Mike Martin Interview
Segment 2
A Cowboy’s Life – The Big Spreads
“I miss the horses. Some of ‘em weren’t
“the funnest,” but you were always well
mounted. Well mounted.”
Mike Martin
Marv: Mike, let’s talk about the various big ranches that you were on.
What were some of your memorable experiences?
Mike: I got to go out on my first wagon, when I worked for Bill Kane, on the Spanish Ranch, in Nevada. Bill was an
exceptional horseman. I was 21-22 years old at the time. I just wanted to “eat that stuff up.” Some of the horses
were good but weren’t broke. So he asked me if I wanted to ride colts and I told him “ya I do.” So I went down to
Elko and bought some colt cinches that were a 25-26” cinch. “Gosh darn,” Bill caught one out for me and it was
hugh. So I says, "how old is this horse?” He says, “ He’s six.” “How many rides you got on him?” “Well he was
started last September and had 12 to 15 rides on him.” So I got a string of 7 of those. I’ll tell you what, you had to
watch, I wouldn’t say I snuck around ‘em but, you darn sure didn’t wave your arms. They weren’t gentle, they was
right next to mustangs, is what there were.
Marv: I imagine with work they calmed down some but…
Mike: Well, we had so many of ‘em there. Bill would run a string of ‘em, in for the spring branding, then He’d turn
them loose and get you another set of ‘em in the fall.
Marv: How many horses would you typically use in a day?
Mike: One, as a rule, because when you were out with the wagon, you couldn’t go back and change.
Marv: I don’t have a perspective of the country. I’ve been to Las Vegas and that’s about what I know about
Nevada. Now certainly the reading that I’ve done in the “American Cowboy” or “Cowboys & Indians” appears like
it’s a more natural type of area.
Mike: Oh ya.
Marv: How many acres to the cow? Does it take 100 acres to run a cow?
Mike: We was in that high desert country. It’d take 300 acres to the cow just to summer. Well, Stanley Ellison,
who owned the adjoining place, so you could go from the Spanish Ranch to the White House Ranch , over 100
miles and never open a gate. It was all “One big chunk of country.” Little over 2 million acres. Now we run about
16,000 mother cows. A lot of cows.
Marv: So those had to be some of the largest ranches in the U.S. I know there are some big ones in Montana,
Wyoming and Texas, but the ones you mentioned had to rank right up there.
Mike: There was another one north of Winnemucca, called the Circle A, and they run 25,000 cows.
Marv: My…My! Gosh!
Marv: How do you manage breeding, distribution of grazing, gain-ability, etc? What do the calves weigh when
they come off the cows?
Mike: The Spanish Ranch held ‘em over to yearlin’s but when we’d wean, they’d probably weigh 400-450 pounds.
Marv: Were they cross breeding?
Mike: Ya, we’d use Shorthorn but they called ‘em Durum bulls. They also had some Hereford bulls and were just
startin’ to get a sprinklin’ of Brangus.
Marv: See now that country gets cold too. There is winter.
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Mike: One fall we pulled out the 15 of September and pulled the wagon back in the 23 of December. We was
havin’ to scrape the snow to set our tent up. It was cold. The only radio station we could get was Boise, Idaho.
They was talkin’ about having 15-20 below zero and I have no Idea what we were. We’d trot out, of a morning,
and we might trot out 8-10 miles and your horse’s chest would be covered with frost. Shot, you didn’t know any
different.
Marv: It sounds like a young man’s country, to me.
Mike: Ya, I was 22-23.
Marv: So real cowboys, working on those ranches, what did you see in them? What made them unique? Now I
would think that those Nevada Buckaroos were different from a cowboy in Nebraska.
Mike: They are. One thing I’ll say about the Nevada cowboy, “There is a lot of etiquette, how you go about things,
how you ride your horses, etc.” You didn’t ride in front of people, there was a lot of respect. The place I was on in
Nebraska was different. The boss would never call a “circle.” You just took off and did your thing. Nebraska was
so open no trees, in the Sandhills country. You could see forever. So if you had a cow get away, it was pretty easy
to get around her. Nevada was different. There was a lot of brush and there was a lot of timber in the mountains.
Aspen and Pine. Big pastures. When I was on the YP some of those pastures were townships. That’s 36 sections.
Marv: Water is always an issue, in the West, but a lot of that Nevada ground wouldn’t have water for the cattle.
Wouldn’t they just hang in the areas closer to water?
Mike: Well the Spanish Ranch, as an example, had big reservoirs in the dryer country especially out to the north.
They had some big reservoirs out by the Allied ranches. Course those old cows were tough some, probably
wouldn’t come into water but every other day.
Marv: How about the teeth on those cows? Did a cow get old quicker there?
Mike: No, no they had cows that were 10 or 12 years old. They held up a lot better than say Southeastern
Colorado cows. Cows in Southeast Colorado, at 7-8 years old, their teeth were gone. Where the cows were
wintered inside or hayed, that saved their teeth quite a little.
Marv: So they didn’t winter graze, all that much, in Nevada?
Mike: No, we had a permit for it but it was way down toward the White House Ranch. Our calving season started
in March, the latter part of March. This would go on through October. So we would wean three times year. We’d
wean the big calves when we got them in an October-November, bringing them in off the desert. Then we would
wean in February and we’d wean in May again before we turned out. So we had three different sets calves.
Marv: Now were these cows tagged so there was an individual identification?
Mike: No all we had was brands.
Marv: (chuckle)
Mike: All we had was brands and earmarks.
Marv: So was it likely that other ranches cattle would be running on your ranch?
Mike: Oh ya. Yes we’d get some from the 25 Ranch, and Willis Packard cattle and Allied, so we’d be watching for
other ranches cattle. We had a special pasture, when we were working our cattle, so we’d call the other ranches
and indicate that we had some of their cattle that we’d bring over and they would do the same with ours.
Marv: Was there any degree of quality or uniformity between the bulls that the neighboring ranches used? Did
these various outfits buy similar bulls?
Mike: Ya, most of the ranches ran Durum bulls.
Marv: So were the cows horned?
Mike: The Herford cows were generally horned but they tried to dehorn everything. They’d use a spoon on ‘em
when they was born or they’d take some off with a knife. So the horns came back on some. They tried to run poled
or mulely cattle most of the time. When you get a horned bunch of cows they spread out further when you’re
driving ‘em. They have to or they’d go to hookin’ one another otherwise.
Marv: Talk about the Chuck wagon type of meals you experienced there.
Mike: Oh, Ya the cooks were something else. Bill Kane always said they came in three categories and he wasn’t
very nice about it. He said they were homosexual, drug addicts or alcoholics. And I think he hit the nail on the
head. So if you was out quite a while they would dry out. I’ve seen ‘em have the DTs and those poor guys would go
berserk. We had one at the YP. He was 70 some years old and had come from Portugal and he had been in the
United States for probably 50 to 60 years. Boy that guy could cook.
Marv: they say that that the cook was an important part of getting good help.
Mike: If crew had a full belly they could take a lot of junk. The wagons we used were Army 6x6s because we had
to go so far. Out at Haythorn's, in Nebraska, we used regular chuck wagons pulled by four horses. But we didn’t
have very far to go. Now you can run a cow on 12 acres there. So you didn’t have to go very far with the wagons.
Marv: How long were you out?
Mike: Well, at the Spanish Ranch, we would be out about six to eight weeks.
Marv: How often would you move the wagon?
Mike: About once a week.
Marv: So your bedroll was your bed.
Mike: Yes Sir. Usually we had a little two-man teepee tent. Now some guys didn’t sleep in tents but, in Nevada,
you didn’t have to worry about a lot of rain. It was nice to have something over you when you needed it.
Marv: You bet. Now the movies always have night riding, as well. I’m assuming this wasn’t a part of your
everyday cowboy experience.
Mike: No. We weren’t driving cattle…it wasn’t a trail drive situation. The Squaw Valley Ranch to the White House
Ranch was 35 miles. They called it, “half-way tanks,” between the two ranches. We would go down there and
push those cattle back up but it wasn’t a trail drive, as such. It would take us 2 days to push cattle to that area,
where we would brand and from there we would go to summer country.
Marv: So were there corrals there, or portable panels?
Mike: No, they were wire lots and a lot of ‘em were just a two sided L shape. You’d push ‘em in there and then
heel the calves. No neckin’. So you’d bring ‘em in by two feet. Now if you missed a catch, they would get you out
of there. You didn’t get a second chance.
Marv: So was, pretty much, everything done from horseback? You read that a cowboy would like to do almost
anything from horseback.
Mike: Ya, that’s what we did.
Marv: So the Nevada experience was one that you will always remember.
Mike: Oh, I was in Seventh-Heaven.
Marv: Public Television has done specials on “The Nevada Cowboy.” There were also a couple of women that
were part of it, as well. Boy, you can tell that it’s a different outlook on life. When you can’t work anymore, it
looks like it is all over.
Mike: Ya. Bill Kane told me about some “Old Timers,” that used to work on the Spanish Ranch. Now the Ranch
took care of them until they died. Now-a-days that don’t happen. It’s kinda like that old cow, when she can’t
produce, she’s gone.
Marv: Are most of those ranches still together?
Mike: Ellison’s , just has the Spanish Ranch, they’ve sold all the others. The White House, Clovers, Squaw Valley all
have been sold. I worked on the Squaw Valley wagon for awhile. A lot of ‘em are selling. The Jackson Ranch,
which is the YP, when I was there Mr. Jackson had 7-8000 mother cows. His son had a place up at Riddle, and their
places joined. After Mr. Jackson died I believe the kids took over and joined the two, into one ranch.
Marv: Were you there long enough to see if there was improvement in the breeding?
Mike: Oh Ya. They were buying good Durum bulls. Now when I worked in Idaho, Oregon and Nevada, they all
went to the same breeder, to buy the Durum Bulls. He was in Oregon and produced 5-600 bulls a year.
Marv: So these were all 2 year old bulls, they would buy?
Mike: Ya. They’ve certainly come a long way since then. The scrawny desert cow is a thing of the past. Cross
breeding has helped tremendously. So a lot of the cows today, are black baldies.
Marv: Anything you miss from those days?
Mike: The horses. Now some of them weren’t “the funnest,” but as a rule you were very well mounted.
Marv: It’s a gift to be able to live the life you want an experience the beauty of creation.
Marv: Mike, in the next segment let’s talk about your business, Martin Feed.
Find Mike and Martin Feed at 15415 County Road 306, Buena Vista, CO 81211-9733
719-395-4044