Cattle Rustling Makes a Major Comeback

Aug. 10, 2009— -- Life on the ranch has a rhythm. The days are long, beginning before sunrise. The work is hard under the unrelenting summer sun, and the chores are endless.

The rancher's rest comes only when the sun finally disappears. Nights on the ranch are peaceful.

But something has interrupted that rhythm, something that has Oklahoma rancher Jeff Emerson up at night.

"It's a feeling like someone broke into your house ... kicking your door in and stealing your stereo," he said. "Only mine is a four-legged stereo ... it's a hell of a stereo, though."

Emerson is very much a victim of a crime right out of the Old West. In a period of 90 days, he says, about 30 of his specially bred cattle have vanished.

"We get about $3,000 an animal, so I'm out about 90 to 100 grand," he said. "It's really tough on a small business man ... and that's really what I am."

Emerson and his wife, Chris, own an organic food store in Tulsa, where they sell hormone-free steaks from the cattle they raise just a few miles away. As he says, getting Oklahomans to go organic is tough enough without someone stealing so much of his product.

"You might as well rob a bank," he said. "It's easier and it is air conditioned, and they get out here in the heat and the weeds and the mulch and the blood and the manure ... and steal a cow," he said. "Why in the world do they want to work so hard?"

Ted Allen of Bixby, Okla., has spent every one of his 78 years on a ranch. He thought cattle rustling existed only in the Westerns he loves to watch. Then, rustlers ripped off a dozen of his beloved cows last year.

"I couldn't believe anybody would steal a cow," he said. "Just didn't make sense to me ... but when you can't find them, and they can't fly, somebody had to help them."

Cattle Rustling and the Economy

Cattle rustling has made a major comeback. In Texas alone, more than 6,000 head of cattle were stolen last year -- that's triple the number from the year before. This year is set to break records in ranching states across the West.

"I don't think it's good people out there stealing for their children to eat," Allen said. "I think it's hoodlums taking advantage of easy money."

Maybe so, but the special rangers assigned to catch cattle rustlers say the crime has everything to do with the recession.

"Cattle rustling is definitely here, and I think it's here to stay," said special ranger Brent Mast of the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association. "We have a lot of people who are out of work, and I think thieves have kind of figured out it's pretty good money."