Longhorns are the Welcoming Committee at Boot Ranch

La Taurus, aka “George”

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HILL COUNTRY

Home on the Range

The Boot Ranch welcoming committee has an impressive Texas pedigree, but they may not be what you’re expecting.

A

s cattle go, Texas longhorns rank pretty near the useless end of the spectrum. Other breeds are far better beef producers. And while their cows’ milk is said to be sweet, longhorns are ignored by the dairy industry. Imagine trying to maneuver those horns into a milking stall. About all longhorns are good for these days is looking at.

But oh, how we Texans adore them.

We can’t pass longhorns by without pausing to gaze upon them, which is why Boot Ranch has kept a few around ever since the private club community opened in 2005. Three now occupy a field by the entrance to Boot Ranch.

One, a 2000-pound steer, arrived a half dozen years ago, brought by members Roger and Rene Cameron when they put their ranch up for sale and moved to the community. They wanted him to live out his days in luxury. “Mine was the winning bid at a hospital gala,” Roger says in explaining how they came to own the steer. They named him La Taurus, but most people at Boot Ranch call him George.

The steer was joined by a heifer named Tascosa in 2017, purchased by Boot Ranch after another longhorn on

the property died of old age. Tascosa was pregnant when she arrived and, in 2018, she delivered a female calf that the community named Pilón.

The name Tascosa might be familiar to some Texans as a former county seat in the 1880s. Home to outlaws like Billy the Kid and lawmen like Pat Garrett and Bat Masterson, Tascosa became known as the “cowboy capital of the Panhandle” and was the site of one of the bloodiest shootouts in the Old West.

Longhorns are just as much a part of Texas history as cowboys and gunslingers, which may be another reason why we cherish them. Brought to the New World by Christopher Columbus and Spanish colonists in 1493, they were moved north from Mexico two centuries later and roamed wild for another two centuries. With their characteristic horns that extend up to seven feet (useful for defending against predators), Texas longhorns are the result of cross-breeding between Mexican cattle ( from the borderland between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande) and cattle from East Texas, which was then part of Mexico.

Once prized as livestock that could survive on poor vegetation, the rangy longhorns fell out of favor when ranchers became more interested in breeds that could be fattened up and marketed for beef. The cattle might have become extinct if not for the U.S. Forest Service, which in 1927 took a small herd to breed on the Wichita Mountains

Wildlife Refuge in Lawton, Oklahoma.

When the University of Texas (UT) adopted a longhorn steer as its mascot in 1916, the breed’s place in Texas history was assured. Athletes at UT had already been calling themselves Longhorns, so it made sense to have a mascot. Stephen Pinckney, class of 1911, raised funds to purchase a maverick steer that was introduced to cheering fans during halftime at the Texas vs. A&M football game. The steer reportedly charged the camera after posing for an official portrait. Ben Dyer, editor of the alumni magazine, named him Bevo for reasons that are unclear, though there has been some speculation that the name was a play on the word “beeve” (plural for beef, as well as slang for a cow or steer that would end up as food on somebody’s table). Since then there have been dozens of Bevos.

He even has his own fan club.

“The longhorn is a tough breed like a lot of us Texans,” says Deven Baughn, director of agronomy at Boot Ranch. “People are finding new ways to show them off. Everyone wants to have a Longhorn.

You’re seeing them on hobby farms or in parades in small towns all across Texas.”

But there’s only one place where the longhorns named Tascosa, Pilón, and La Taurus are waiting to greet you, and that’s at the entrance of Boot Ranch.

— MARIANNE DOUGHERTY

ISSUE 2

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