving for a young kid to ask questions. There is a lot to be said for keeping your mouth shut and just observing, also, though. The next most important thing is be honest about your abilities. When I in 2015, when I came back to Cowboy in full time, I'd been working some Colts and trimming some horses, and I knew how to shoe just a little bit, and I got the cow boss's phone number, and the interview was like three questions. The first question was, can you shoe? And I says, I can shoe my own horses, but I'm not a farrier. Gosh, excuse me. Second question was, can you rope? And I says, Yeah, I can rope. And the third question was, will you write anything I put in your stream? I thought about it and I needed a job pretty bad, so I said, Yep, I will. And that's if you if you know how to shoe just a little bit, that helps. If you know how to rope and you don't know how to doctor by yourself, like Mark Bosser, myself, 310, like there's a ton of information on YouTube now. A guy can a guy can get the concepts there, and then just be honest when when you do apply for a job and be humble and gracious because this life, you're never gonna have a shiny new pickup. These two pickups I have are both 24 years old. They're probably gonna be the last two pickups I ever have. If I get to a point in life where I can afford a new pickup, it probably came from YouTube someday because it didn't come from cowboying. But I've been more places a horseback than most people ever be, whether they're hiking, hunting, four-wheeling, side by side. I've seen cooler sights horseback in this walk of life than some of the things I've seen a horseback, people think I'm just making up. I mean I I I've seen I've seen a sunrise from a mountain almost 9,000 foot tall when I could look down I had to look through almost down through the clouds to see the sun coming up. That's something most people never see. No, you know? I saw I saw a first calf heifer have her calf lick it off, it stood up, nursed, everything was just perfect on like a 70-degree Easter morning. Like that's that's just a blessing. There's so many quiet blessings like that in this lifestyle. All you have to do is look for them and turn off the noise. You know, you're not competing with the Joneses. And that's I I have three or four three or four buddies of mine, townies, we call them. They're I mean, they're just town people. And it's not an insult, but they they tell me all the time, man, I'd love to have your life and this and that. Well, get rid of that truck, get rid of your mortgage, and just learn to live life enjoying what you do. That's the biggest thing.

SPEAKER_02 57:06

That is true. And it's not all about the money. You can and you can be happy if you don't have a lot of money, you know. The Lord will bless you, and you can be happy with what he gives you and live a good life. Yeah, absolutely. You sure can.

SPEAKER_01 57:22

I I've been in the oil fields before I started cowboying again, before I came back to it, and I made a lot of good money in the oil fields, and the more you make, the more you spend, you just end up in more debt and you just make it tougher for yourself.

SPEAKER_02 57:41

The Western cowboy though is changing. Like, cowboy lifestyle, what they present it to be, is the type clothing you're wearing. Like, the clothing, the cowboy line has gone unreal. Like, there's people wearing it that never seen a horse or a cow.

SPEAKER_01 58:04

Yeah, we call them hats and boots, and they come out usually about the time the Reno Rodeo's in town. It is so hard, and we can even just break this down to cowboy boots. I have a I have a partnership now with Little Joe's boots out of Oklahoma City that I got through my through my YouTube channel, and they sent me a pair of boots, and when they reached out to me, I was a little bit skeptical, not of what they offered to do, but prior to them, I've only ever found one pair of boots it was worth having as a working cowboy because you get Justin's, Ariott's, Double H Tony Llamas, I mean you you name all the the boot barn brands, so to speak, and they're rubber soled, they have a soft shank, they have that low rope or heel, and that you know that works for an arena cowboy or a guy that doesn't own a horse because it's basically just a western-style tennis shoe. Where like 90 some odd percent of the working cowboys I know, it's a leather sole with a stiff shank with like a two and a half inch heel. And that's for safety and ultimately comfort, and you can't yeah, you can the fashion today for I don't what some of the handiest guys I've ever seen in my life probably didn't own a cowboy hat, to be honest. I know you know they'd they'd never they'd never I would argue with anybody that the handiest guys in the West don't rodeo whatsoever at all. Like they just have no interest in it.

SPEAKER_02 59:40

They just wear what they wear and get out and work.

SPEAKER_01 59:44

Yeah. Yeah, and you know, depending upon the day for me, I like prior to our podcast tonight, I had on a white t-shirt because I was pouring concrete earlier today. I mean, I'm not gonna take what is this, a$30 or$35 button down and go pour concrete in it, that'd be foolish. Where where you see I I won't name I won't name the guy. There's one guy that he day works, he's a young kid, he's trying very hard to learn. He he definitely could set his pride down and learn a little bit faster. Young kids, we were all like that. But he comes out and he looks like an advertisement straight out of the AQ magazine, and it's just like by the end of the day, you know, he's mad because his whatever kind of shirt's got a tear in it, or his hat blew off and got stepped on and's got a hoof mark in it. It's just like, you're working, man. What do you expect?

How To Follow And Final Thanks

SPEAKER_02 1:00:48

Yeah. I've never I'm not real big into wearing the brands. I mean, I I got stuff I like, you know, but you won't see me dressing like a full blown cowboy when we're out driving horses. I'm gonna wear what's comfortable and wear in the wintertime what's we Yes Yes, I do not like the cold. Take care of myself, you know. But yeah, it's just change so much. It's unreal. Like next week I'm going to road to the horse, which is a cold start competition. And I gotta sit up there, you know, and pass out stuff and promote our business, promote the YouTube channel, and um I'll see it all. Like I'll see people in the fanciest western attire, and it's gonna be all just a western full-blown week. And you know what? I'm gonna go in there with my mule hat on. There you go. Promote the mule something, but uh I'm looking super forward to it. But all right, guys, we're gonna call this a night. It's uh almost yeah, it's 11 45 here on the east coast, and I've got to get into bed probably. I'm getting a little sleepy.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:57

Yeah, I got kids to put to bed. I can hear them starting to give my wife problems.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:01

Mine's done long gone. I got a three-year-old and a seven-month-old, so oh yeah. I know how it is. Guys, once again, I'm gonna let him tell you the uh YouTube channel and the website.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:15

You bet both of them are Rhubuck Nevada. That's R-O-O-B-U-C-K Nevada on YouTube, and then rubucknevada.com. I sell some Rantropes, have a little bit of other stuff. I'm working on getting more quality gear on my website. I won't sell anything on that website that I would not use myself or have not used myself. So, gosh, my phone number is even on my website. If you've got questions about ropes or tack or anything like that, shoot me a text message, call me, email me, rubucknevada at gmail.com. I'm not the handiest guy, I'm not the smartest guy. I just have years of experience and I can give you my opinion on things. Sometimes that matters a whole lot more than anything else.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:01

It sure does.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:02

Stephen, I appreciate the opportunity here tonight. I really enjoyed this.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:05

I appreciate you. It's been a it's been great. I've been looking to get a real working cowboy on this podcast. And uh I found me one in Rhubuck, Nevada. So, guys, thank you all for listening. Again, harness up podcast with Hace Draft Horses and Mules. Check us out on the website at www.drafthorses and mulesforsale.com. Also, you can find us on social media all across all platforms at Haste Draft Horses and Mules. Until the next episode, keep harnessing up, guys, and we'll see you real soon. God bless you.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:42

As another captivating episode of Harness Up with Haste Draft Horses and Mules draws to a close, we extend our sincere gratitude to our listeners for joining us on this enlightening journey. We hope today's discussions have deepened your appreciation and understanding of these magnificent creatures. Remember, the adventure continues beyond this podcast. Stay connected with us on social media and share your story. For more information and to explore further, visit Drafthorses MulesforSales.com. Thank you for being part of our community. Until next time, keep harnessing your curiosity and passion for these God given creatures. Farewell for now.