Cattle Inspectors Always Make Sure to Check Label : Livestock: Although rustling is rare, brand inspectors in North Dakota still watch out for thievery.

In the Old West, a man caught stealing another man’s cow was likely to find his neck in a noose by sundown.

Today the penalties for cattle rustling are far less severe, but North Dakota’s brand inspectors still keep watch for livestock thievery.

“We have very few repeat offenders,” Jack Chase, North Dakota’s chief brand inspector, said with a smile. “In the eight years I’ve been chief, I think we’ve had only two repeaters. Once they get caught, they rarely do it again.”

The maximum penalty for getting caught with someone else’s cattle is a $500 fine and a year in jail. But seldom is such a penalty imposed.

First-time offenders usually get off with a warning, said Dennis Mosbrucker, one of about 35 brand inspectors working across the state.

Mosbrucker, who is based at an auction house in Mandan, is charged with making sure the cattle that farmers and ranchers want to sell belong to them.

“We catch someone every once in a while,” he said. “But the laws aren’t very tough. It’s not like the old days when they used to hang guys.”

Mosbrucker spends his days climbing through pens full of cattle, checking the brand on each animal against a wad of livestock title papers.

“I got kicked really good a few months ago. Broke my knee,” he said.

Ranchers--somewhat like car owners--must have written proof of ownership and written proof that the brand on the animal is theirs before they can sell.

If not, Mosbrucker can prevent the cow from being sold or--more likely--allow the sale but hold the money until the rightful owner is determined.

If he suspects that a cow is stolen, Mosbrucker calls Chase or one of two field supervisors, who investigate.

Chase, a former steer wrestler on the rodeo circuit, works for the private North Dakota Stockmen’s Assn. but is empowered by the state to investigate and make arrests.

Cattle are big business in North Dakota--the second-largest income producer among agriculture operations in the state after wheat, said Lyle Dawson, livestock director of the state Department of Agriculture.

Inspectors check about 1.5 million cattle annually and return about $200,000 in stolen or “stray” animals to their rightful owners, Chase said.

“Sometimes a guy will have his neighbor’s critter and he’ll say, ‘Gee, I didn’t know I had that,’ and we’d have a tough time proving he was trying to steal it,” Mosbrucker said.

All livestock leaving North Dakota must be inspected, but Chase admitted it is impossible to stop every cattle truck. But modern technology has made the job of determining who owns the animals easier.

The Agriculture Department has a new computer program that keeps track of the more than 22,000 brands. An animal’s owner can be identified in seconds by typing in an inspector’s phoned-in description of a brand and its location.

Despite the technology, Chase and Mosbrucker said their jobs haven’t changed much--and probably never will.

“They’ve talked about putting little computer chips under the cows’ skin and having us carry some sort of little scanner gun,” Mosbrucker said, “but we’d still be standing out here in the cow poop.”