Cattle Rustling

<a href="//www.billingsgazette.com//index.php?id=1&display=rednews/2004/02/01/build/business/65-rustling.inc">This</a> is a real good article on cattle rustling and new high tech ways of dealing with it. Many people might not realize it but this is still a big problem in cattle country. Most of the time it is one or two critters but other times it can be a lot. The Padlock ranch a couple of years ago when they rounded up their cattle in the fall was strangly enough missing exactly 2 semi loads of cows. Now they could never prove that anyone stole them but it was an awful large, and even number of cows missing.<br />n<!–more–><br />nMost rustlers are a little smarter than the man in the story. They just sell them instead of keeping them on their place. This is easier and quicker. No, I have no personel experience stealing cows, I just understand how the buisness works. Their is big money in it. Depending on the type of critter you rustle, they are worth anywhere from $400 to $1000. That kind of money adds up fast when you are rustling cattle.<br />n<br />nI personally, that I know of, have yet to experince a large theft of cattle. It is not unusual for me to be missing one or two cows in the fall but I usually attribute that to death loss while some of my neighbors, in the same situation, assume that somebody stole them. I run in such big, rugged pastures I could easily have a cow die and not find the carcass so that is what I assume happened to them. I guess your view point on whether a critter died or was stole depends on your viewpoint of human nature.<br />n<br />nMy dad talks about one time, many moons ago, when he had a buch of calves missing. It was late in the fall, snow on the ground, when he weaned and shipped his calves. Strangly enough he had enough cows, but was missing a semi load of calves. He went and checked out the pasture that they had been in and found, by the tracks in the snow, where somebody had let the fence down, drove a bunch of cattle to an isolated corral, weaned the calves, brought the cows back and fixed the fence. He never did find out who did it.<br />n<br />nI guess as long as cattle are worth big money it is just like anything else. Someone will try to find a way of making the "easy" money on them by stealing them. <br />n<br />n<b>The number 1 rule of thieves is that nothing is too small to steal.<br />nJimmy Breslin </b>