Back when I was travelin’ man people used
to call me a big bull shipper. At least that’s what I thought they were
saying. The reputation was well earned because I used to buy a lot of
bulls every year for friends and customers. I worked bull sales all over
the country as a ring man and I was the announcer for a big video
auction company for over 20 years. I suppose my friends figured that I
might say something nice about their consignment and powerful bull
battery if I was the one who bought the bulls to begin with. I bought
truckloads of bulls for some of the biggest names in the business who
I’m sure would not want their names associated with mine.
My
friends and neighbors thought as long as I had to go to the sales
anyway I might as well do something constructive and buy their bulls.
There were other factors at work. Most of my friends are as tight as I
am and they didn’t want to spend the $12.99 Motel Six was charging for a
room 20 to 30 years ago.
There’s also
the fact that 10% of the general population are auction terrorphobics.
Their hands get clammy, their eyes become glazed and their bidding arm
and hand are suddenly paralyzed. This is how you end up with a rancher
who bought a Longhorn at an all breed bull sale instead of the Charolais
he came for. Or a bull with a 112 pound birth weight instead of the
heifer bull that was desired.
In
my bull buying days things were much easier and you didn’t have all
these abbreviations and numbers cluttering up the sale catalog and
clouding the mind. Stuff like $W, %F, $G, $B, RE, CW, CEM, MARB and HDK
are turning ranchers˛ into computer geeks. Forty years ago we were lucky
to get a weaning weight, a sire, dam, four legs and a gear box that
worked. Heck, the all breeds bull sale at San Francisco’s Cow Palace
didn’t even demand a semen check on the sale bulls. In San Francisco I’m
sure they thought it was discriminatory and sexist.
I
thought it was asking a lot that one rancher I bought bulls for
insisted I look at the bull’s mother and sisters before I spent the $850
he gave me to buy each bull. The strangest request I had was from a guy
who was at the sale. It was his theory that he was such an astute
rancher that people would watch him and try to buy the same bulls he
did, thus costing him more. So we worked out an arrangement where he’d
remove his hat when he wanted me to buy the bull in the ring. He’d
bought five bulls in a row before he remembered to put his hat back on!
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