Baker County Living
Rural Living
DO • Slow down • Watch the herders for signals on when to proceed • If you follow a herder or another car, stay close to prevent cows from moving in between • Watch for cow-herding dogs DON’T • Honk your horn or make any other loud noise • Stop more than 50 feet or so from the herd — if you stop, the cattle might stop, too • Get out of your car to take photographs — it’s OK to roll down a window and take pictures, however S. John Collins / Baker City Herald
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Cow dogs do their jobs well, but they're small, fast and sometimes unnoticeable to drivers.
Baker County is open range, which basically means the cow has the right-of-way. If you kill a cow with your car, you have to pay the cow’s owner — even if the cow was straddling the broken line down the center of the highway. But Phillips said the main reason she remembers that incident on icy Highway 86 is that it illustrates what drivers shouldn’t do when they roll up to a cattle drive. What they should do is spelled out in a two-page pamphlet the Baker County Cattlewomen printed. Actually it’s a new version of an old pamphlet, the late Judy Whitley, who owned a ranch near Medical Springs with her husband, Phil, said in an interview several years ago. Although cattle drives might seem an Old West anachronism, as
relevant to the 21st century as wagon wheels, that’s not so, Judy Whitley said. “We do have cattle drives here — you have to,” she said. “It would take you a week of Sundays to haul (cattle in a truck).” “For most ranchers there’s no other choice,” said Lori Thomas of Thomas Angus Ranch in Baker Valley. Thomas, Whitley and Phillips also used the same word to describe the attitude that drivers ought to adopt, whether they roll up to a couple dozen Black Angus or a herd of Herefords with 300 head. “Patience.” “The biggest problem we run into is drivers who don’t have enough patience to wait until it’s an opportune time to get through the herd,” 46
Thomas said. If you’re not sure whether that time has arrived, Whitley recommends you watch the ranchers who drive the herd. They’re usually on horseback, although occasionally you’ll see a herder riding an ATV — efficient machines, but they quickly ruin the Chisholm Trail ambience. If a herder waves you forward, proceed slowly, Whitley said. She conceded that weaving through a herd of thousandpound animals, even when you’re safely ensconced in a vehicle, can be intimidating — especially for drivers unfamiliar with the bovine temperament. See Page 48