Ridin’ Fence ~~ Wolves and ranchers

Lynn Allen writes with a striking understanding of rural people and places. I’ve invited her to post two of her Ridin’ Fence articles each month here at Westinspect. In a couple of weeks I’ll post an interview so you can get to know her better. And I guess we better find a photo of her, too!

I spent the week in Catron county New Mexico. Personally, I hate deserts. If I’m going to take a week long vacation, I’m going to go somewhere where God does the irrigating and I can look at something green. That’s not southern New Mexico. I also hate heat. Anything over 70 degrees qualifies as heat in my world. There’s lots of heat in southern New Mexico. I’m driving as little as possible with fuel at $4.50 a gallon. It’s 500 miles to Reserve, New Mexico.

I went because a man I respect promised he’d introduce me to the ranchers, livestock owners, and even townspeople who have been “impacted” by the New Mexico Wolf Reintroduction Project. The issue originally caught my attention when I saw an ad in the Rocky Mountain News placed by the Defenders of Wildlife. It was a cute little wolf pup rolling around in a bunch of flowers. The header asked “Who’s afraid of the big bad wolf?” I wrote in saying “I am!” and included six pictures of livestock and pet remnants. My reply wasn’t printed.

Those pictures were sent to me by Laura Schneberger. Her name was on this list of people I would be able to meet if I climbed in that pickup and went to New Mexico. I did my homework (the Mexican Gray wolf is being raised mostly in pens at various breeding facilities and released into the Gila National Forest where there are complaints of them killing livestock) and I went.

I arrived on the first ranch Wednesday evening after traveling 20 miles of dirt road, 20 miles of pasture trails, and another 10 miles of cow trails. After two hours of carefully feeling me out to make sure I actually knew how many stomachs a cow has, I’ve eaten venison and that the scuffs on my boots came from spurs, I started getting the real stories.

Stories like 800 head of weanling calves in the pasture around the house being chased by the Luna pack all night every night – final tally 19 dead calves. It took 60 days to get permission from the absentee owner to ship the calves instead of holding them the full 90 days as they’ve done in the past. The calves lost 81 pounds in those two months. Total loss on that bunch of calves was over $100,000. The calves went to wheat pasture in Kansas. The new owner noted the calves were covered in bites when they arrived and more died from septicemia caused by infected wolf bites within the next few days. He’s not buying any more New Mexico cattle.

The wolves broke into the tack room inside the barn and ate a barrel full of dog food.

“It wasn’t even the good stuff, it was Ol’ Roy,” the ranch boy said. “How did wolves get a taste for Ol’ Roy?”

I wanted to know how the darn things found the tack room, and why they felt safe enough in the barn to spend the time to break down the door. But the family didn’t seem to find wolves in their barn all that new or exciting. They’d had calves killed in the barn before.

Thursday morning I watched a 16-year-old boy pick up a rifle, jack a shell into the chamber and head out the door to do chores. The barn is a stone’s throw from the house.

“Nobody goes outside without a rifle any more,” his mother said. “Daylight or dark. They used to let us have the frequencies for the radio collars on the lead wolves in the pack so we could tell when the wolves were close. But they don’t do that anymore. We don’t know where they are or when they’ll show up. And they’re not scared of people.”

When I got in the pickup to head for the next ranch, I pulled my .45 out from under the seat, jammed it between the cushions, and tossed the shells on the dash within easy reach.

The next rancher is also an outfitter. Or was, until his hunters started encountering wolves. With 40 percent of his calves dead from “unidentified predators” and hunters finding other places to hunt, he started complaining to the New Mexico Fish and Game. They admitted there was a problem and started feeding the wolves in the area. Ironically, the Diamonds couldn’t get a “confirmation” of a wolf kill, but when the carnivore logs started arriving for the wolves, the calves quit disappearing.

“Carnivore logs are horse meat,” he said. “I had it tested. No wonder those wolves are harassing my horses and mules.”

John is third generation on this piece of land and grew up ranching, hunting, fishing, and packing. His wife is pregnant with their first child. They’re considering buying a house in town so the child will be safe. But not the local town. There has been a wolf on the playground there. Soccorro, maybe. It’s a bigger town.

Schneberger’s live so far out, it takes all day and $150 in fuel to make a trip to town for groceries. The cowtrails into the first ranch were good road compared to the trail into their place. Matt’s parents bought the place in the 1960’s and he thought there was no better place in the world to grow up. Packing a gun was an option for him as a kid, now his adult daughter goes nowhere without a rifle in her saddle scabbard. His young son plays inside a wolf-proof fence.

At the recommendation of the Wolf Reintroduction Project entities, they bought longhorn cattle to replace those killed by wolves. However, that didn’t stop the killing and longhorn calves are worth less than other beef calves at market. How many pay cuts can they take?

Their daughter had been surrounded by wolves within quarter mile of the house, and still has a hard time talking about it. They have horses that go crazy every time they see a carnivore and all the riding stock is kept in the newly wolf-proofed corrals and fed. The parents flinched every time their rambunctious son yelled in the back yard. If he was quiet for more than a few minutes, somebody went to check on him.

I loaded the pistol and I jammed it between the seats before I started out of there.

The Haught’s bought a small ranch with the idea of turning it into a Christian youth camp when they retired in a few years. After loosing 60 percent of the stock (calves, cows, bulls, and horses) to wolves, they sold the land and all the improvements they’d put into it for a fraction of its previous worth. They’re just glad to get rid of it.

Preston Bates had a successful guest ranch for 23 years until wolves ate 49 percent of his calf crop, killed several expensive foals and crippled some of his yearlings and two-year-olds. Defenders of Wildlife paid him $2500 for his losses claiming he couldn’t prove it was wolves killing and eating his stock. He sold the ranch to keep from filing bankruptcy and now works for the absentee owner who bought it.

He also warned me to take my pistol with me if I had to get out of the pickup for any reason. He was changing a tire once and had one come up so close, he threw a handful of gravel in its face to give him time to get in the pickup.

I watched an old timer struggle to hold his emotions in check as he listened to a Wildlife Services guy in a uniform tell him that the bits of his 15^th dead calf was probably the result of a coyote kill, but to be careful, the San Mateo pack had moved onto his property two weeks ago and were denning.

The list went on for seven days. I saw ranch kids with the same pale complexion as city kids. I watched people who though they’d “bought a slice of heaven” say they’d take about any price that would let them get out of debt and give them gas money to move. I had a nine-year-old ask to see my gun and tell me I needed to be able to draw it quickly because if a wolf is within 30 feet, it can get you in one jump. He informed me he’d seem two wolves pull down a 1000 pound cow and that if one got ahold of me, I didn’t stand a chance. He was really glad my pistol didn’t require reloading between shots.

“If there’s a pack, they all attack at once,” he told me. “You won’t get much time to kill them. And they aren’t afraid of shots. We tried to drive them off by shooting in the air, but that doesn’t scare them at all.”

There’s little wood-and-wire cages at the bus stops for the kids to hide in.

“We’ve had kids chased and stalked, and it’s only a matter of time before somebody gets killed,” a superintendent told me.

“But nobody’s been bitten by a wolf,” I told a roomful of people later in the day. “The records say so.”

The room exchanged glances for several minutes before one of the county commissioners looked at me and said. “There was a woman killed in the pens at the breeding facility. I tried to find out if it was one of the wolves they’d picked back up after it was threatening our kids, but they wouldn’t tell me which pack did it. And we’ve had hunters and campers bitten. We’ve had them identify the animals. One even said the thing had a collar on. But after they spend a few minutes with the Fish and Game, they change their minds and say it’s a coyote. Then the state pays for the rabies shots and the medical care. We’ve had a several people out here chewed on by coyotes since this wolf program began.”

“What’s going to happen?” I asked the Catron County Wolf Interaction Investigator.

“Somebody’s going to get killed. I hope it’s a camper’s kid because if it’s one of ours . . . these people have been living with being told they can’t protect their stock, their pets, and their kids for so long that . . . . I just hope it isn’t one of our kids. You can only push people so far.”

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