Roundup Won’t Be Last as Sport Corrals Followers

“Hud, hud, hud, hud!” shouted Sheryl Edgar as she barreled her mare into the herd. The frightened cattle smacked into the arena’s wood fence as they scrambled away from her charge, but Edgar cut out the cow she wanted.

Feinting and cutting like a halfback, the cow tried to make its way back to the herd, but Edgar was relentless. She kept her horse’s nose right behind the young steer as she drove the 400-pound animal the length of the arena and, with the help of her teammates, into the small pen.

It was Friday night, cow-punching night at the Santiago Equestrian Center on Santiago Canyon Road east of El Toro.

Every week, weather permitting, a few dozen equestrians gather at the stables, owned by Edgar and her husband, Dave, to practice their favorite sport--team penning. Business executives and ranch hands alike test their skill and luck at singling cows out of a herd at one end of a 200-foot arena and driving them into a pen at the other end.

Teams of Three

The riders, who work in teams of three, are forbidden to touch the cows, use a whip or rope or even wave a hat. Each team is timed while it pens the two cows wearing the numbers called out by the announcer as they gallop toward the herd.

The “pen” is not complete unless the rest of the herd, part of which always seems to follow along, is back in the far end of the arena. The team has two minutes to complete the maneuver, but good teams can finish within 30 seconds.

“Anyone who can ride a horse can do this,” said Sheryl Edgar, but so far that night her teams had not made a successful pen of both cows. No one seemed upset.

“It’s a kick,” said Rick Flathers of Orange Park Acres, who works in his family’s pool table manufacturing business. “How many guys in the 20th Century wouldn’t like to get back to punching cows?”

An accomplished rider who occasionally competes for cash, Flathers says that getting the cows in the pen is about 80% luck. “When they’re determined to go through the hole (squeeze between a blocking horse and the fence), there’s nothing you can do,” Flathers said. “We once had a cow, he got near the pen and just stopped, he wouldn’t move a muscle. If we could have penned him, we would have won $650. You have to get the right cows.”

(Well, not exactly cows. They are 1- to 1 1/2-year-old steers, if they are male, and heifers if they are female. “But no one would say, ‘Go in and get that heifer,’ ” Sheryl Edgar said.)

And it helps to have the right horse, too, Flathers explained. He was sitting on a good one, Fancy Peppy. Born on the King Ranch in Texas, Fancy Peppy is a cutting horse--a horse used to working near cattle and reacting instinctively to block a cow’s attempts to maneuver back to the herd.

“They lock in on them like radar on an airplane,” Flathers said. “They can read the cow better than you can.”

That is the reason that Will Rowley, who nine months ago did not even ride horses, had just plunked down $4,500 for one of those radar-equipped horses. He said he can hardly wait to bring his new horse to the Friday night sessions so he can compete with the more experienced riders.

“I run people all week at a desk. Sure, I sometimes wonder what I’m doing chasing cows,” said Rowley, president of a building materials company.

‘Hooked on It’

He and his family moved to the Nellie Gail Ranch from Garden Grove last year and bought three horses for trail riding. But Rowley said he is going to sell one of those horses to make room for the cutting horse. “I’m just hooked on it. I have no idea why.”

Ranch hands drive the cattle down to the stables’ arena each week from the Edgar family’s adjoining ranch, the 1,000-acre “4S.”

Dave Edgar, 37, born and raised in Garden Grove as the son of a physician, said the family owns three ranches, all in California. The largest is a 15,000-acre spread in the southern Sierra that runs 400 head of cattle. His father bought the “4S” in 1959, he said.

Ask Edgar for his business card and he will give you four: president of the Southern Sierra Land & Cattle Co., co-owner of the equestrian center, chief executive of the family’s steel-forging company, Compton Forge Inc. in Compton, and David C. Edgar, private investigator. Private investigator? “I’ve been doing investigative work for 10 years,” said Edgar, whose background came from a stint as a law enforcement officer for the U.S. Forest Service. “I mostly specialize in civil cases now--locating people and assets, looking for information. Most of the work comes from attorneys.”

Loses Money on Cattle

He loses money on the cattle, but the stables just about break even, Edgar said.

Team penning was introduced at the stables in 1984 to attract more boarders, Dave Edgar said. In addition to Friday night practice, the stables host a competition one Sunday a month with several hundred dollars in prize money. There are similar events throughout Southern California and the San Joaquin Valley, but the sport is not practiced much outside the state, he said.

“It’s a family sport, and it’s not really dangerous, like rodeo events, where the animals are bigger and wilder,” Edgar said. But, he added, a horse that cuts quickly can toss an unprepared rider into the fence. It happened last week to a professional horse trainer, Edgar said.

“They made her paint the fence,” Rick Flathers joked. “She was all right. The dirt is soft.”