This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2017, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Tavaputs Ranch •

Thanks to an emergency last week, Sonny and I may have developed a new way to herd cows. We'll happily accept any awards later. Right now, we're too sore to move.

The Tavaputs herd wasn't supposed to relocate to its summer range until later this week, but on Thursday night one of the cows picked the lock on the gate and the herd started moving on its own.

It may sound like the cows had a plan. They didn't. A sense of direction is but one of two major senses bovines lack, the other being a sense of humor. Especially when they have calves.

Anyway, the call went out to the ranch crew. Help was needed immediately. Sonny and I threw our herding gear into the truck.

We've done this before, so it didn't take long — cowboy hats, cowboy boots, jerky, bowling balls, gunpowder, pressure bandages, morphine, etc.

Me • "Wait. What about the crutches?"

Him • "Forget 'em. This year I'm leaving you where you fall."

Then we were off to meet up with the rest of the drovers in Range Creek, a ghost-haunted, time-traveling canyon east of Price. We spent the better part of two days fighting dust, cows, bugs, imaginary bears and one another.

Long story short, we didn't find all of the herd. Most of it is on top of Tavaputs where it belongs, but a few malingerers are still hiding out in various parts of the state. We did get a call from two that made it all the way to Vegas. They were drunk of course.

It was in the middle of moving the herd across the plateau that Sonny, fed up with my complaining, decided there had to be an easier way of finding missing livestock than by just sitting on a horse and cursing. So he launched a drone.

As Sonny's brainchildren go, this was one of the smarter ones he's conceived. It didn't involve riding a horse/mule or any strenuous hiking, and nobody called the cops.

You can see a lot from a drone, nearly all of it straight down. Within a matter of minutes, he had located some strays hiding in the timber.

Yes, ranch hands still had to go and get them, but at least now they knew the cows were actually there instead of having to ride over and find out that they weren't.

Whether cows were more concerned about the herd dogs or they couldn't look straight up, they didn't seem to mind the drone spying on them. The same cannot be said for horses.

The average working horses have a whole different set of politics than cows. They not only don't like the intrusive nature of spy drones, but they're also willing to do something about them.

On Saturday, they started hopping around and preparing to throw off their riders whenever something whirred by overhead. Whether they thought it was a giant horsefly or something from the NSA, they didn't like it.

As a result, Sonny had to take the drone back up to 350 feet, where it was out of sight and out of mind. But he got this great picture of the herd being moved through a gate.

Thanks to poor resolution, it's impossible to tell which of the cowboys down below is me. But it's probably safe to assume that I'm the one farthest from the herd.

Drone herding is still in its infancy. Some things need to be added to the machines to make the remote operation truly effective. I'm thinking whistles, dog barking and loudspeakers capable of transmitting effective herding technical commands such as, "G'wan! Get out of there you stupid $#@*%#@s!"

While we're at it, a way to drop bowling balls would also be nice.

Robert Kirby can be reached at rkirby@sltrib.com or facebook.com/stillnotpatbagley.