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Oklahoma cattle ranchers report rustling at all-time high

By CURTIS KILLMAN - Tulsa WorldPUBLISHED: NOVEMBER 18, 2013

Cattle thefts are at an all-time high in the state largely due to high beef prices, according to industry and state officials.

So far this year, ranchers across the state have reported 835 cattle thefts, a 16 percent increase compared to 2012, when about 700 cattle were stolen during the first 10 months of the year.

"I believe this is the highest that we have had historically since we have been collecting the data," said Blayne Arthur, state Department of Agriculture associate commissioner.

Brett Singleton from the Langford Ranch near Beggs reported on on Wednesday that The Langfords lost $100,000 in livestock to thieves in September and October.

Tulsa World

when you hangem ,hangem high.

Same jokers who run their hog dogs across us.

There was an article in the Joplin, MO newspaper a few months back stating the rise in cattle rustling. They catch them once in a while. Not many ranchers are running around county roads at 2am pulling a stock trailer.

Part of the problem is that county sheriffs are less than enthuzed with being hard asses for the most part and won't enforce trespassing laws. This leads to situations where you get a high influx of white trash poaching and being on your land. Then they see the cows in the field, hay in the barn, and the ATV in the shed and start to covet what they don't own.
We have deer camera pictures of Billy Bob running his hogdogs on camera in the middle of our place and the old sheriffs office is nonresponsive. They basically don't want to get into the middle of what is basically real class warfare: rich gentlemen farmers verses white trash subsistence hunters who think that the hunting methods used in 1930 are still acceptable.

That's because the stopped hanging the SOB's.

that will get you 10yrs in the pen here.

How do they get away with selling someone else's brand?

It'll get 'em worse than that when I catch them...

Been losing cattle for years, but when you can't cover the expanse of the ranch within a day's ride in a pickup truck, it's hard to keep an eye on all of them.

We do find the cut fences and tracks, and resulting cows without calves, or calves without cows.

I will not fire warning shots.

If they had any taste they'd go to California and steal them damn wino cows that Spankacoculas has been feedin'.

If ya gonna steal a cow,..you might as well steal a good 'un.

Several ways.

Some states have mandatory inspection at the ranch by a state brand inspector before the cattle are allowed to be loaded on the truck and shipped off the ranch. The paperwork accompanies the cattle. They also have brand inspectors inspecting cattle at all sale barns. These states have a statewide brand registration. The inspectors are certified peace officers, and carry a gun.

New Mexico is like the above. But, it doesn't stop thieves from stealing unbranded calves, or just shooting what they want in your pasture, and taking the meat. Had both happen there.

Some states don't.

Texas for example, you register your brand in the county where you ranch. There are 254 counties, so there can be multiple registrations of the same brand...
They record the brands at the sale barns, but if they are 5-600 miles away, who will question them?

Beef packers are a free for all generally.

Or, they do as they did in the old days and brand over existing brands, then let them peel and heal and run them through the sale ring.

A load of stolen cattle was caught not long ago inside an RV motorhome by a traffic cop that pulled it over. Nobody even suspected, until they got caught.

They are pretty sophisticated now.... Lots of ways to profit.

By CURTIS KILLMAN
World Staff Writer

Cattle thefts are at an all-time high in the state largely due to high beef prices,
according to industry and state officials.

So far this year, ranchers across the state have reported 835 cattle thefts, a 16
percent increase compared to 2012, when about 700 cattle were stolen during
the first 10 months of the year.

"I believe this is the highest that we have had historically since we have been
collecting the data," said Blayne Arthur, state Department of Agriculture
associate commissioner.

Arthur said the increase in thefts can be tied to the price of cattle.

"Beef prices have been trending upward over the past few years and a lot of that
is due to a decrease in the beef herd, in part, due to the drought," Arthur said.

With cattle selling between $1 and $1.50 per pound, each head can easily be
worth $1,000 or more, she said.

"That's quite a bit of money. If you steal 10 or 20 or 30 head, it adds up pretty
quick," Arthur said.

A bill passed in 2001 authorized the state agriculture department to hire its own
agents to arrest horse thieves and cattle rustlers.

Launched with just two investigators, today the agency has 10 individuals who
investigate livestock thefts, arson investigations in forests and timber thefts.

"Usually, the cases that we receive come from the sheriff's office and we work
collaboratively with them and OHP and OSBI," Arthur said.

The state unit has filed 274 felony charges thus so far this year.

But not all cattle-theft cases are passed on to the Department of Agriculture
investigative unit, Arthur said.

The Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association also investigates cases of
cattle theft in Oklahoma.

The association employs 30 "special rangers" stationed throughout Oklahoma and
Texas who investigate thefts for its members.

One of the cases being worked this year by the TSCRA involves a theft reported
from an Okmulgee ranch.

Nineteen cows and calves valued at more than $100,000 were discovered missing
from the Langford Hereford cattle ranch beginning in September.

The cattle, highly valued because of their genetic makeup, were taken despite
being branded, tattooed and ear tagged.

Within weeks, TSCRA investigators arrested a Haskell woman in connection with
the cattle thefts.

Special Ranger Bart Perrier said last week that he continues to work on the
Langford ranch thefts.

Suzy Langford said about half the cattle have been recovered so far from sale
barns in Oklahoma and other states.

Preventing cattle thefts can be a challenge. Perrier described the crime as "low
risk, high reward."

Langford said they have reviewed security procedures as best they can.

Gates are locked and all cattle are branded and regularly checked, she said. But
"our pastures are scattered over several miles."

Staff will no longer be keeping pens in remote pastures, believed to have been
where the thieves loaded cattle, she said.

"It just makes it harder for us," Langford said. "But what else can you do?"

Perrier could not say whether the TSCRA is seeing an increase in reported thefts.

"I don't know if there is an increase ... it just never goes away," Perrier said,
adding that "drugs fuel 98 percent of it."

He said investigating cattle thefts in Oklahoma can be somewhat challenging.

Livestock brand registration is voluntary in Oklahoma, unlike Texas and other
states, Perrier said.

A registered brand is a primary means to determine livestock ownership because,
Perrier said, "black Angus cows all look the same."

In Oklahoma, there are about 13,000 brands registered through a voluntary
program managed by the Oklahoma Cattlemen's Association. The figure includes
horse brands and ranches with multiple brands.

Cattlemen's Association spokeswoman Chancey Hanson said the agency favors
voluntary brand registration.

As with the TSCRA, the Oklahoma Cattlemen's Association offers a $10,000
reward for information that leads to the arrest and conviction of individuals who
steal cattle, Hanson said.

A felony conviction on larceny of domestic animals carries a prison term of three
years to 10 years imprisonment.

B:

Keep up - Spanky's now in Oregon.

HAR!

We need some "long-range" watchmen to oversee the herds. A few missing rustlers and the word will get around.

I think we were 20-30 head short post roundup this year.

Can't remember exactly.



Anyway we wound up with a big slick bull calf and an extra bred heifer. Cow must have Wintered out in the hills with her 2012 calf(the bred heifer) and then had the bull calf. It was pretty sweet.


We found a little scattered groups here and there since round up but still short. Some die, bogged, lightning, random weird chit.

And yes, I'm sure a few strays never make it back wind up in someone else's herd.

One time back in the '70s I was running a rig up a lonely little state highway in central Missouri about 2:00 AM. I found men on horses herding cattle across the highway and down a side road where a cattle rack was parked.

Now this was at a point in my life when I was highly aware that I was naive about many things, so I really didn't know what to think of that. I made note of the crossroad name and put the pedal down until I got to the next town and a pay-phone.

I called the Sheriff's office and made what must have been a peculiar report. "I really don't know your area or your ways, but I lived on a cattle ranch in Illinois and I never saw any farmer awake at 2:00 AM let alone herding cattle across a highway." "Does that seem peculiar to you?"

The deputy's reply was to the effect that: Darn tooting he thought it was peculiar!

My dad and I gathered cows off the high school lawn about 20 years ago....at 2AM.

Middle of winter and a pack of dogs chased a little bunch off the river and right into town.

Sheriff calls up and let us know. Herded them right down main street on the way back home.


The next day at school everyone was wondering about the cow chit on the lawn.

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2009/11/modern-day_cattle_rustlers_hit.html


JORDAN VALLEY -- They were spotted from a small airplane, two cattle rustlers on horseback hazing 125 white-faced cows across Malheur County's forbidding "empty quarter" in Oregon's far southeast corner.

The men, sighted last spring, were pushing the stolen herd south through a high-desert tapestry of chaparral, manzanita, juniper and sagebrush. They looked like ordinary cowboys.

The pilot descended for a closer view, but the men didn't look up, said brand inspector Rodger Huffman of the Oregon Department of Agriculture. The pilot finally had to break away, and the Malheur County Sheriff's Office didn't hear about the sighting until a week later.



'ION Country'
has reckless, dangerous past

In the 19th century, Oregon�s southeast corner was part of �ION country � � where Idaho, Oregon and Nevada meet � and some say it was among the most dangerous regions of the Old West.

Its gold and silver mines helped bankroll the Union during the Civil War, and gunbattles erupted inside mines over ownership of ore veins. Paiute, Shoshone and Bannock warriors fought to defend territory and their way of life.

As late as 1900, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid rode through the Jordan Valley after a bank holdup in Winnemucca, Nev. Two decades later, so much bootlegged whiskey was produced that Jordan Valley was known as the �moonshine capital of eastern Oregon.�

Now, area ranches can be 60 miles long, and ranching families sometimes drive two hours to reach a paved road. Wild horses roam terrain shaped by canyons, arroyos and mountains with such names as Hoodoo Butte, Defeat Butte and Horse Hill. Stagecoach ruts are still visible in the desert.

Rand Collins, a Malheur County rancher who lost 150 cattle to thieves three years ago, says 19th-century Oregon ranchers sometimes rode into Nevada and Idaho to steal cows, swimming them back across the Owyhee River. Out-of-state ranchers retaliated by stealing Oregon cows.

�There were several cowboys drowned in the river and all kinds of stories,� he said. �But it�s not a game anymore.�

-- Richard Cockle It was one of the few glimpses anyone has caught of men suspected of stealing 1,240 cattle worth $1.2 million over the past three years from Malheur County ranches. Hundreds more cows have been taken in bordering counties in Idaho and Nevada.

Cattle rustling did not fade away with the Old West. What makes these thieves unusual, investigators said, is the scale and duration of their operations, their use of horses to reach areas inaccessible to car or truck, and the fact that they sometimes drive their plundered herds for days, carefully sweeping around ranches and people.

Ranchers are circulating wanted posters offering a $47,500 reward for information that leads to a conviction. Some are also spending spare time on horseback, ATVs and in pickups and airplanes trying to hunt the rustlers down, Malheur County Undersheriff Brian Wolfe said.

Malheur County sheriff's Deputy Bob Wroten and others suspect the thefts are the work of one group of four to six men who are well-acquainted with the territory.

"The way these cattle are ending up missing, those guys grew up tough," he said. "They lived the life all their lives. They aren't outsiders."

The losses have been devastating. Most of the stolen cattle were females that each year produce calves worth $600 apiece.

About 20 Oregon ranches have been hit, with a dozen taking the brunt of losses, Huffman said. In Humboldt County in Nevada at least 500 cattle are missing, and still more have been stolen in Owyhee County in Idaho.

MORE,,,,

In this area, I can't recall ever seeing a branded cow.