Standing Rock Reservation, Sherwood Ranch, South Dakota, June 1956, with my Dad, Phil Sr. and my Cousin Billy Forte, branding and cutting calves, while our younger cousin Greg Sherwood, watched and learned, anxious for his day to come!
The fun and challenge were riding the odd two-year-old calves, hands-free, that had missed branding the previous year. This is where I clearly learned that riding broncs or bulls in a Rodeo was not for me after a calf turned suddenly and 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 61 years, this was a rough business, but in those days all you had was a horse, a rope, your physical strength and team work.
I was a flanker. Once you the calf was roped it my job to run down the rope and "flank" the calf, dropping it to its side. Because what I learned at Standing Rock, I won the Calf Scramble at the Walla Walla County Fair. I simply flanked the first calf I came to, held him down, put a rope halter on him, let him up and ran the calf across the finish line! As they said in those days, "An old Indian Trick!"
Today this is done very differently, electronically and painlessly, in many places and the day of "flanking calves", as it was called in my young days, is over. To be honest, painlessly or not. I personally do not the thought of being castrated and branded. That is just my perspective.
For myself, I have almost become vegetarian! —
