Inside Cowboy/Ranching Culture - West Texas 🇺🇸

I'm kind of a person who doesn't like change everything we're seeing here is 06 Ranch Gotta Love it or you wouldn't do it because it's insane if they do another Yellowstone series are you going to be the next John Dunn all right this time we had to sell everything Chris has got a cow challenge for me do you feel as a Rancher for Generation Steve is this under threat how is the culture right now ranching Cowboy culture this is Cowboy lunch eggs and cheese sausage that's one way to end the video one of those horns in my face right this is where the Cowboys would live food has been glamorized where's your food come from in the early days you would have a team is ever like like I bet your hair grandfather is cheap oh wow I would like to have it just like it was a hundred years ago [Music] good morning guys here in West Texas and today we have a very interesting story we're getting into we're going out to the 06 Ranch now this is a ranch that's been around since the 1800s in the same family and from what I've been told they do things in more traditional ways so let's get out to the ranch and see what this type of lifestyle is like in this modern world [Music] here we are at the 06 Ranch cowboy this is just a water reservoir you got going on here yes sir yeah trying to clean it yeah I probably have been cleaned out in about twice 30 years we don't know if there's any dead bodies in there I don't know let's find out yeah What's this called This is called a camp usually part of the crew lives in the house takes care of the animals down over there is the scale pans and there's scales from the Old West Railroad scale pen what's that uh where you take cattle or horses and you want to weigh them before a sale or or whatever so that was like 18 something something and we're still using from 1800s so this this Ranch is how big oh I'll let Chris tell you that and I'll tell you why because it's in the early days if you ask someone how many acres or how many cattle they have it's like asking how much is in your billfold it's disrespectful to ask a Rancher how much acreage you have how many cattle you have correct my background and it happens out here boy these Cowboys are so good stuff that you know I was kind of big fish and a small pond up North and then you come down here and and everybody does everything that I knew before breakfast we're probably down to a third or a fourth of the number of horses that we had we had to sell them why is that for the from the drought the drought how long has that been going on we haven't had a whole lot of rainfall since five years or so five years wow then last year we had so much rain all of a sudden one day that um it washed out all the roads it washed out a lot of the buildings and it was a mess this is one of the studs he's retiring that's Frost I guess he's been fed how old is he he is 20 I believe 18 18. okay that's right one guy here this uh dark Colt who had a bad cut and so he's kind of mending from that right here okay yeah so your your horses you have a close relationship with oh yeah yeah they're like your partner when you're out working cattle I like riding these cow bread horses because you top a hill and they're hunting cows they're very keen you know they're uh predatory animal and any movement in the brush or sounds rocks going they'll Lurch it to it okay so uh and oftentimes when you go when you ride here in the rocks it's you have to be in partnership with them because you can't put that much horse on each Rock I mean you just they have to help you and place their feet in in places that keeps you safe and still where you want to go so there's a lot of danger in this work when you're on the horses oh yeah so what keeps you going you've done this for a while yeah I was born on a uh Born and Raised on a dairy farm and then I married a beatbox [Music] Rancher so there is differences but now here these are some of the horses Call Music horses hi buddy that's here's a big one music horses a using horse like yours we're gonna use a horse okay today to go over the mountain or something or tomorrow he's he's means he's broke to ride and uh good to go by using horse that's The Branding on the horse over there yes can you tell us about that the old six is the name of the ranch and it's the pay grade of a captain uh officer six so it's officer one officer two one of his greats was in the Texas Navy okay and so in kind of a nod to him they call the ranch the 06 the 06 okay I read also somewhere that it helps with thievery like if someone steals your horses or cattle this is how they would go to auction and know that it's not theirs right exactly there's uh more going on in densely populated areas okay uh where they feed their cattle and where their you know cattle will come to a horn a honk and uh out here you know they're just gonna run off mainly there's too much country out here to uh steel too many cattle but if if they want them bad enough we they kiss you too we do lock our gates off this is a big question but how is the culture right now ranching Cowboy culture what's your assessment of it these days if you want to see some tote tough folks I'd say this is a good time to hit them up because it's the ones that are still in it are tough yeah yeah people don't ever hope uh you know hold on to what they have with the original livestock they've had for years the blood in years so it's harder to do these days is that what you mean by being tough folks no we just couldn't we just couldn't come up with hay enough to keep them you know we wanted to keep a small group and build back yeah and in 2011 we were hit with a big Wildfire of 20 000 acres and 20 miles of fence and um we had to sell off two-thirds that year wow because of uh after that fire there was a hundred days of over 100 degree temps so it just scorched okay you know it looked it the ground was sterile in places where the fire had gone through and I'm I'm uh wise enough to know now not to ask how many cattle but two-thirds would be a good amount like a good number oh yeah well to me get rid of him yeah you had to sell off two thirds well it's just kind of what we could hang on to what we could keep feeding and so forth but this time we had to sell everything I mean we just so it's you're in it because you love it or in it because it's like um a marriage that you can't get out of or both I think all of the above you gotta love it or you wouldn't do it because it's insane every uh about uh two years out of ten years is a good year it's a good year okay uh so you kind of have to plan that way with rain if it rains it makes so much difference I mean it so your spirits the mood of the Cowboys and and even the town maybe is going to be higher when it rains like people are the weights of the cattle which is money in your pocket to pay bills right so so the rain is everything rain is everything right yeah I see some big homes up on the hill here right like there's some big homes up there right so people moving into town or it's always been that way or what's that it's a development it used to be part of the ranch uh it was some of our family our cousins uh elected to uh to develop that a character part so when you say it's a way of life and you have to love it is it um like you couldn't imagine doing anything else than being on the ranch it sounds good take a cruise read a book in daylight read a book in daylight because your daylight hours you have a zero time other than working on the ranch well you'll see you know checking where we're going pretty much can take your day and that's all in the ranch and it's Mountain Roads so you're not going 70 down the highway but there is a Highway going down through the middle of the ranch and it's kind of like we have a highway in the middle of the ranch but we got a highway in the middle of the ranch an actual Highway yeah yeah interesting okay so we can get trucks and trailers places that like in his young age and uh your grandfathers they had to ride so they would have to ride out of here to go wow you can't see the Barnes anymore like to that mountain over there to that mountain way up there huh so we're gonna we're gonna go on that that trip right now yeah what's in this building bar well right now it's a stirred up mess I'm sure because the baseball team is here you want need some luck here you go do you got the dust dust devils baseball team out here to take care of business these are the Alpine Cowboys baseball teams players from all over all over Montana State all over what's a Chuck Wagon the Chuck Wagon is when in Roundup which is two weeks in the spring and four in the fall the cook would drive this in the early days he would have a team and up until when did you quit running it in the with the team in the 70s it was probably in the 60s we just got this back oh what's this a Jeep yeah we had it restored it's his grandfather's Jeep oh wow a Willy's it's a 56 Willis when he had his baseball team he they they took a tour down to Mexico City can you imagine driving here in Mexico City and this and it's cheap hey what are we like an hour to the Border it's about an hour but Mexico City is Way Beyond obviously oh gosh way way yeah [Music] the 06 brand on all your vehicles so that I just thought of it for the first time the word brand comes from ranching right like oh that's the brand like Calvin Klein or probably or whatever probably is this what you'd call like a more traditional ranch these days yes very we were way more traditional than we are now actually okay right now so we haven't pulled our check wagon out in in two or three uh roundups uh just to cut back on expenses and try to get by with what we're doing but we'll probably get back into it with the Chuck Wagon or the Chuck Wagon it might seem backwards but we can't run an ATV we can't run a um a four-wheeler whatever up these rocks are we have to go and therefore you go horseback [Music] so don you were saying as we were driving in the left side of the road all the way to those mountains and then the right side all the way is your Ranch where your cattle are from there to Fort Davis the other side of Fort Davis when we cross over this cattle guard and this opens up into this big country uh that goes goes into headquarters I just always think of being out here like the first you know it came along in a buck board down here and there's a spring and there's a nice trees and stuff I just think boy this would be it you know if you were coming from Audi Audi we had a car commercial the director was here and he said oh open it up wide shot think Costner this is the headquarters the gate was built in 1921 but the ranch was applied in 1912. they first settled here and then they sold to the coconut uh Pete family and we went from there and this is where my great my great grandfather and my grandfather lived and grew up here at this place great grandparents uh like 1883 Ranch around Alpine and then and then and came out here went to Lubbock where Texas Tech is uh that's that was the horse pasture up there and then uh sold out and came and and uh bought this Pruitt Ranch uh back in 1912 and and have ever since then gone off so does it does it mean a lot to you oh yeah uh we're uh we're proud to be be here we're proud to be part of the legend we we try to keep it going we we would like I would like uh to have it just like it was a hundred years ago I'm kind of a person who didn't like change and and so uh I I like it uh better that that way do you feel as a Rancher four generations deep this is what you know this is your life is this under threat a little bit this way of life or is it like you're saying you're you like no change and things are just easy peasy nothing's really changed or what are your thoughts on that there's always somebody uh wanting something that that you have we've got to keep an eye on the federal government we've got to keep an eye on the nature conservancy and uh any you know anything that would cause a uh disruption to what you're normally doing we have an organization called the Davis Mountain trespectives Heritage Association we work on private lands Texas has a lot of private property and and a lot of the states to the West are federal and you know with BLM and all that sort of thing we're trying to stay away from that that organization was created because they wanted to make a national park out of all these Davis Mountains at one time and so we we got that feasibility studies shut down so these are these are the Davis Mountains out here yes all this in terms of Davis Mountains okay would one of the the threats be maybe developers these days or that would be up to you 100 if you wanted to put on that road we can develop we could do whatever it's just a taking 30 30 or uh uh 30 30 land grab what is that check it out what's the 30 30. well by uh 2030 this Administration wants 30 percent of land and water of on this country it's already going through Vermont and and New York I think this can get very busy this is a big place and it takes and we're we're down on crew right now we didn't have the cattle we didn't have the work because of the drought because of the drought and we just had to cut I mean just cut expenses and Personnel is expensive we're in the process of running some stalker cattle they call it New Orleans okay we'll run them for a while just to utilize the grass that we did make because we have potential out here of a fire and you might as well use some of this dry glass before it burns up so stalker cattle is like you basically lease the cattle or yes okay we we sell the grass to people that own it so this is where the Cowboys would live yes yes yeah this man was man with Hispanic he's been with the family for a lot of years and we had to let him go he stayed here and very simplistic life and I gave him a microwave about six years ago and it was a coffee table for the next five [Music] this is the bunker yeah and this is where he lived just him yes well and then during the Roundup sometimes we had other people stay in here and we had this grass studied and it's a surprising the amount of protein in here why is that do you think just the soil it's just a different type of grass lives out here and it's pretty high in protein you like taking people out here because it gets you into the yeah it gets me in the country and if you know if we have a chance to push some cattle tomorrow uh horseback that'll be uh something I'd like to like to do as a Rancher a lot of it's not out in the field that's actually doing paperwork stuff like that well if if you're doing what I'm doing uh at my age and everything I I try to help as much as I can and and uh just you know paperwork uh bills uh how much taxes are going up you know my grandfather always said I know two things for sure I want to die one of these days and they're always going to raise taxes you know so uh so I mean that's something we're working with all the time you you try to keep taxes down and try to try to keep those expenses down if you can Chris can you can you Buckle me up please yeah here we go uh I'm gonna use this right here okay ranching safety buckles oh there's oh there you go okay that's what we're doing you feel safe yeah I'm driving [Laughter] my wife may not think that but no comment [Laughter] you're talking about vets that fought overseas they come out here of all branches yeah and they're interested in horsemanship they rode our horses and it was a good experience but those guys are when they're here they're so pumped up you know and then your friends put them on Facebook and those down days are pretty down and you know PTSD and injuries and what they go through in their family and you know you just have to pray for them just how do you how do you manage One Foot In Front of the other okay it's kind of how I operate because you know life goes on and your son Jake Jake was in Afghanistan lost his life what what year 2011 October 2011. I'm sorry yeah what's that I don't have to put that on there if you don't want me to That's Heavy that's heavy stuff uh that we use around the headquarters and uh and our shipping traps and we've got we also have water in the creek down here it's getting pretty hard would you say those that don't Ranch they say they live on the coast you know they're on the East Coast or the West Coast that don't live this lifestyle what do they not understand do you think [Laughter] I don't know what if they live in a ferry a fairy store you're a fairyland or or maybe believe or something like that but whether you have to have agriculture to live and okay so you're saying for the people that think ranching is a negative thing or something that's your response you need agriculture to live yeah yeah you have to I mean you've got to eat where's your food come from it means you go to the grocery store you okay I was just gonna say what if you're a vegan vegetarian and then you that's the good answer right my friend that always said there's no such thing as a vegan because you may wear leather or you might Home Products or there's so many by-products in a in a cow that is used for other things all the way from glue and nail polish a lot of Cosmetics nail polish yep how's your relationship with your cows what do you feel about your cattle when you had them here and then when you're going to get them back again what are your oh first of all we've we try to raise the best cattle possible and we have all those genetics and all those years of cattle being here and those cattle are situated here and they live here and this is our home now you've got to take them away and sell them all now you got to start over again and so that's the we've we pride ourselves on disposition and uh and health and and weight and and quality and so you just gotta that's what you do you want to get the best quality out of them which means they have to be treated in the best way have the best grazing right you don't want to Overstock you can only stock uh one cat over 40 acres out here one one cow every 40 acres 40 acres and that's not the case right now the case right now is is way way uh less but I mean and there were some instances where we one count every 80 acres you know okay so we're looking at what is this Valley here is that 80 acres that's uh probably uh 300 acres you're looking at right there okay I'm a little off on that one so uh we could put we could put a few cows out there and that would sustain them at this point yes and is that because it's so dry and rugged yes so if they're in a different say Montana they need less land yes hopefully for them so what's going on here this cow's caught up they're uh on this water trough right here okay thank you you're just trying to get them over there right yeah this is a rookie question like most of mine out here are cows dumb animals or smart animals would you say they're smart well that maneuver that you just saw yes that's because horses cattle prey animals like that are usually straight line thinkers so they're seeing their friends are over there right that's why he got hung up on the fence there's a straight line he wasn't thinking about going around repetition that they'll start figuring that out you know they have good memories they'll remember places and got a pretty good GPS system and I know when we've gathered over hundreds of thousands of Acres it's it's you see the same cattle every year like say mom goes to that area and has her baby in it okay well acclimating and really haven't found their country yet okay so it takes some time to get used to a new new land is that what you're saying yes they came from Mexico but they're pretty Hardy I mean they're pretty they're pretty tough so they'll go back to Mexico no they won't they won't ever go back to Mexico down in Mexico now it is dry just like it is and they're sending cattle up here because they don't have they're having problems down there so once it rains down there they're going to stop sending the cattle oh so we're taking advantage of of that so that's interesting the cattle work between the borders yeah it doesn't look like they have grass here but they're going to travel off they're going to get their bellies full of water and then they'll kind of take a nap and then they'll kind of graze off and all this gold that you see here that's grass they're utilizing that grass okay yeah these Hills here cattle of our climbers so in another that's kind of why we're out here we're checking all this all the time to see where they're at where they're kind of migrating to if there's too many which there are so we'll have to move some of these tomorrow and how long do they stay here before they're off to they go to the slaughterhouse right no they'll go to another place that they'll go onto wheat Fields probably in like the Panhandle Kansas type thing then they'll go to a feed lot where they're finished okay so what's the time frame from when they're a calf till when they're say meet in the supermarket or leather on your shoes probably uh a year or a year and a half uh two two years to finish them out you know okay corn fed or whatever whatever you're trying to do and basically all steps of the way how well they're raised means how good the meat's gonna be how nice the leather is going to be yeah is that the story if you have a gentle cattle if you if they have good disposition and they don't get you know harassed very much and that uh the meat is going to be a lot better uh if if they're a little wild and they they you know they're banged around a little bit you you get bruising in your in your meat cuts and you get what they call Red Cutters how do they rate that is there a rating system for that great em choice you know you see that in the grocery store USD USDA crime is the best right right what's the price of a cow typically I'm sure it varies but a thousand dollars right now the cattle market is pretty good uh if and if it ever does rain it'll really be good that's molasses that's their nutrients yes the vitamins are in some molasses they'll lick that so it's they'll get protein extra protein Antelope yes that's antelope whistle see if you'll turn around whistle save your time bad hearing you'll fit right in I don't know where his buddies are they usually with some other antelope Chris has got a cow challenge for me he said I got to get up the ladder there right is that right right these things get aggressive or not really nothing we'll see I want to keep them Prime guys USDA prime all right guys here we go here we go it's easy I'm a natural okay so Chris wants to know water situation in this tank oh we're looking good it's up to about here are you there put your hands up right here yeah this is hot and then it's cold okay is that what it is Chris Works smarter not harder yeah well I mean you know if you're in a hurry or something you know you just feel it of course if you're halfway up the ladder you might as well look inside [Laughter] Don you're asking how many miles of Ranch Road you guys have here you asking Chris yeah it's over it's about it's probably a little over a thousand miles of Roads a thousand so one third across the United States almost seems like when you're going around and doing the mountains and things like that what are you looking for with the banana I see this there's a steer over there you see a steer oh yeah just on his own yeah so what happens when there's one on their own well it's either he's either not feeling good and he's a little sick or he's just maybe there's a few more with him that we can't see usually they don't go by themselves so what do you got to do bring him back well yeah for tomorrow if if uh if he's still there and we may try to get him with a bunch tell me to stop where you want me to but um is ever like a thought of if you sold all this I mean developers would just be licking their chops with this thought of having all this land right right um and you know we've been uh approached many times would you like to do this would like to put windmills would you like to put solar would you like to do you know there's all kind of things that come to us every day all the time every day and uh the antelope you get a lot of offers yeah there's a lot of ideas everybody's got you know a better idea than you do you ought to run this and y'all do that and you know we get a lot of help [Laughter] so the thoughts never crossed your mind though just like sell this whole thing and then not have to ever worry about money again ever in life well yeah my uh I've got some family members Network sale okay it's a our I don't know what they want you know it's hard to tell yeah we're in the process of family meetings now we're trying to keep this thing together best we can hopefully we can what's this over here by it looks like something dead what happened you think when they go through um dipping bat shots all kind of stress squeeze shoots Brandon and soul sometimes they'll suck up too much of that depth that they they dip their head under so they can clean them completely ticks that come out of Mexico and it's a good thing but then it makes them sick too sometimes so they just don't make it yeah what are oryx good question good question and then we just put them out there they're it's a game Adam it's African they're they're supposed to be um something that people go to Africa to hunt there's supposed to be a feast of the of the Kings from back in Egyptian times they were highly sought after the I guess the meat's really good what are you doing with them out here we'll have them we'll hunt them eventually with the hunt for the horns okay and yeah anime there's both of them it's like an elk so you get a hunting program on the ranch too all right one of the things that keeps us going there we go they're quite huge that's one way to end the video one of those horns in my face right yeah yeah we have you know honey and cattle horses some advertised stuff you know film stuff if they do a another Yellowstone series we are you going to be the next John Dutton you're nicer you're a much better guy [Music] we carry and and we want to sure make sure it is ready to go in case there's something you know that said that needs to be put down or or something if you you really might need it for I hope never have to use it right oh it's called 9-1-1 from this point they would be about an hour and a half yeah if they came with Sirens blaring yeah do this spot to help you yeah we're far back in yeah you might need to deal with things yourself what about ranches Big ranches like this they sometimes have helicopters right right you don't have a helicopter no first of all I don't know how to fly another another thought is that the fuel is is really expensive and it's a high dollar to have one now Alma Calif he's got a jet Ranger see your neighbor yeah yeah this is where your skills shine this is where Jeep comes in hand y oh yeah a little string cheese guys all right it's Cowboy lunch Cowboy or not yeah eggs and cheese and sausage there you go Chris thank you Dawn's freshly made homemade cookies fresh from the freezer but you made this yes okay let's see what the food critic has to say Chris it's good it's good USDA prime so the reason you've chose to lease the land out it's risk management you were just saying off camera if the water ran out then they would just get on trucks and go back to the ranches they came from right yeah someplace else we'll go to a different place where if they were your cattle you don't have that option correct you wouldn't be able to we'd have to sell them we'd have to sell out again okay and my grandfather my great-grandfather I don't think I don't think they ever had to do this sell out like this um the market was so bad and the draft was was bad there's a government comes in and they say okay we're going to give you uh 25 ahead and you're gonna take these cattle over here to just get this uh Dead Set we've dug and we're gonna kill all of them and we're not gonna let anybody else have any meat out of it we're just going push them in the ditch cut them up with a bulldozer what's the point of that so to get the market up oh I guess it worked it was very painful you can imagine shooting your own cattle or government guys shooting your cattle and then you know handing you a check and then driving off in the car you know that was a bad time the rest of the 50s was hard pretty much everybody had to sell out but we didn't it always rained a little bit somewhere on the ranch somewhere this side of the ranch is so big you can see there's very little fences so they can kind of migrate almost like Buffalo herds over here that they can get up higher for the cool they can get into valleys canyons and they'll follow the rain so if it rained off in that direction you know 5-10 miles they'll you'll see in another couple days those cattle would all drift in that direction okay okay so don you were saying this is like your uh your cheap date you don't have to go out to dinner whatever you Cruise you and Chris Cruise the ranch together you have a little meal some cookies some eggs and take a break and hold hands and make out for a while next to the cows yes yeah that's romantic well we have a chaperone okay all right Jasper there you go this is an oasis yeah it's it's a Santa they call it a sanaga I mean the water's not very far from the surface of the ground okay uh it's coming through here that's why uh Pruitts and the Coconuts built the the house and when you put the chain back on you don't have to snap it well you'll snap it but you'll just put it over the post oh Pro tip all right you got it so guys it's not easy getting into these different worlds and when we get in um you never know what you're going to get into at least I know and it's great when you meet awesome people really quality people that are able to show us around so he scored we got lucky with this one am I hard Chris yeah yeah you do did a rats that's enough anytime you're talking about land you always try to make it better try to make the fences better the water better and you have that attitude of stewardship whether you're checking into a motel room you leave it a little better than you found it you know this idea that you have to trash every hotel room and my name's not on the paper but I realize that God put me here for a reason to help him Steward that land this land and you were saying also um most people are three generations from farming yeah I have to give credit to Dr uh Jim heard from Texas A M who did a thing on equine horses years ago and he was given all this information and all of a sudden he flipped that that statement and I couldn't hear anything else for a while because I just kept what he said at the time at the time this is probably 10 years ago that the average person walking the street today is three generations away from the farmer Ranch so they have less invested they're not emotionally attached it's unfamiliar with them um food has been glamorized you know you go to Walmart and get pretty bags and you know all that type of thing you don't Hunt and Gather you know for your families you haven't stepped away from that life yet not even one generation away I'm not dude here with the horses moving cattle moving cattle and I know that's why I'm here because you wanted expertise yes we'll bring a Widowmaker do you have trading wheels for me like some floaty things for my arms just in case a good idea day two on the ranch are you bonded yet the horse is breaking me [Music] best job I ever had this job I ever will have City girl falls in love with the cowboy yeah the other six Brands this is you said The more gangster version yeah I don't know if that's a compliment I'm your newest employee we'll pay you what you're worth six cents an hour so you can spend thousands oh thousands you know what a cutter is no and you are ranked what in the world there's a lot of humping going on here life happens it's not what you are it's who you are Cowboys here they're such gentlemen did I let my hair go gray and I haven't opened the door in June [Music]

Channel: Peter Santenello

Views: 1,376,982

Keywords: cowboys, ranchers, peter santenello, cowboys culture, ranchers culture, yellowstone, yellowstone series, cowboys texas, ranch texas, west texas, ranching, O6 ranch, ranching culture, ranching life, horse, cows, texas, kokernot, kokernot 06 ranch, kokernoto6 ranch, cowboys in texas, cowboying in texas, Inside Cowboy/Ranching Culture - West Texas

Id: Ak6aB5vwdiw

Length: 43min 37sec (2617 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 19 2022