A Cowboy Tradition: Open Range Roping
Open range roping is a traditional cowboy skill a few hands are keeping alive.
My guess is that when most people hear about roping cattle, their imaginations snap to a rodeo or jackpot roping. This sort of competitive roping is very popular today and showcases extremely talented hands and specialized horses. However, it’s important to remember that rodeo events grew out of skills necessary for working cowboys to make a living. In the beginning, roping was just a thing men did on the job. However, cowboys didn’t stop there. This probably doesn’t surprise you. My guess is you could throw a group of men a broom handle, and by the end of the day they would either be in competition to determine who could balance it the best, or one man would have it and the rest would be unconscious. It’s just in our nature. One skill that the old boys showed great pride in was their ability to rope. However, unlike arena events today, these men cut their teeth open range roping.
If you are reading History of the West with Sam Payne: Trail to Cheyenne you might be at the point in the story where Sam and Jesse had to pull an animal from the Pecos River. Understanding how open-range roping works should help you better understand the scene and the lives of cowboys.
Of course, on the trail, there were no corrals or chutes to work cattle. Instead, hands had to rope any of the cattle that needed to be worked. Most people today realize that roping was a skill developed by the vaqueros and passed onto the Texas hands as they started driving cattle. Roping wild mavericks was tough and dangerous business. To get a job done without getting maimed, people employed some simple but effective open-range roping techniques. If you’ve read the book, you’ll realize how Sam and Jesse handled the situation they had. However, that is not the only way to go about things. Luckily, with today’s modern technology, a variety of people have shared what they know about open-range roping. If you are interested in the subject, here are a few of my personal favorite YouTube videos that show some traditional roping techniques.
First off is a guy I really enjoy, named Pat Puckett. Puckett is a good historian, and he keeps alive one style of traditional horsemanship. Here is a video he made showing how to doctor an animal out on the range in a traditional way.
Another of my favorite channels is 3:10 Ranch Life. These folks have dedicated their channel to showing techniques to doctor cattle in the pasture. They also host a roping event called the El Guapo where they compete in traditional roping.
Finally, if you want to see just how fast and dangerous this work can be, check out the Apache Cowboys. These guys throw caution to the wind and gather cattle in some rough country. I think their videos are a great example of what roping wild mavericks would have been like in the 1800s.
Hopefully, these videos will give you a better idea of life on a cattle drive. Most people may not realize this sort of open-range roping was how people did, and do, their job. Even if you enjoy arena roping, this more traditional style is fun to watch. These videos demonstrate that for some people, open-range roping is as relevant today as it was more than 150 years ago.
