Inside a Montana Rancher's Life

Nov. 27, 2007 — -- Greg Fields pulls his mud-caked spurs off his cowboy boots and throws them in the back of his pickup truck. He's splattered with dried mud and smells like horse sweat and manure, but he's grinning like a kid.

"All in a day's work!" he jokes, pulling his saddle from the back of a sweaty quarter-horse.

Fields has spent the last 10 hours in his saddle, wrangling 120 horses about 40 miles in southwestern Montana.

Fields is a wrangler at the Elkhorn Ranch, one of the oldest family dude ranches in the American West. He spends his summers working as a backcountry guide, taking "dudes" into the wilderness of Montana on horseback.

"I've worked on other outfits," he says as he tends to his exhausted horse, "but there's no other place I've worked where you get into country like this."

The country he's referring to is the great expanse of rugged land in the Madison Range, about two hours outside Bozeman, Mont.

During the warm summer months, the wranglers lead dudes on horseback rides into the wilderness, pack mules and repair the 100 miles or so of lodge-pole fencing around the ranch.

"At the end of the day, you have something to show for your work," says Fields. "You work hard, you clear that trail, you put that fence up. That fence will be there for the next 15, 20 years. … That's something that a man can be proud of."

By late fall, the ranch closes to guests. Fields and his fellow wranglers are joined by the local blacksmith and a few neighboring ranchers to herd the worn-out horses from the corrals of the ranch to their winter pastures of the Hog Back, a broad, low mountain located on the other side of the Madison Range that looks just like its name.

It's a wild and woolly ride. The horses and wranglers travel 43 miles over a 10,000-foot snowy pass before they drop down into the vast winter pastures.

Once the entire herd arrives on the Hog Back, the wranglers meticulously check each horse for injuries, vaccinate them and remove their horseshoes for the winter. The herd spends the winter there in the high pastures of the Hog Back, fending for themselves.