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The material and attendant photo illustrations found on this website are copyrighted © 2006 by R. J. Sagely. The reprinting or distribution of the whole or any part without express permission of the author is prohibited. This notice supercedes any other copyright notices and dates found herein.

Laying Down Cattle -
compiled and written by Bob Sagely

A continuation of the article "How Many Ways Can You Catch A Cow?". This one talks about what to do with them when you connect on one of your fancy, or plain, roping shots.

Once you catch a cow with one of the many long rope shots that are available within the vaquero/buckaroo style, you need to know what to do with the cow, at least for the purpose of getting your rope back off of that cow. This article will talk about some of the various ways of dealing with that dilema.

So, you have caught a cow with that amazing del viento, or that backhand that you have been practicing for so long but just never had a chance to try until now. You've got 500 lbs. of live and somewhat perturbed bovine on your twine and you'd simply like to get your rope back and try another shot before the day is up. You and your partner have put away the breakaways and now you have one... what are you going to do? Here are some possibilities.

Cabezas – Catches that encircle the horns, head and horn, neck, neck and one front leg or the neck and both front legs with a figure eight loop (one of the most difficult to do).

The basic head or neck catch allows a roper to control an animal and set it up to allow the heeler to more easily come in and catch the hind feet. On smaller animals, catching two hind feet and dragging them to the fire is a commonplace deal, whether dally roping or tying on Texas style, hard and fast. But in vaquero or buckaroo style roping it is sometimes not feasible to drag calves, often because the work is being done out in the wide open from a rodear that is not necessarily being held on ground the rancher would want his calves drug across. Or simply because you are roping stock that is large, or kinda ranny (from oreana, a wild one) and rank, or both. So the head catch is very useful and learning to handle cattle on the rope, especially neck roped cattle without choking them, is what a person ought to do. If you are looking to be a buckaroo, you'd need to know how to lay a cow down by yourself if you've got them by a head or horn catch. Your horse needs to learn about this too, cause he or she is the hardest working half of this deal. You need him to become responsive to the rope, the beast you roped and most of all, to you. There is hardly a worse possible wreck than getting rimfired by a cow that is tipping the scales at 1500 lbs., except for maybe having that happen with a 2000 lb. bull on the end of your rope. And once you get the down, until she is tied your horse is what is going to keep her down.

Controlling The Cow You Caught -

The main thing to work toward here is humane control. It is easy enough to just lock your dally down and pit your horse against that cow and hope the cow chokes down before your horse gives out or just gives up. It is important to never have your horse end up thinking he can be beat by whatever is on the end of your rope. If you force him to try and pull when he just plain physically cannot you will set him up to start thinking that he cannot (mentally) pull that rope and whatever is on it. If he thinks he can pull it, he will try... many horses won't try if they think they cannot... and that is a learned thing and a bad deal if he up and quits when you need a tight rope. They learn, if you teach them well, that they can pull anything, anytime and so will try. Or, they learn that the fool riding them may think they can pull that nasty ol' cow but they know they cannot and so they won't give it a go. A rope horse that will not pull when you need him to is a dangerous horse to rope from. You should only be asking him to pull when you want him to and need him to and most importantly - WHEN HE CAN! That is why dallying is safest and if you get to where your horse is in a bad place pulling wise your best deal is to pop those dallies and let the long, lot of rope you have at your disposal run until you can set it up for your horse's success to stop the cow again and pull if you need or just hold that rope tight. That is why fifty feet of rope is good, sixty feet is better and, if your hands are big enough, seventy or even eighty feet can be useful as heck. There is probably for some folks such a thing as too much rope but I have sure seen more times when folks were not packing enough rope.

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