Cowboy for Hire

Among that rare breed known as cowboy, Vaughn Kennemer is rarer still. He’s a full-time, freelance cowboy who hires himself out for day work to ranchers in the rolling red hills, wooded river bottoms, and mesquite canyons of his native Oklahoma.

Kennemer has earned a reputation for roping the mean ones—errant cows determined to get away and big bulls nobody else can catch.

“When the bull has nothing on his mind but to kill you and your horse and he has the weapons on the top of his head to do it with, it gets interesting,” says Kennemer, 40. “When you pull tight on a 2,200-pound bull for the first time and he stands up on both hind legs and goes to walking off with your horse, you wonder about your intelligence. As bad as it may seem when the bull is yanking your horse around, it gets a lot worse when he goes the other way and comes up the rope.”

Many who hire this modern-day cowpoke are small ranchers with other jobs who lack the time to handle branding, vaccinating, worming, or ear tagging their own cattle. Even some large ranches with regular crews need extra help when penning cattle or handling big jobs like branding. In the fall and spring, Kennemer is hired to do pregnancy tests on cows.

His base of operations is his own ranch in Elk City, Okla. (pop. 10,510). Other ranchers often take cows to him, because it’s cheaper than having Kennemer set up his portable wheel pens and chute in the ranchers’ own pastures.

He treats sick cows or catches a cow that has wire around her leg, a common occurrence when wire or bailing twine gets left in the pasture. He also pulls a lot of calves during calving season.

Although he has never been seriously hurt while plying his cowboy trade, he has had horses gored—once by a bull and once by a cow. The horses recovered, and are much wiser for the experience.

“I don’t get called to catch something unless most other options have been exhausted, therefore the animals I catch are typically mean, mad, and know every trick in the book,” Kennemer says.

By the time he takes care of the chores around his own ranch, including feeding cows, horses and dogs, and training cattle dogs (his specialty), Kennemer often puts in 12-hour days. Still, he enjoys what he does, mostly because of the variety it offers.

Art Harris, one of his regular customers, says he does really good work.

“He’s dependable, fast, trustworthy, and efficient,” says Harris, the CEO of a six-bank holding company headquartered in Elk City, and the owner of more than 200 cows. “In this part of the country, it’s pretty common to hire day workers, but they come and go, drifting from job to job,” he says. “I feel like Kennemer is here to stay.”

Kennemer recently added another cowboy service when he built facilities on his ranch to rest cattle on their way from Kentucky, Florida and Tennessee to feed lots in the Texas Panhandle. They stay for five or six hours, getting food and water, before going on to be fattened up for the market. “I guess you could say I operate a bovine bed-and-breakfast.”

Although Kennemer grew up around horses and cattle, he earned a petroleum engineering degree, worked for a well service company for nine years and taught high school for four. About seven years ago, he went full-time as a freelance cowboy. He says he prefers freelancing to owning cattle because he earns more money with less financial risk.

“I couldn’t keep up with both jobs,” Kennemer says of why he abandoned engineering and teaching. “Now I can’t imagine making a living doing anything else.”

Elaine Hobson-Miller is a freelance writer in Ashville, Ala.

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