Tall in the Saddle : Veteran Cowboy Ray Yanez Grabs Life by the Horns

A veteran cowboy and inveterate character, 80-year-old Ray Yanez delights in spinning yarns as big and as bold as the canyon he calls home.

There is the one about the mean old stallion that reared so high he left his hoof marks in a tree branch--and planted a horseshoe there to prove it. There is the one about the ranch hand from Mexico who can express himself only in poetic Italian.

And there is the one Yanez told a few years back when he was putting the moves on his wife-to-be, Yvonne. He persuaded her that he could guess a woman’s weight down to the pound--if he could just squeeze her thigh for a second or two.

“All my life I’ve been full of the dickens,” Yanez says. “I’m always up to something.”

Indeed.

A high school dropout, Yanez has whirled from career to career ever since he turned 16 and set out to see where his talents might take him.

He has flexed his brawn as an Olympic boxer and tested his nerves as a Hollywood stuntman. He has finessed his way to a rodeo championship and finagled his way to a college professorship. He has worn the referee’s tunic at polo matches and the judge’s tuxedo at horse shows.

And he has learned how to rope, brand, vaccinate, dehorn and castrate cattle with truly thunderous speed.

For six decades, Yanez’s pursuits have tossed him across the continent: Mexico, Canada, Alaska, Utah. He even spent a few years in Hawaii--where, he fondly recalls, “I wasn’t married and there were lots of widows.”

Hitched now, to a spirited wife who spits back sass like a seasoned cowboy, Yanez has finally stopped roaming. He has settled down in Aliso Canyon, a wide-open swath of gnarled oaks and brittle grass slipped between Ventura and Santa Paula. He loves the place.

“You ought to hear the frogs at night,” he says. “They sound like Sinatra.”

Hemmed in by bumpy brown mountains, Aliso Canyon holds plenty of Yanez family history.

Although no Yanez has ever owned the land, family members have managed the ranch since 1902. In fact, Ray now lives in the yellow frame house where he grew up with five brothers and six sisters. On the property he leases from an absentee landlord, he runs the Ray Yanez Stables.

No gentrified “equestrian center” of white picket fences and mincing mares, the Ray Yanez Stables look rumpled, earthy and very well-used.

Horses bray under tin-roof shelters. A rider brushes down a heaving Arabian. A $200 bridle dangles above a bag of 9 Lives Cat Food in the messy tack room.

The rough-and-tumble atmosphere suits Yanez perfectly.

Here, he can ride bucking broncos, rope stubborn steers and breed stud stallions, backed up by the gorgeous, scrubby hills and flat, endless sky of Ventura County’s cowboy country.

“It’s just fun,” he says, in one of the few sentences he lets slip out of his mouth unembellished.

Yvonne Yanez agrees. “It’s never dull with him,” she says.

Then, abruptly changing tone, Yvonne points to a splotch on her husband’s checked shirt and clucks: “I think the horse wiped his nose on you.”

With Yanez, that’s entirely possible.

A gruff Pied Piper in cowboy boots, Yanez attracts animals wherever he goes. “They follow him around like puppy dogs,” Yvonne says.

Striding from stable to stable with a carrot tucked in his back pocket, Yanez talks to the horses in a low voice. He plays with them gently, mussing manes and slapping necks.

“The good Lord gave me an ability to work with animals,” he says.

Through the years, Yanez has trained horses for actors Marlon Brando, Richard Widmark and Ronald Reagan. Appearing in several movies, he has worked alongside Hollywood stuntmen Clyde Kennedy and Monte Montana.

Even at age 80, stiff-jointed and a bit hard of hearing, Yanez still spends several afternoons each week breaking in wild horses.

“I think I’d rather ride than eat!” he hollers as he puts a young stallion through training exercises. The glossy brown horse whirls left, spins right, then pulls up short in a great poof of dust. Bouncing through the routine, Yanez lets out a gleeful: “Yee-hee!”

During a similar training session 2 1/2 years ago, a cranky horse bucked Yanez and flung him to the ground, knocking him unconscious and splintering his shoulder blade.

The accident spooked Yvonne, but Ray Yanez refuses to slow down.

After all, he is a hardened fighter, who competed as a lightweight boxer in the Los Angeles Summer Olympics of 1932. In those days, newspaper stories described the 5-foot-7 spark plug as an “up and coming amateur leather pusher” known for “knocking over (opponents) flatter than a window with large acreage.”

Yanez still works out with a punching bag. And he still has a boxer’s swagger.

“I have no fear,” he says flatly.

His wife cringes as Yanez explains that a lifetime colliding with danger has taught him, paradoxically, that caution can be deadly.

“Being careful won’t get the job done,” Yanez says. “With animals, you need to teach them to obey and respect you.”

Yanez’s gung-ho grit awes fans like Rex Laird, director of the Ventura County Farm Bureau.

“He’s inspirational,” said Laird, whose three horses board at the Yanez Stables. “A lot of folks 30 years younger than Ray aren’t able to do nearly as much as he does.”

Recognizing his innate skill with animals, Ventura Community College tapped Yanez to teach horse management in the early 1970s. Because he had never graduated from high school, Yanez needed special permission from the state to teach college. Once he got the go-ahead, he found he loved academia.

“Whatever the students asked me,” he said, “I pretty much knew the answer.”

Eager to breed a new generation of trainers, Yanez still gives guest lectures at his stables.

He has also passed his horse sense to his two sons from a previous marriage. His eldest, Smokey, rides the rodeo circuit and his younger son, Danny, trains show horses. Yanez also has a daughter, Jeannette, who works as a supervisor in a Santa Barbara nursing home.

Photos of all three children stud his living room wall, mingled with shots of championship horses and autographed portraits of movie stars. “It’s my wall of fame,” Yanez says.

Sometimes, Yanez misses the era captured in those black-and-white photos. He misses, too, the days when Ventura County’s tough terrain swept from ranch to ranch, with nary a red-tile roof in sight.

When he feels nostalgic, Yanez heads out to swap tales with the handful of old-time cowboys who still cling to homesteads in the back country, miles from the nearest mini-mall.

He can pal around with Jack Willet and Toots Jauregui in nearby Wheeler Canyon. And there is always 78-year-old Bud Sloan, a John Wayne type whose ranch backs up to the Yanez Stables in Aliso Canyon. These cowboys may be aging, but they are still spirited--and driven.

“The men around here are tough,” Yvonne Yanez says.

As proof that he is still active as ever, Yanez keeps eight pairs of cowboy boots by the kitty litter on his porch--all well-worn, all waiting for new adventure.

“I want to keep doing this as long as my health’s OK,” he says. For now, despite years of being battered by hoofs and fists, Yanez remains fit and energetic.

He attributes his endurance to temperance: “I never smoked in my life, and I wasn’t much for drinking, either,” he says.

With a loving laugh, Yvonne scoffs at Ray’s claims of moderation. Her husband may stay away from cigarettes and liquor, she chuckles, “but he makes up for it with big stories.”