Here is another one from the old H&R site.
While living in Alamogordo, New Mexico. My wife and I kept our horses at a stables north of town. On weekends I had little to do, so I would go out to the stables and sit and listen to the old timers talking about by-gone days there in the Tularosa Basin. These old ranchers still owned their ranches but now lived in town. They all kept saddle stock in town to have availiable if the need arose to use one. As these elderly gentlemen got to know me, they started including me in their routine of breaking and training young horses. During the spring round-up, they invited me to come out to their ranches. I watched these old guys roping and dragging calves in for branding. I was in awe at how well they handled ropes, and their horses. I also noticed that the older men did not get down off their horses often either. I figured it was because they were the owners, in their 60s and 70s, and most had undergone hip replacements. I did a lot of the grunt work, throwing the calves,castrating, and branding. Talk about dirty, nasty, and hot. But all through this I kept thinking about one of those highly sought after invitations to hunt on these ranches. Everyonce in a while I would see the ranchers rope something and one of them would get down and work for a few minutes on the ground. Then he would climb back into the saddle, and they would all disperse.
Come hunting season I got the invitation. I loaded my saddle horse and a pack mule and went out to the ranch early. All the old guys were there. The young lady that lived there and sort of looked after things, was cooking breakfast. Man could these guys eat. After breakfast we saddled up and rode out on to the range. As we approached one of the many stock tanks for water, I spotted a big deer browsing nearby. I shot this deer, then rode over to dress him out. As I approached I noticed that he had the poorist rack I had ever seen on a mule deer. The rack was small and spindely. Yet the body of this buck was huge. The deer was big, fat, and looked healthy, except for his rack. The rancher I was hunting with that day, looked at me and said "Young-un since my stainless steel hips are hurting me today I'll just sit here and watch while you gut that deer and load him on the pack mule. I figured that was coming anyway, so I jumped down and rolled the deer over. I could not get over how big and heavy that deer was. As I was opening up the belly and moving to the back, I realised something was missing. This deer had no testicles, he had been castrated. The old man saw my surprise and chuckled, "Yea boy, they get bigger that way". I then realised that was what the old men were doing during the round-up last spring. When they found a fawn lying in the grass, if it was a small buck they castrated it just like the calves. They told me later their Daddies had done it, and that they were just carrying on the practice.
In memory of Barr, Burley, Kenneth, John, and Tadd, The Toularosa Basin cowboys.
