WHAT DID COWBOYS DO IN THE WINTER?

Article By Michael R. Grauer

“You get up every morning and you think about what you need to do that’s best for your cows. That’s your responsibility. You look after cattle. You don’t think twice about it.” Joe Magee, Texas Panhandle cowboy.
Cowboys work[ed] regardless of weather. On the Great Plains a blue norther (or Texas norther), refers to an Arctic cold front that develops suddenly on the northern horizon as dark, wet clouds appear bluer than the sky above the cloud mass. On January 9, 1887, a blizzard covered parts of the Great Plains in more than 16 inches of snow and temperatures dropped to around 50 below. Cattle losses numbered as high as 75 percent and changed open-range cattle ranching forever. This series of events became known as The Big Die-Up.
Montana artist Charles M. Russell captured the conditions of this tragedy with his famous small watercolor, Waiting for a Chinook (later given the title The Last of Five Thousand). The Big Die-Up is fairly well known in terms of the costs to live stock and open range ranching. What is less well known are the human costs to those who did (and do) the cow and horse work during harsh winters. Cowboys froze to death trying to save cattle.
Another giant of Western art, Frederic Remington, sculpted The Norther, his first bronze to be cast using lost wax in 1900.  The Norther was a marketplace flop, although it is now considered one of Remington’s finest works as he captured the conditions cowboys endure[d] to look after cattle. Depicting a mounted Great Plains cowboy and his cow pony with their backs hunched over to the bitter wind and snow; Remington even used a special patina to evoke frost on the horse and the cow hand.

Source: Photo Reference: "The Monster Blizzard That Turned Kansas Into a Frozen Wasteland: “Hell without Heat.” New Perspectives on the West, Episode 7. PBS, Public Broadcasting Service, Web. 19 Jan. 2019. In a blizzard painted by Frank Feller, circa 1900, the Great Die-Up resulted in thousands of dead cattle clogging rivers, piling up against fences, and filling coulees. The smell of decay lingered over the region for months.

Just how did cowboys do their work during winter weather conditions? First of all, most ranch crews were drastically reduced during the winter months. Those who were laid off often rode the grub line; looking for a meal riding from ranch to ranch until spring broke.  A skeleton crew remained on ranches, with one or two hands assigned to line camps strategically place to patrol a part of a larger ranch. Their duties included riding and fixing fence, doctoring cattle and pulling them out of bogs, branding unbranded cimarrons, and generally searching for things that always needed doing on a cattle ranch.
How did they do these jobs of work in bitter cold and blizzard conditions? Many wore heavy buffalo (bison) hide coats as they rarely dismounted and did not need the freedom of movement required during other times of the year. Some wore galoshes or overshoes on their feet with extra wool socks instead of cowboy boots. Fur-lined gloves were prized along with hair-hide mittens and some hands even wore buffalo (bison) hide hats. Northern plains buckaroos often preferred lined wool caps with ear flaps while on the southern plains a cowboy’s felt hat brim was turned down over his ears to become flaps and the whole shebang was tied on with a cowboy’s neckerchief (wild rag).
So, the next time you are warm and toasty in your house when its below zero outside, remember that somewhere-from Mexico to Canada--a cowboy is tending cattle and horses from the back of a horse to ensure a reliable supply of food for American and world-wide tables. Simply say, “much obliged.”

Michael R. Grauer
President, Western Cattle Trail Association