- [Eva] These are real cowboys. I am not a cowgirl, but I've
always dreamt of being one and these guys have offered to teach me. - Who are you? - [Eva] See, I grew up in
Europe, and as a little kid, I used to be obsessed with horses and eventually started
horse riding lessons. But as it often does, life got in the way and I stopped spending time with animals. But the dream remains. So now that I'm in the United States, I wanna give it a shot. Can someone here teach me
how to become a cowgirl? And here is the really big question. In a world where seemingly
everybody wants to be a cowboy. - Every millionaire I
know wants to be a cowboy. - What does it really take to become one? When I started filming this video, I thought this would be easy and I promised myself to
get a real cowgirl hat as a prize for, you
know, becoming a cowgirl. One day, when I become a real cowgirl. But what I didn't realize at the time was that this whole idea of
trying to become a cowgirl as a European would be
much more complicated and difficult than what I had expected. - [Cal] Just wanna keep
pushing them down this road. - A lot of pressure, guys. A lot of pressure. So I went to get a lesson from
a real teacher of cowboys. Hi! - Morning. - How's it going? - Cal. - [Eva] This is Cal Middleton. Cal has a pretty unusual job. He travels the country far and wide teaching cowboys how to cowboy. - This one Here is Macy. I think we're gonna catch her in a minute. That's who you're gonna ride today, Macy. - [Eva] More specifically, he shows people how to communicate and work with horses. - The biggest mistake most people make is they're trying to be too
nice and cuddly with them and petting them too much. And next thing you know, the horse is standing over top of them, which is real dangerous for people. - [Eva] He may sound like a real toughie, but his philosophy is actually all about responsible horsemanship. First item on the agenda, catch my horse. Give her a brush. - [Cal] You're not a kitchen table you're trying to, you know, clean off. You know, they have feelings. - [Eva] And clean out her hooves. Oh, and dress her up for the day. - [Cal] Perfect. Aha! Better, right? (Evan groans) - [Eva] It was heavy, okay? - There you go. - So I just got these cowboy
boots and I am loving them. I think they're so cute. What do you think, buddy? I think she approves secretly. (laughs) Oh, my God. Yes, this is exactly why I'm here. The fashion. - Now, you're feeling. - Forget Prada. This is the coolest thing I've
ever worn in my entire life. Cal was about to teach me the
basic skills of the cowgirl and we started with basic
riding, which went okay. - Very good. So remember, there's
basically three skills. What were they? Let's see if we can remember them all. - (laughs) Riding. - Riding. - Herding. - Herding the cattle. - Roping.
- And roping. - [Eva] This is a pretty technical skill, so we started off by
practicing with a dummy. - You guys are about to meet
a very famous being here. This is carpet. - [Eva] This dummy calf looked like it was about two centuries old, but it has served as a teaching aid for many, many cowboys
all across the country. - Reach back. Hey, that was pretty good, though! So now, the next thing you gotta remember is just how to follow through. (Eva cheering) Easy, easy. Good! Nice job, girl. Reach back a little more. Reach forward more. Reach back more. Reach forward more. And now just real smooth, let go of it and open up your hand. - Like I am shaking someone's hand, right? - [Eva] Yes, ma'am. Hey! Look at that, huh? - (cheering) I did it! - [Cal] Easy now. Good job. - [Eva] So at the end of our day together, I had a big question for Cal. Did he think that anyone, just
anyone could become a cowboy? - You know, I think if
you're gonna be good at it, you've gotta have a lot of try. Anybody can do that job for a while and just say, oh, I
cowboyed here or there. But to be a really good cowboy, you've gotta have a lot of try. For where you're at today. - Yeah. - And for the level that you had and for the information you
have and the amount you tried and the amount you learned, you got an A. (Eva cheers) - Okay, well, I still don't feel like I can get like, a cowgirl hat just yet. Learning the theory in a
controlled setting is one thing, but I wanted to test my
skills on a real ranch. So I drove to the Little Belt
Cattle Company in Montana, where I would get to stick part in a real cattle drive
on a real working ranch. - So, I'm Greg Putnam. I'm the co-founder and president of Little Belt Cattle Company and we raise 100% Montana
beef from start to finish. - [Eva] Greg is a veteran
of the Navy Seals. After a decade serving in the military, he and his business partner
decided to go into ranching and that's how they founded
the Little Belt Cattle Company. - Have just been building and growing with the goal of building this kind of closed local
supply chain of Montana beef and sustainable and
local is really our goals in putting high quality
and nutrient dense food back into our community. - [Eva] Greg got me on
horseback immediately to test my riding skills
before we did anything else. He had me trotting and cantering
and going around obstacles. I think I may have passed this test. Phew! - [Greg] There you go. Perfect. - You can definitely see
why people love the idea of becoming a cowgirl or a cowboy, right? 'Cause you're like, on
the back of a horse. You're out in the country. I was curious about Greg's own journey, going from Navy Seal to cowboy. What was the learning curve like? - Definitely a big learning curve and when you have that many
live things in your care... - [Eva] Yeah. - It's a huge commitment and it really has to take precedent. So the commitment that
you're making to doing this has to be a hundred percent. - Today is the real test. I finally get to take
part in a cattle drive and see if I have learned anything. This is going to be a taste of what a day in a cowboy's life actually looks like. Observation number one, even in summer, it starts way before sunrise. Woke up at 5 AM this morning and we're just about to set
off to go and get cattle today. Oh, it is chilly! Today, Greg and his team are moving cattle from one pasture to another. It's a big and important
day in the life of the ranch and the ranch itself is massive. Over 20,000 acres of Montana countryside. Before we can jump on horseback,
first, we need to drive to where the cows are currently staying. That's where we're going to
meet the rest of Greg's team. (soft music) What is the point of a cattle drive? What is a cattle drive? - So a cattle drive or trailing cattle would be moving cattle from
one pasture to another. Or, you know, like we'll start
kind of at our headquarters and then drive those cattle out here. And then generally, for us,
we're moving those cattle, you know, from one pasture to the next and there's a strategic plan. There's only really two ways to do it. You either have to put them
in trucks and trailers. - [Eva] Yeah. - Or, you know, drive them like this. You know, this kind of
country, like you're gonna see, it'd be really challenging
to load this many cattle up into trucks just to haul them, you know? So driving cattle like
we're doing horseback is the most effective way to move them. - I gotta say that filming on horseback is not the easiest thing
in the world. (laughing) Because as you can probably
tell from the camera, it is bouncy. So those cows that you guys
see just over the fence, they actually belong to Greg's ranch. So, I guess we'll need to
figure out a way to get in there and try and get them ac back
across the fence to our side. Is that right? - It is. (soft, twangy country music) - So right now, we are
trotting up the hill to kind of trying and
approach the cows at an angle so they don't freak out
and run away from us. So we're trying to be
gentle, subtle, stealthy. (soft, twangy country music) Okay, so Greg has just trusted
me to move this gal along. So I'll do my best to
just gently nudge her in the right direction, which is up there towards the other first cows. (soft, twangy country music) First cow I've ever moved. All right, my responsibilities
have increased to three cows. I mean, with, you know, this type of work, you gotta be really careful
because you are really caring for actual live animals and
you just wanna make sure that, you know, they're safe,
that they are feeling good, and that you're also getting them to go where you want them to go. (gentle upbeat country music) Oh, nice. Wow. Well, they're just about
to go through that gate. So I guess our mission has been a success. You know, like in a way,
it sounds really simple. You know, get some cows through a gate, but in reality, it takes
time and it takes effort and you have to, you know, go in there, move in a certain way to get them to want to go through the gate. It's not quite as simple as, you know, here they are, they're going. - So right now, like, they're
just walking through there. So that wasn't a bad experience for him. Then the next one, it
gets easier and easier. So like, the problems
compound or, you know, the ease of movement compounds. - [Eva] Yeah. - And that all starts with, basically, like, kind of the attitude and
the speed that you're going. and that carries out
throughout the entire day. It's not instant gratification, like we all are so kind of
used to getting anymore. And so, I really love
the fact that, you know, the good and bad decisions we
make, you gotta wait and see. It's not gonna be like, you know, this instant gratification. Oh, I want to know how this is gonna be because, you know, with
environmental stuff, with livestock and really with anything
with meaning, it's time. - Greg was about to give me
the biggest responsibility I've had so far on my cowgirl experiment. Looking back, I really
don't think my skills were up to scratch. But Greg, for whatever reason,
seemed to trust me with this. So Greg has just gone
to kind of take a look in the other pasture, which
leaves me with the honor of driving this herd
in the right direction. A lot of pressure, guys. A lot of pressure. I just hope that this isn't
too much responsibility all at once because I
really do not wanna mess up this setup. My mission right now is to just keep them
all together and moving. I have to avoid scattering
them or frightening them off or, you know, just doing anything
that would get them moving in the opposite direction to
where we want them to move. Greg was still somewhere
behind the mountain. The rest of his team were working on other herds across the ranch. So here, it was just me and this group of 14 skittish ladies. I mean, being out here,
out in nature on horseback with other animals just
feels so incredibly real. You know? It feels just real. (chuckles) And I love that
and I can definitely see how, you know, people would get this idea that this is the life 'cause
it is an amazing life. But if the weather wasn't this good, if the sun wasn't shining, I feel like it would be a different story. But right now, this is just such a dream. Now, I just have to make sure that the cows don't go
into the woods over there and that they don't run
into the fence over there. So straight ahead. And hopefully soon,
I'm gonna be joining up with another herd and some other cowboys who are helping us out today, just on the other side
of this little hill. There's Greg. - Good job! - [Eva] Thank you! - Cowgirl or not, that was awesome! - [Eva] (laughing) Thanks. - That was awesome. - Thank you.
- Yeah. - No, that was like, really good. - So proud of myself. - So everybody wants to
be a cowboy or a cowgirl when it's warm and, you
know, it's like today, but do you have what it takes
to do it when it's negative 20 and it's blowing 50 miles per hour? And only the people that do can kind of answer that question. Like any job, there's like,
amazing days where you go like, oh, this is, you know,
these are kind of the days that you do all that other stuff for. I think for the right
people that want to do it for the right reasons- - [Eva] What are the right reasons? - I think the right
reasons are you truly care for the wellbeing of livestock
that is in your management and you truly care for being a small part in kind of the greater system of putting like, truly, you know, the best food on the plates of American citizens and making it easy for people
to have access to that. (cows mooing) (soft music) - We've just joined up
with another big group and two more cowboys and
now, we have this huge herd that we're gonna try and
manage and keep moving. And like, I can see how
with, you know, 15 cows that I had before, that was
relatively straightforward, but this is gonna be about 500 cows soon, which is, that's a lot
of animals to manage. - When I got out of the
military, it was, you know, it's just a hard transition. You go from doing, you know,
a very like, mission-driven, purpose-driven, task-based job to, you know, unfortunately
today, like modern jobs, a lot of those, there's
not a lot of, you know, mission and purpose and teamwork and the military unit, I was
fortunately to come out of. I mean, it was all about
helping your friends. It was all about how is your buddy doing and your buddy's helping you. And one thing I love about ranching is that it is absolutely
like a task-based job, not a time-based job. When five o'clock hits, we don't go home. Now, we might have a great
day and get done early and go cook some steaks and drink a beer or we could be out here all day. You're not done until the job is done. - Get them out of there! (soft music) - Dixie, one of the heading
dogs, was just swimming to get the cows out of the water. How amazing is that? (soft music) (dog barking) So how's it going so far? - Good.
- Yeah? - So, this is the pasture they're going to and then what we're gonna do is take them down to where water is. So you always end them on
water and then that way, you know they got everything
they need to succeed. - [Eva] Right. Nice. Do you think we got them all? - I think we got everything
but two that we know of. Right, boys?
- Yeah. - And then this gal. - [Eva] Stubborn little girl. So are you gonna go back for those two? Is it worth it? - So we'll go back through
and gather this tomorrow and just like, really double
check that we got everything. - [Eva] Okay. - And so we'll catch those ones then. - [Eva] And eventually, the job
got done, as it always does. Greg's team gathered up all
500 cows, worked together, and moved them from one pasture
to the next without hiccup. These boys and girls, their
horses and their dogs, this is what they do every single day. This is the life they've chosen to live and I just happened to catch them on a really, really good day. - [Worker] Keep that UV
radiation off her eyeballs. - [Worker 2] She loves it. - [Worker 3] She's never
had watermelon before. - She's like-
- This is pretty all, bro. - He's so cute.
- Smile. Give her a smile. - [Eva] That is the funniest thing. He's just a little puppy. - [Worker 4] Yeah.
Like, this one's for me. - [Eva] Do you harbor any
hopes that your children might kind of take over
the business one day? - That's a great question. (laughs) I do. Yeah. No, totally. I have three daughters. Their ages are 10, eight and six and they're not here today, but usually, they're out here helping and, you know, they come and participate in ranch activities. And I do, you know,
inside, I really do hope that it resonates enough
with one, all of them to where they wanna take over. But I know one thing for sure. That the hard work and the dedication and the care that they're learning for something kind of bigger than themself will apply to whatever
they do in the future. And I secretly hope that some, you know, that it will be in agriculture, just so I can keep doing
it longer. (laughs) - [Eva] I love it. (laughs) I quickly learned that
all these rodeo skills that you see on the grand
stage, the barrel racing and the roping and all the showy tricks, they're actually rooted
in real cowboy culture. But they are just a tiny,
maybe even insignificant part, of what it really means
to be a working cowboy. Because from everything I've learned here, cowboying is about
something very different from what I had expected. And although I didn't love
the show "Yellowstone," this part here was spot on. - A friend of mine, Jackson Hole, was talking about their rodeo. Bozeman doesn't have one. Why not? - It's 'cause nobody
here cares about rodeos. - Oh, you're wrong, John. Every millionaire I know
wants to be a cowboy. - And this is why I'm not
getting myself a cowgirl hat because to be a real cowgirl,
you don't just dress like one. It's not something you can
achieve in a couple of days. Uh-uh. To be a cowgirl, you
dedicate your life to it. You get up early, you work hard, you show up day in, day
out, rain or sunshine. It now seems to me that
cowboying isn't just a job or even a lifestyle, it's a calling. (gentle acoustic guitar music) Hey, if you'd like for your
name to appear in these credits or if you'd like to get early access to all of my YouTube videos
or if you'd like to get access to my making off/behind the scenes videos for every single film
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to my Patreon community. There's loads of different perks. Patreon is where I
usually post my early life and travel updates, where I
make loads of exclusive content, and we get a chance to connect
on live calls, as well. It's a really, really great community. And yeah, if you'd like to see more of me, this is the link somewhere
here on the screen. Anyway, see you in the next video.
