Tough hombres
Cowpokes train with bison
By TRAVIS PURSER
Express Staff Writer
Cowpunchers are notorious for spinning tall tales, so when the
Wrangler-jeans-wearing, cowboy-hat-sporting, droopy-mustache-cultivating Will Nuttal
claims he and his friends substitute behemoth, spike-horned, temperamental buffalo in a
contact sport that usually involves docile cows, well, it’s a little hard to swallow.
Buffalo
in Hailey take a break from their training. Express photo by Willy Cook
The sport is called cutting, and it entails maneuvering a highly trained
cow pony to remove one or a few animals from a herd. At stake in the timed, judged event
are points and sometimes large amounts of money.
At the Idaho State Futurity taking place this week in Hailey, 85
contestants paid $750 each for a chance at winning part of the $35,000 cash pot, event
organizer Charlie Cord said from atop his horse on Monday afternoon.
Cord owns the Cutter’s barn on the northeast side of Hailey near the
mouth of Quigley Canyon. Shiny, extended-cab pick-ups attached to expensive-looking horse
trailers were parked here and there near the barn, and cowboys and cowgirls scrambled
around 300 temporary horse stalls getting ready for the event.
Spend a few minutes with these folks and their penchant for never-ending
leg-pulling becomes obvious.
They consistently introduced a reporter as an agent for the Internal
Revenue Service who wanted to "ask a few questions."
Nuttal, an assistant horse trainer working for Cord, suggested the Idaho
Mountain Express report that his boss was such an unskilled horseman he
"couldn’t ride in the back of a pick-up with the tailgate closed."
"He couldn’t pour p… out of a boot if you gave him
instructions," Nuttal added excitedly, making sure accurate notes were taken.
"That must be cowboy humor," Cord said later, responding to the
statements.
So why believe the dozen buffalo, fenced up in a nearby pasture, were
stand-ins for the cows?
"They last longer than cows," Nuttal said matter-of-factly.
The problem with cows, he explained is they "sour." That is,
after a few rounds of being chased by a horse and rider, they get bored with the game and
just stand there. Nuttal said his riders make about 300 cows bored every month.
At $500 to $600 per cow, replacing them can get expensive.
For his part, Cord said the buffalo are a little unorthodox and are used
for training purposes only.
One solution Nuttal’s tried in the past is to train with a plastic,
mechanical cow that runs on tracks, he said. But the problem with that is the horses catch
on to the repetitive pattern the mechanical cow follows, he lamented.
Also, the horses don’t feel very "intense" about chasing a
plastic cow, he said. "They can tell the difference."
So about a year ago, Nuttal, a South Dakota native, struck upon the idea
of cutting buffalo, and so far he and Cord agree it’s a solution that works.
Bought at $1,500 each from a feedlot in Shoshone, the buffalo are more
expensive than cows, but they last about 15 times longer before they sour, Cord said.
Cord said cutting buffalo is "a little trickier" than cutting
cows, because they’re smarter.
As for the horns, he said, they’re not a problem because "the
buffalo will not charge you."
Still, Cord said, "I’d be very subject to criticism if I used
them in competition."
