I’m going to have to say that my dad is my non-famous hero. He was moving cattle last Monday, he went up in front of the herd on a hill to keep the cattle from going the wrong direction, when the horse he was riding fell over backwards on top of him. If he hadn’t been on that hill the horse could have landed flat on top of him and that probably would’ve killed him, instead it landed on his left leg which still wasn’t good but better than the alternative. The doctor said his leg wasn’t broken but the bone was badly bruised, which made him limp every where he went. He still went to work with his leg all wrapped up to help keep down the inflammation.

Dad is working with the cattle, which he prefers over the sheep, partly because that side of the business has slowly become harder and harder over the years. First it was the occasional employee wrecking a truck once in a while (they’re not very good drivers), or predators killing a few head of sheep. Then it was the big horn sheep issue, the Forest Service claims domestic sheep are contaminating the big horns, which caused us to cut back from eight bands of sheep to six, because the places we could take them were restricted. Each band is about 2,000 head. Now it’s the employees, trying to find enough people to work for us is a major problem. We hire Peruvians through a company called “Western Range” to come work for us, we pay for them to get into the country, for their housing and food. Some of them have been leaving the job to work at dairies or other jobs, meanwhile the sheep are left unattended, and the Peruvians are then illegal immigrants. Also, the new Canadian imported wolves that are supposed to restart the wolf population in Idaho, are killing, not abnormally, hundreds of sheep. Idaho’s wolf population dropped to critical on the endangered species list a few years ago, so Idaho Fish and Game brought in Canadian wolves to jump start the population. Well, the bigger wolves did just that. Now we have these Canadian wolves killing livestock. this has just created a new, even bigger problem for us! On top of that the government doesen’t have the funds to manage them or pay ranchers for their losses.

As you can see my dad has some problems on his hands, but he keeps everything turning some how and manages to stay afloat even with all the things that want to swallow up his bussiness. My father is a very dedicated hard working man and that’s why he’s my hero.