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The Life and Times of Gordie Peer

The Whip and Rope
By WARREN RESEN

In his own words:
"In the days of open range in Florida the cattle just roamed until it was time to go out and catch them. The cows had to take care of themselves so the horns was needed to help them survive. But it also made them difficult to catch in the piney woods.

"Catching them was hard 'cause the woods was so thick. Florida back then was full of pine trees and thick growth and you couldn't see the cows very far. That was the purpose of the whip. Because the sound of the whip would run the cows on out of the woods and you would try to run 'em to a part where it was open, or where it was a marsh or something where the trees didn't grow and where they could see 'em. And then you could ride around 'em.

"You would build pole corrals and try to run the cows into the pole corrals to trap 'em.

"They didn't rope here in Florida until the 1900s. It was introduced by Oklahoma cowboys. In the old days, the Spanish cowboy did roping. But then the Spaniards left or died off and for a period of time there was no inhabitants to speak of in all of Florida. The original Indians of Florida, and no, they wasn't the Seminoles, were wiped out by diseases and the Spanish, and because the Spanish didn't have those Indians to teach them how to survive, the Spanish finally all died off here too.

"Then the Spanish went on over into Central America and then on into Texas and the Southwest. They survived better over there. The Spanish or the Mexican cowboy, the vaquero, became quite proficient with the rope and found they could catch them cows by using a rope. And then the American cowboy started using the rope.

"But the Florida cowboy first used the whip, because as I said before, them woods was so thick you couldn't rope too good. But after they started lumbering the land, why then you had clear areas where you could rope.

"Today with all the improved lands and pens, you can do the work with fewer people. It's easier to gather the cows because you're working a smaller pasture. And you got fence lines to use to move your cows along rather than drive them across an open area where you gotta be all the way around 'em. So you bunch 'em and trail 'em down a fence line to your cow pen. With the hydraulic chutes and the layouts they have today, you can work 400 cows in a day where you could only work 200 or less years ago. You were lucky some times to even get 100 done.

"You're catching them by hand and holdin' their heads to doctor 'em and worm 'em, brand 'em, and some of 'em have things wrong. Cows get cancer too. And you'd doctor 'em for pink eye and lots 'o little things that happen to cows. But basically that's it. You used to spray 'em for flies a lot.

"Well, when I started working at the Okeechobee Livestock Market, I worked less out at the ranches. Ranch work is long hard hours with little money. And you got to be really dedicated to it.

"There's still ranches that have bunkhouses where they have those guys that live right there on the places. There are still places like that here. Most of 'em just go to the job in the daytime and go home at night. But there's a lot of 'em that's still doin' day work.
"The day workers, they might go to work for 2 or 3 or 4 weeks at one place workin' cows. When they get them all taken care of well, then they go some place else and work. And some time some of 'em just work one day here or one day there when somebody's needin' an extra hand.

"A lot of those guys follow the same cycle every year of workin' different people's cows. But there's fewer and fewer of 'em around now."

Author's note: Even though there are fewer old time cow hunters around each year, people who were brought up in the old traditions, there are more books being written about this topic than ever before. It always seems that when something looks like it could be lost, people finally wake up to its importance. And yet I still get this quizzical look from people that says, "you mean there are cowboys in Florida?
People drive through the middle of the State of Florida, they see all that cattle and they say, "look cows," and think nothing more about it. But if they drive through Texas or Oklahoma and see the same cows, they immediately associate them with cowboys and ranches. There's very little association in Florida with the same thing. That's because of what Hollywood created.