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The Life and Times of Gordie Peer

Working Cows
By WARREN RESEN

For many people, traveling the rodeo circuit, shows, fairs, and making cowboy pictures in Hollywood might seem an exciting way to make a living. But Gordie Peer, who spent most of his life on this circuit, reveals his true passion.

In his own words:
"Any time there wasn’t a show, I had to go find a job where I could work with cows. I did lots of different jobs. I would go out and gather cows, brand them, and work the chutes. And here in Okeechobee when I was workin’ for Pete Clemmons, I got to where I started doin’ more overseein’ and making sure that things were like they ought to be to work cows properly. The cow pens had to be built and ready to go when you gathered your cattle. They’re not used every day and when you gathered the cows, everything had to be functionin’ so you could get those cows through the pens, doctored, inoculated, or parted out.

"You went as fast as you could. I worked the cows in the pens and unloaded them and parted cattle. And I worked on the maintenance of the pens. A lot of the stuff that I built back in the late ‘50s to make it work smooth is still being used today. Pete Clemmons bought the market in the early ‘60s, maybe ‘62. I had worked there before that for the previous owners. At one time it was owned by the Adams family, you know the ones that own and run the Adams Ranch, but then this friend of mine, Pete Clemmons, bought it and I worked for him.

"Pete Clemmons comes from a family of Florida people in the cattle business. I would work on makin’ the thing run smoother. You know, little things like fix gate latches where if you threw the gate it latched so you didn’t have to run over and slide the latch shut yourself. I figured out ways where when you ran a cow up there you got to get a gate open. I used a series of ropes and pulleys. I could reach up there with the cow ahead of me and if I wanted to let her out and I don’t have anybody to do it, I could reach up pull the rope and it would trip the latch and the gate would swing open and she’d go on in. And by the same token when that gate was open, if I was runnin’ in there and needed it closed, I could grab that rope and pull it and slam the gate in front of her and stop her from goin’.

"Say we’d have a pen full of cattle and somebody’s at the other end and wrote up a ticket on the cattle. Well, you gotta get it back there to the guy on the other side. We’d like to put a stone in it and throw it back there. But you can’t find a lot of stones in Florida. So I took an old tricycle wheel, and put a rope on one end and another one at the other end and put a clothes pin on it. They could clip the ticket on it and run the bicycle pedals and it would roll it back to the other end and you could pull it off there. They’re still there. They’re still using them and I put them back in there years ago.

"I worked at the Okeechobee Cattle Auction off and on for about 19 years."

East vs West - COWMEN, COW HUNTERS, COWBOYS
"If you go back to the old days, people who worked on ranches, here in Florida, were called day workers. The cattleman and ranchers generally owned the land and cows. The word "cowboy" started out west when the west came into the cattle business.

"Florida had cattle before Texas did but the really big cattle business developed in Texas before it did in Florida. You know they started trail driving cattle out west. In Florida catchin’ and movin’ cows was kinda tough because it was so heavily wooded. It was like huntin’ deer. The cattle was wild and scattered.

"I have 20 acres here in Okeechobee. It’s my home and my ranch and I raise different types of cattle here. The long horns you see here are a part of the old west. It’s somthin’ I remember growing up with. People were always talkin’ about how they were almost gone at one time.
"The ranchers kind of went away from the horned cattle. Some believed that the food value was going into horns ‘stead of the bone structure and body structure. Out West a lot of the ranchers today are going back to the horned cattle.

"You know, there’s a lot of different theories. Out West today they feel that those cows that have horns feel more secure and can better protect themselves against predators. In Florida we have a lot of coyotes. Out West wolves are being introduced back into the population. With their horns the cows can protect themselves even against dogs that are runnin’ loose. There’s a lot of loose dogs in Florida and they can create a lot of problems with cattle. Not only do the horns make them better able to protect their calves and protect themselves from other cattle even, but the cows don’t walk so close together because the horns are in the way. And so they spread out while they are walking to the cow pens where you inoculate ‘em, and doctor ‘em, and part out the weak and poor ones and you put ‘em out to better pasture. They stay spread out so they don’t get as hot. There’s more air flowin’ between ‘em in the west, where here in Florida the cows without the horns bunch up. When they bunch up some times they’re hard to drive. I like to see the horns on ‘em.

"I also have a Spanish breed of cattle. The Spanish cattle were a slender, longer type of animal. The Spaniards didn’t know anything else but this type of cattle. And the Spanish had the long horn. Now if you’re talking about the English breed of cattle you’re talking about Whiteface and Herefords or Angus and a lot of ‘em didn’t have horns. Different parts of the country had different breeds of cattle. But there are some Herefords with horns. The ones without horns are called polled Herefords; the ones that were bred with the horns off ‘em. They took cows that didn’t have horns and bred them with bulls that didn’t have horns and developed a whole string of animals that they didn’t have to de-horn."