Rancher Showdown

[azshtr]

I'm surprised the story of the Nevada rancher has not made it here yet.

 

http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/10/us/nevada-rancher-rangers-cattle-showdown/

 

While I don't know the whole story my first opinion, based on past rancher dealings down by the Dragoons, was not in favor of the rancher. From what I understand this guy has been running cattle on land he has no right to and stopped paying the fees long ago. "My dad, and grand dad ran this land" type of an argument. Why is this being looked at in favor of the rancher? Am I missing something?

[rossislider]

Watch this video by a friend of mine. His uncle is the rancher in question and he explains the situation better than any of the many I have read and seen. I have followed this pretty closely. I'm 100% in support of the rancher, feds are overstepping big time!

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1_mZ2XOfRU

[bigorange]

Little guy against big govt...no matter who's correct, the little guy will almost always win, especially if it goes to court. This principle was actually taught in a government contracting class I had to take...

[rossislider]

All started because the tree hugging hippies saw an opportunity to shut down some ranchers by claiming their cattle were endangering a tortoise and were able to get the feds (BLM in this case) to enforce their political agenda.

Don't be fooled. As soon as the tree hugging hippies can find some "endangered" slug in your hunting honey hole, they will have the feds shut you down too.

[SWDesertRat]

/>Watch this video by a friend of mine. His uncle is the rancher in question and he explains the situation better than any of the many I have read and seen. I have followed this pretty closely. I'm 100% in support of the rancher, feds are overstepping big time!

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1_mZ2XOfRU

Right...cuz he is totally impartial.

 

If Mr. Bundy has been allowing his cattle to graze on federal land, without paying his grazing fees to BLM (regardless of who Mr. Bundy thinks should get the money, it goes to the land managent agency) then he is in violation of the agreement that he as a permittee and in fact should pay the fines and face the court.

[4Falls]

The rancher is in violation of a bunch of laws and court orders and has not paid grazing fees in quite a while. That being said, theres a lot of fishy stuff going on on the side of the feds too. The "critical" desert tortoise habitat that has caused the closure of the area in question was relocated to this area after being originally designated in a different area that was being ranched by a friend of Harry Reid. This guy is the last hold out still running cattle in this area. My guess is someone in Nevada has some future plans for this federal land.

While its apparent the rancher is in the wrong that doesnt mean the govt is in the right.

[SWDesertRat]

/>All started because the tree hugging hippies saw an opportunity to shut down some ranchers by claiming their cattle were endangering a tortoise and were able to get the feds (BLM in this case) to enforce their political agenda.

Don't be fooled. As soon as the tree hugging hippies can find some "endangered" slug in your hunting honey hole, they will have the feds shut you down too.

Not trying to pick on you, but this is information isn't correct.

Give me case history when individuals privately recreating were excluded from specific areas as a result of the establishment or finding of an endangered species (not counting the sensitive area closures like BH on Pusch Ridge or Cabeza Prieta from April-July)

However, if a land management agency is federal, and a user group (mining, logging) or individual (permittee etc) that has a sort of fee (grazing) or special use agreement with the federal land management agency that could affect the species or its' habitat, then yes there will be changes to the actions of the groups that could affect the species BUT this does not translate to an individual, family or recreational users unless they are the miners, grazers or loggers.

[rossislider]

Fracking Away Freedom - A BLM True Story: http://youtu.be/lVbbhfmKEqU

 

Here is a little on the future plans:

[rossislider]

No worries. I don't feel picked on. I haven't cited any cases because I haven't taken the time to research it. Mearly an observation and speclation on thing to come. But yes, this was started by the tortoise. The feds are using this as an excuse to pursue their agenda and force the ranchers out.

[reganranch]

The potential Oil & Gas plays in the Chainman shale field do not include Clark County, only the east central ones.

 

Clark County where the BLM ordeal is happening, is shown in red.

[Outdoor Writer]

When I first read about this rancher, his name sounded familiar. Then I recalled an article I wrote in 2007 about a big Strip buck killed with an auction tag. Now...I can't say for sure but I would bet the Bundy Ranch that he's related to the family that originally settled in that area.

 

Here's an outtake from the article and the sidebar that went with it.

 

Copyright by Tony Mandile

 

.....................The hunter booked a charter flight into Las Vegas, where guide Clay Bundy picked him up and brought him into camp. They arrived at 4 a.m.

 

The Arizona Strip is a relatively narrow chunk of country that is isolated from the rest of the state by the Colorado River. From the river, the Strip goes north to the border of southern Utah, from east to west, it goes from the Lake Powell to the southeast corner of Nevada. Although the North Kaibab sits within this area, a reference to the Strip normally means the other three hunting units. The terrain in these units -- 12B, 13A and 13B -- consists of a mix of high desert, big canyons and the forested slopes of Mt. Trumbull, Mt. Emma and Mt. Logan, all of which rise more than 7,000 feet. They also contain areas as remote and wild as any in Arizona.

 

Among the world’s trophy hunters, it has a lofty reputation. Over a span of about 20 years, the Strip produced some of the best mule deer hunting in the West, and many of the bucks grew to record-book size. In fact, the trophy record book published by the Arizona Wildlife Federation still lists more than 30 typical and non-typical bucks from the Arizona Strip that were killed from the mid-1950s into the early 1980s.

 

The history of the Strip prior to the early 1900s is somewhat murky, however. We know the Mormons used timber from Mt. Trumbull to build a temple in St. George, Utah. We also know good populations of pronghorn antelope and desert bighorn sheep inhabited the Strip because local cattle baron Preston Nutter proposed that it be turned into a big-game refuge. Nothing ever came of it, though. And supposedly, Teddy Roosevelt brought a herd of gazelle from Africa and turned them loose somewhere on the Strip. Nobody knows what happened to them either.

 

Unlike the Kaibab, where the mule deer had been a mainstay back into the 19^th century, the Strip herd has a much more recent history.

When the first settlers arrived and created Bundyville in the early 1900s, the area was nothing but dry sagebrush flats and pinyon-juniper forests, and about the only water available was on Mt. Trumbull. Some written accounts by those living on the Strip back then make it clear that seeing a deer was a rarity. For the most part, much of the land was marginal deer habitat anyway. The lack of water didn’t help. As more ranchers began grazing their charges on the Strip, however, they built dozens of stock tanks to ensnare free-running water for the cattle and sheep.

 

In 1947, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service assigned Ted Riggs to the area as a predator control trapper. Using both traps and poison, Riggs made a serious dent in the coyote and lion populations. Then the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), which controls the majority of land on the Strip, moved in during the early 1950s to improve the grazing habitat. With a heavy steel chain stretched between them, bulldozers “chained” down entire stands of juniper and pinyon trees. They used this clearing technique on acres and acres of range.

 

New forage plants started growing almost immediately, and so did the deer herd. Within a few years, the steady supply of water, increased browse and low predation helped the deer herd grow huge, even to the point where it threatened to overrun the available habitat. The Strip became a productive deer factory.

 

By the mid-1950s, hunters in Arizona learned about the excellent hunting and trophy-producing ability. Nearly anyone who wanted to venture into the remote area and endure hours of bumpy, dusty roads could tag a buck. If they had the patience and willpower to pass up the smaller ones, they had a very good chance at an outstanding trophy. Because the soil in the area mirrors the same mineral-rich type as that on the North Kaibab, antler growth was sometimes spectacular, with spreads often going well beyond 30 inches. Place names within the Strip such as Poverty Mountain, Mt. Dellenbaugh, Snap Point, Trumbull, Black Rock, Wolfhole and Seegmiller became well known for their big buck production.

 

At an old-line shack near Grassy Mountain, the graffiti-covered walls tell some of the story. In 1966, a local cowboy, Garn Esplin, scribbled, “Saw 40-50 deer in the past two days.” Farther down the wall, in March 1963 ranch foreman Mel Wipple wrote, “What’s the matter with the deer hunters? There’s 10,000 deer here by the look of things.”

 

Even Riggs saw what was happening. In 1956, he rode his horse from the Wildcat Ranch to Snap Point. On the way, he counted deer; his one-day tally totaled 346 of them. More than half of them had antlers, and half of the bucks were four points or more.

 

Not surprisingly, three of the notable entries in the Arizona record book have Riggs listed as the hunter. His typical entry from 1968 scored 189. His two non-typicals scored 249 6/8 and 240 2/8. His last Strip deer, taken in 1988, was an 8x9 with double eyeguards.

 

Sadly, sometime in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Strip no longer harbored a lot of deer. A lot of finger pointing occurred, but for the most part, the downward population trend happened because of several factors.

 

Worried about a repeat of the now infamous debacle where thousands of deer starved on the North Kaibab in the 1920s, the Arizona Game and Fish Department (AGFD) liberalized the seasons and also issued a large number of doe permits. Then in 1972, President Richard Nixon banned the canid poison, Compound 10-80 for use on federal land. This move took away Riggs’ most effective predator control. About the same time the coyote population started to grow again, the AGFD gave the mountain lion the status of a big-game animal, thus creating the need for a special tag and an annual limit of one lion per hunter. Finally, the drought that has plagued the state for the last 12-15 years arrived.

Together, these factors resulted in a dramatic drop in the total deer population. The game department estimated the population of deer on the Strip was less than 5,000 during the 1970s, and by the 1990s, it had fallen to about 2,400 or less.

 

At one time, the Strip country west of the North Kaibab comprised a single hunt unit. After the deer numbers started to plummet, however, the game department split the unit into 13 A and 13B for management purposes. The split effectively separated the deer populations around the Mt. Trumbull-Mt. Logan area from those in the Virgin Mountain, Black Rocks and Mudd Mountain area........................

 

 

Sidebar:

 

The somewhat vague history of the Arizona Strip tells us the first white men to visit the area were Dominguez and Escalante when they traveled along the base of the Hurricane Cliffs on their return trip from central Utah in 1776. Nearly a century later, other Anglos attempted to take advantage of the area’s vast land resources, but conflicts with native tribes occurred as the newcomers quickly laid claim to the best water sources and vegetation. Disputes between settlers and the Navajo, Paiute and Ute tribes culminated in the Black Hawk Navajo Wars of 1866-1869. By 1870, Mormon paramilitary action had mostly quelled the native resistance, eventually leading to the "Treaty of Mount Trumbull" and the establishment of several Paiute reservations.

 

Although the settlers included a colorful array of ranchers, sheepmen, cowboys and outlaws, the majority of the newcomers were Mormons, dispatched by the Church of Latter Day Saints to lay claim to the choicest land and resources before non-Mormons settled them. A number of large ranches were established, as well as a sawmill and a large dairy, and the rights to limited water sources of the region were swiftly claimed, though often without "valid government title." Range wars -- often settled with guns -- were quite common in this lawless frontier, and cattle rustling was a crime with hanging as its punishment.

 

Immigration to the Strip was encouraged by two events in 1916: the Stock Raising Homestead Act and the opening of a half million acres of Utah’s Dixie National Forest to homestead entry. In addition, a climatic shift early in the 20^th century brought increased rains and snows, which filled water holes and allowed the grasslands to grow lush.

 

About the time of the immigration surge to the Strip country, Abraham Bundy and his family had been living in the Mormon colony of Moroles, in the state of Sonora, Old Mexico. But Poncho Villa and the Mexican Revolution of 1912 forced them to seek out a gentler environment. So Abraham brought his wife, eldest son Roy and several daughters to Arizona in 1916, where they settled in an area near the Hurricane Cliffs, not too far from 8,000-ft. Mt. Trumbull. Bundyville, also known as Mt. Trumbull, became the Strip's largest community. Eventually, nearly 300 people lived in the town, which included a schoolhouse that was built in 1922. Roy Bundy just happens to be Clay Bundy’s grandfather, and Clay went to classes until the third grade in Bundyville’s tiny schoolhouse.

 

Today, little remains of Bundyville. The school had been abandoned in the early 1960s, then later restored. It recently burned, but it’s demise as part of the Strip’s history won’t last long. Clay Bundy is a contractor and has already made plans to restore it once again. He also still owns a cabin on a ranch near Bundyville. It sits on land that belonged to Roy Bundy until Clay’s father, Orvel, bought it.

[Edge]

I think it's time.....

[rossislider]

The potential Oil & Gas plays in the Chainman shale field do not include Clark County, only the east central ones.

 

Clark County where the BLM ordeal is happening, is shown in red.

 

 

They have to clear off the land before the can start leasing it for fracking. I have a map for you showing oil exploration conducted on the land where Bundy runs his cattle (all the red crosshairs are oil and gas exploration drilling operations):

 

http://www.naturalnews.com/files/Petroleum-Data-Clark-County-Nevada.pdf

[Edge]

Hey OBAMA,

[stanley]

Little guy against big govt...no matter who's correct, the little guy will almost always win, especially if it goes to court. This principle was actually taught in a government contracting class I had to take...

 

Little guy has already gone to court several times on this and has lost every single time.