Dogies Lose Home on Range : It’s the Last Roundup for Longhorns

So long, longhorns. It’s been too long knowing you.

That’s the opinion of Santa Ysabel ranchers who have been neighbors to the unneighborly cattle roaming the range east of Ramona.

Everyone along the boundaries of the longhorns’ spacious stomping ground has a story to tell about what one of the top-heavy critters had done, had eaten, had frightened or had broken. Walking hatracks make for trouble, especially when they seem to slice through fences like butter.

“There’s not a fence made that will hold ‘em, not when they are hungry,” said Ernie Coneen, who has become custodian of the longhorn herd. The neighbors will vouch for the veracity of his statement and tell tales of stampeded horses and ruined garden plots. One very pregnant woman in Slaughterhouse Canyon chased away a longhorn weighing close to a ton by beating on a dishpan, neighbors say. But the bully already had eaten most of her newly planted greenery.

On Thursday, about 200 of the mean-looking critters, all horns and hooves, were trucked away to a San Jacinto auction barn where, come Aug. 29 they will be sold to satisfy some of the debts of John Monk, a Texan who dabbled in San Diego real estate and longhorn cattle.

‘Sort of a Hobby’

Monk lost the ranch in a foreclosure and Coneen got his nearly 1,000 acres back but inherited, along with it, the job of selling the longhorn herd for the best price he can get. And, he admits, there isn’t a brisk market for bony old longhorns.

“Monk bought ‘em and kept ‘em as sort of a hobby,” Coneen explained, with a shrug that suggested that anybody who would do that probably had stayed out in the sun too long. “There’s some championship stock in there,” he said, gesturing at two slowly moving cattle trucks pulling out with loads of wild-eyed, stamping livestock. Each truck bore “Eat More Beef” signs on its mudguards.

“There’s half a dozen bulls worth $10,000 to $28,000. Each.”

Coneen hopes the bulls will go for breeding stock “at 10 times the price that they’d bring for beef” when the herd is auctioned off. But, he admits, some of the herd are old and tough, probably not much good for anything but dog food. The calves, a few yearlings and some heifers “ought to bring a good price, maybe $1.25 a pound,” which isn’t dog food when you multiply the price by the weight of a fattened calf--about 800 pounds.

Coneen doesn’t know if Monk’s cattle were the only longhorns in the county, but he bets that they were the most expensive. Monk acquired the animals at auctions since the late 1970s at what is believed to be an average price of $7,000 to $8,000 a head.

All the Rage

Five or six years ago, longhorns were all the rage. Breeders touted the longhorn beef as the leanest on the hoof and crossbred the cattle with tenderer types to produce a low-cholesterol meat. Now the longhorn market is next to non-existent, the auction barn operator tells Coneen.

The last roundup began Monday in sweltering heat and rugged countryside off California 78 near Santa Ysabel. Casey Tibbs, who held the title of top cowboy for eight years a couple of decades ago, came out of retirement to ramrod the event with a crew of local talent. Even the longhorns seemed impressed and allowed themselves to be rounded up with few protests.

One bull took umbrage to the tight quarters in the double-decked cattle carriers and made a break for freedom, heading for California 78. Coneen jumped in his white Cadillac, grabbed his trusty rifle and started up the road with murder in mind. He figured that if that 1,600-pound bull made contact with anything smaller than a Peterbilt, it would be sudden death for someone.

Fortunately for the bull and the balance sheet, riders persuaded the animal to make a U-turn before it reached the main highway.

Loading the critters presented a logistics problem. How do you get a cow with a 3.5- to 4-foot horn span through a loading door about 2.5 feet wide? The cattle knew the answer instinctively and tilted their heads so the cumbersome headgear slipped through lengthwise. Of course, there were a few lummoxes that tried the frontal approach and only got aboard when one horn hooked the doorway frame and jerked the cow’s head into the proper position.

Sincerely Sorry

Only one person is believed to be sincerely sorry that the longhorns are gone. That’s Carol Jesson, who has been riding herd on the herd for a long time, unloading tons of hay bales and filling water troughs endlessly during dry seasons.

“She really loved those animals,” said Mary King, whose horse ranch borders the longhorn range. “They seemed to like her, too. She used to play music for them and they seemed to like it.”

The herd made headlines recently when the San Diego Humane Society rushed an emergency order of hay to the longhorns after receiving a report that they were running out of rations.

The report proved false. The animals just look skinny naturally. And, according to Humane Society officer Fred Lee, a shipment of 28 tons of hay arrived the day after the Society truck left its CARE packages.

There are still about two dozen longhorns roaming the range, Coneen estimates. The strays will show up eventually, seeking water and food, or making a raid on a neighboring ranch.

“I’ll just wait until the neighbors call in and complain. Then I’ll go out and pick ‘em up and send them to auction,” Coneen quipped. “That’s the easy way to catch the strays.”