Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, Sherwood Ranch, South Dakota, June 1956, with my Dad, Phil Sr. and my Cousin Billy Forte, branding and cutting calves. The fun and challenge were riding the odd two-year-old calves that had missed branding the previous year, hands-free.
This is when I clearly learned that riding broncs or bulls in a Rodeo was not for me. This became very clear, at 12, after a two-year-old calf, I rode, hands-free ran me into a small tree !!!! My cousin Billy is trying to keep the calves head down because once he turns it and begins to move around, you can't safely brand.
I realize, as I look back almost 62 years, that this is a rough process, but in those days all you had was a horse, a rope, your physical strength, and teamwork. Today this is done very differently. Electronically most places. The day of "flanking calves", as it was called in my young days, is over.
For myself, I have become mostly vegetarian!
