Tales of a Wild Cattle Whisperer
A Q&A with the guy to phone when your cattle make a break for it.
Modern Farmer: What does a typical day look like for you? What’s a typical job?
Chet Peugh: Today, the average would be one to three head loose. But sometimes, 150 head walk out of a feedlot gate. Most of the cattle get back themselves. But every group is going to have what I call “ringleaders.” Depending on the number of the breakout, one ringleader will have maybe only three running with it. Maybe it’ll have 30. The cattle seldom stay together. You have to get each group found, pull the ringleader away, and then, as long as highways aren’t involved, I like to just get away from the others, because the biggest share of the time, the followers will go back home.
When cattle get out here, the average they travel is four to seven miles from home. They can go in any direction. “Any wind will blow ’em,” as they say. Usually nothing’s moving during the daylight. They lay down in cover, a cornfield or brush, and just chill out. They do their traveling at night, which is why it’s such a nightmare on the highways.
MF: So runaway cattle on the highway are the biggest problem you’re dealing with?
CP: Absolutely. I would estimate 80 percent of all the jobs I get called in for, the cattle have easy access to the highway. When they get started traveling, four to seven miles is the average that they travel. Here in the Upper Midwest, you can cross several busy highways in that length of time. That job yesterday, for instance, my dogs found those two head of cattle a half mile north of U.S. Route 20, which is a very busy two-lane highway.
If the cattle aren’t too crazy, I can just ride out with a horse and take it slow and easy and handle ’em fairly well.
MF: Say you get a call in the morning, what do you do? Walk us through your process.
CP: Usually, if there’s a large group of cattle, I’ll drive to the job site and chain the dogs up underneath shade trees far away from the area where I’m gonna be working. Just let them relax. Quite frequently, if the cattle aren’t too crazy, I can just ride out with a horse and take it slow and easy and handle ’em fairly well, even in standing corn that’s taller than me. You can’t really see anything, but you can hear ’em. I can smell ’em, I can smell the dust that’s kicked up by ’em. And the main giveaway is tracks. I do a lot of tracking.
If you get there the day that they break out, it’s usually quite easy to convince them to turn around and head back home without too much work. It looks really impressive, [but] that’s the simplest thing there is to do. It really makes you look like a superstar when the cattle start walking through that feedlot gate and I’m just kind of cruising along slow and easy.
I would rather drive cattle, ’cause roping takes time, and I always tell people, I’ve never spent any time in an emergency room by simply driving cattle. Every time I’ve had to get to the hospital it’s because the horse stepped in a hole, rolled over top of me, or I tried to rope something, or roped something nasty and it happened to catch a horse off balance and knocked us both down.
MF: What’s the longest cattle have been loose before you’ve caught them?
CP: The first time I had to go to Virginia, those cattle had been out five to seven years. The neighbors couldn’t tell me for sure.
Every once in a while you get into something where they’re not actually out. But an old-timer had had a cow herd and just let ’em go, and then the heirs got the land, only they’re not farmers, so the cattle are literally on their own.
MF: They’re just left to fend for themselves?
CP: Yeah. They’re not running loose. They’re still on the property they belong on, but they’re in the thickets. They get pretty rank. Some have been not touched by human hands for 10 years. You’ve got carcasses all over the place where they’ve died of old age, you know. They get pretty cagey.
MF: What’s the most common way cattle escape?
CP: There’s all kinds of reasons. A lot of times, people have got a chain that goes around the gate and it goes around a wooden end post. So when they want to do chores, all they have to do is grab that chain and flip it up over that end post and the gate comes open. Cattle can lick that and do that same maneuver. Their tongues are like sandpaper, and they can flip the chain up and then just walk out.
MF: How do you charge customers?
CP: I’ve always gone with a head charge. That way they know I’m gonna get something done. If I don’t catch anything, you don’t pay anything. That’s been a very good selling point for me over the years.
MF: How long have you been doing this?
CP: The business has been handed down from father to son through the generations. I don’t know how long we’ve been doing it. Each generation seems to take it a little bit different direction, or improves it. I am currently 53 years old, and I would guess I was about 11 years old when I quit being in my dad’s way and was actually starting to contribute a little bit.
MF: So your dad did the same thing? He made his living rounding up stray cattle?
CP: Yes. It was one of several sideline jobs that he had. In 1984, I told him I wanted to do it full time. So I bought him out. Bought his half of the dogs. I bought my own truck, and then bought his stock trailer. And then I went on the road.
As it turned out, when we were headed toward what ended up being his last job, he just casually asked me what job number that was. I said, “This is job number 102” for that year. And he got kinda quiet, and then he looked over at me and he said, “You did it.” He never thought I’d get to 100 jobs.
I’ve been hassled by ’em. And I’ve been sued plenty of times.
Just a few hours later he had passed on. One minute he was laughing and the next minute he was gone. It was like two days after Christmas that year, near a town called Galesburg, Illinois. It was cold weather, snowy, not the best of conditions. We got the cattle on the trailer, and he was standing beside it. I looked over at him just to see him going down and that was it. The big one. But his boots were on. It was a long drive home with his horse, and explaining to my mom what had happened. That was in 1992.
MF: Do you ask permission before you to chase cattle across some other farmer’s field? Do you just go?
CP: Many years ago, that’s how my dad did it ”“ get permission. But I got to where I was running so many jobs [and] there was just too much going on. My priority is the motoring public. Yeah, I understand I’m going through your crops, but the cattle were here first, and the cattle are in front of me, usually. I don’t want somebody to get hurt or killed on the highway.
Most people understand that, and they’re accommodating. It’s a bad situation. You don’t want to be out there, but you have to be. The car that hits one could be a family member of somebody’s land I’m working on.
Every once in a while, somebody is just so angry at the whole situation they take their anger or abuse out on me. I usually just say, ‘If you feel I’ve wronged you, call the sheriff.’ I’ve not been arrested. I’ve been hassled by ’em. And I’ve been sued plenty of times. They don’t get anywhere.
MF: Do you ever have to do jobs in urban areas where cattle get loose somehow?
CP: Yes, they’re my least favorite places to be. Long story short, after a two-day job, the dogs penned the last two head of cattle in the service elevator for an underground parking lot for a multinational chemical company in the Chicago suburbs. Somebody left the door of that elevator open.
The dogs thought it looked like a pen. [Laughs]. I was just glad to get ropes on those cattle before somebody upstairs punched the button and sent ’em all into the office complex!
(This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity)
I live in the panhandle of texas. We had a cow get out but will they go over a cattle gaurd. Wich way will they travel
I know about this guy, and he’s 85% fake, and likes to spread lies about other cow catchers.
If you want to interview some real wild cow catchers give me a call 931-316-2261, and I’ll give you an interview by some of us guys who catch cattle for a living on a daily basis, from Arizona, to Florida and a few places in between. Please don’t feed off into Chett and his bullshit tales.