Open range laws are unfair to the cattle in this county

Recently Tubac has experienced a cow invasion. Sort of like what the folks in the east side of Rio Rico have to deal with constantly. The cows get out of their pastures and roam around residential neighborhoods eating landscaping.

Arizona is an “open range” state meaning homeowners have to fence cows out. Ranchers do not have to fence their cows in.

That may have made sense in the 1880s. But now we have a growing conflict between rural Arizona and suburban Arizona.

Since ranchers themselves are becoming an endangered species, the public relations problem of cows wandering around neighborhoods needs to be addressed.

Fortunately, Milo DeWitt, whose cows got into Tubac, understood the need to get his cows out of the town, and made a serious effort to recover his stray cattle. Other ranchers haven’t had the same attitude.

While lots of people complain about the cows in their yards, I didn’t hear anyone looking at the problem from the cow’s point of view.

Since we had five of them virtually living on our property for a week before they were rounded up and taken home, we got to know the cows pretty well.

My favorites were “Big Red” and her calf “Little Red.”

Big Red was the head cow, and the herd followed her. Thus if you wanted the herd to go somewhere, you had to persuade Big Red to go thataway.

Big Red probably weighs in at 1,000 pounds, and isn’t going anywhere she don’t want to go.

Big Red and I had several staring contests in the yard. I could see her mind going “I’m bigger than that cowboy and I can just run his butt into the ground.” Fortunately, she didn’t. But then again, I didn’t push her too hard, either.

I got the distinct impression that while it might have been an adventure to get out of the home pasture, a few days of being yelled at in town, having a hard time finding water, dogs barking, and cars whizzing by, was more than the cows wanted to deal with.

One of the escaped cows did get run over on the frontage road.

My guess is the wayward cows were happy to get hauled back home.

Maybe it is time to amend the open range law and require ranchers to make serious efforts to recover their cows if they wander into settled neighborhoods. If they don’t retrieve their cows within a week of them getting loose, the homeowners get to keep the cows and have a neighborhood barbecue, or sell them off to someone who lives far away.

The problem is compounded by others either cutting fences or leaving gates open. The Tubac cow problem apparently was caused, in part, by the refusal of folks in the Palo Parado area to have a closing gate.

Folks who cut fences or leave gates open ought to be subject to a penalty for allowing the cows to escape�-like having to pay for fixing the fences, and the cost of recovering the cows.

My guess is both the ranchers and the cows would just as soon not want to deal with peeved townies.

The current open range law doesn’t do the cowboys or the cows any favors.