I went to auction to buy a huge steer and instead bought two small, cute heifers that weighed less than 900 pounds combined. I locked them in a pen with a pond and plenty of grass. I returned the next day to discover that they had run away. I was sent back to the sale barn to buy a steer. A BIG one. I’m a Texas girl, I can do this!
I watched as all of the really smart cowboys bid on the cattle without having to look under them to determine their sex.
A cattle auction barn is set up like an amphitheater with the seats surrounding the auctioneer and the cattle are quickly driven one at a time around the auctioneer. The bidder seating section begins about five feet above the action floor.
Cattlemen are unique individuals. Having run cattle on their land for several generations there is a bit of competition between neighbors to see who has the best herd. For privacy, bidding on a cow can be done with the slightest gesture.
This “herd ego” may have been my biggest problem. These cowboys were into lot 50 which means nearly a thousand cows had come through already. It was dark and coming close to the last lot. I moved lower and lower in the stands but could not get into a position where I could see under the animals without getting on my hands and knees and poking my head through the rails.
The auctioneer talked fast. I finally raised my bid card, for imaginable reasons I knew this was a steer! I won! I was so excited because he was big. As I was leaving the bidding area to claim my prize the auctioneer began to argue with a man seated in front of me. I proudly backed straight into the chute as the cattle hand drove a scrawny heifer into my trailer. I began to cry. It took hours to place my bid, I could not bear the torture again.
It seems that the bidding happened so fast that by the time the steer I thought I was bidding on entered the chute, we were bidding on the cow that was still behind the gate. The auctioneer had been trying to convince the man that actually purchased the steer I thought I was buying to let me have it but the old geezer refused. RUDE!
The auctioneer must have felt bad for me so he sold me a healthy black steer at the same per pound rate. (Tears always help.) What a beauty! He was huge. His muscles were bulging and it appeared he would soon rip right out of his skin. He tried to run over the cow hands as they loaded him. The angry steer did not know he was a steer, he thought he was still a bull. He made my trailer shake with his stomping and snorting.
I stopped in town for a glass of wine. What a night! The entire winery came out to see my newest purchase, T-Bone. He lunged at us and we all screamed and giggled. How much more exciting could this get? Once inside the pen he quietly wandered into the darkness and I locked the gate.
At dawn I sped to the pasture and instantly lost my mind. HE WAS GONE! Not again.
Cows are lonely creatures and it turns out they can swim, especially if there are friends across the pond calling to them. So, there he was in a neighboring herd, we knew it was him because of the ear tag. Tradition has it, if you find a tasty steer in your herd you cut out the sale tag and eat him next spring.
We didn’t have a cutting horse, a cattle chute or a 4-wheeler. So what’s the next best thing for a big black steer in a herd not your own? Yellow paint! We each had a cup of paint and intended to throw it on him so the property owner could not lay claim. T-Bone had a little bit of a temper and I barely got out-of-the-way of his fury a couple of times by climbing barbed wire fences and jumping into barrels like a rodeo clown. It was a unique experience for sure, but within an hour he was adequately covered.
I spent special time throughout the next year with T-Bone by running down a dirt road between two different herds of yearlings who had just been separated from their mothers. They would get so excited about the activity that they ran along the thin barbed wire fence line kicking up their heels and farting. It was exhilarating and a bit scary. I called it “running with the bulls of Hawkanollaville”.
The day finally came to go to the packing house. I asked the ranch hand to help me load my trailer with his cattle chute and before long there were five excited young men chasing my steer with cattle prods. He was all muscle so the chase was going both ways. The snot was flying. Once he was loaded I drove him to town. I backed in and he did not want to get out. I had done my homework and found a humane business that ran a “stress free” operation. Even so, I shed a tear for my friend who we renamed nearly a year earlier. I hear “Picasso” was mighty good eating, I was a vegetarian.
