Monday, June 06, 2011

Texas Still Has Its Rustlers, and Men in White Hats Chasing Them

Whoever was stealing cattle had to have some cowboy in him, the theory went. You could tell by the seamless way he could lure more than a dozen animals at a time out of their pens, onto his trailer and into the endless Texas night, like some Pied Piper of bovines. This was not the handiwork of some crack addict, risking a kick to the addled head for the low yield of a heifer or two. This was a cow whisperer, cattle people told themselves. One of us. The reports started piling up across South and East Texas. On March 15, for example, 26 calves vanished from a sale barn in the Houston County town of Crockett — the same night that a livestock trailer was stolen in neighboring Walker County. On May 3, 18 head of cattle disappeared from a sale barn in Milam County. Two nights later and 160 miles away, 28 head went missing from a sale barn in Nacogdoches County. Enough was enough; these cattle didn’t just wander off to take in the night air. On May 6, Hal Dumas, a special ranger for the unique Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association — part industry advocate, part law enforcement agency — joined the Milam County sheriff in sending out a be-on-the-lookout alert, telling ranching communities everywhere of the rustler among them...more

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