In modern-day Kansas, cowboys practice an ancient art

Jake Betts looked every bit a cowboy as he tugged the reins of a horse named Leroy and jangled up a ridge. He wore Levi’s, wrapped with leather chaps. Cowboy boots with spurs. Rope coiled off the side of his saddle. Cattle in the distance, almost 1,100 head to be driven on this day earlier this week. And all went well until Leroy bucked and Betts fell backward onto some rocks. The crew laughed for the rest of the day as the aching cattleman winced watching cows march into tractor trailers. “I’ll be fine if I can just make it through the shipping season,” Betts said. It’s that time of year — late July, the shipping season — when the Flint Hills cowboys saddle up. Meet the modern-day wrangler: Betts and 10 other cowboys and cowgirls commenced this roundup at the first break of light. The bovines they corral are speckled across a vast, spectacular stage. For the last four months, the cows have munched on a thick carpet of native bluestem grasses. And in keeping with Old West tradition, they’re rounded up by men, women and children on horseback, not in the four-wheelers or pickups that many ranchers favor. “For 50 years — since about 1890, actually — we’ve been talking about the disappearing cowboy,” said James F. Hoy, director of Emporia State University’s Center for Great Plains Studies and an author of books on Kansas history. “But if you get off the interstate a ways, cowboys are still out there. They don’t carry a pistol anymore in their holster. Now it’s a cellphone.” A cellphone and intricate spreadsheets help Cliff Cole manage the ranching operations here, and they’re extensive: A half-dozen caretakers reside on 80,000 acres owned by West Bottoms businessman Bill Haw, who with a Texas partner also owns the cattle — all 40,000 head...more