Somewhere between Kemmer and Cokeville WY a few years back, I was cruising along at 500' and noticed a few stock trailers off the side of the road, some mounted cowboys, and some cattle. It was pretty easy to figure out it was roundup time, once I eyeballed the situation for a minute. Being very careful not to be construed as unwanted help, I dropped down a ways off and started working some stragglers nearer the main herd, the cowboys quickly realized what was going on, and working together and in short order the catlle were herded up by the trailers, and after I waggled my wings and headed off, I got a few waves of their cowboy hats in (I'm pretty sure...) appreciation for the help.
Just 2 weeks ago, the Peruvian cowboy my rancher neighbor hires every year, was on his ATV on my 70 acres, rounding up some strays that had slipped under their fenceline onto my place. I mounted up/got in the RANS, and to his initial surprise, joined in and got a couple out he had missed to where he could see them. 10 years ago, I was doing a solar water pumping job about 60 miles away, and my landing spot had cattle in the way, forewarned, and with my customer's full cooperation, I herded them out of the way enough to effect a landing, using the trick the late Ted Barber taught me ("The Flying Mustanger", a great read if you can find a copy). I had a 50' long light rope with tin cans knotted along it, in the cockpit, and once over the cattle threw it out, to stream behind me. Once I dropped down low level, the ground dragging cans dramatically increased the movement of the cattle, as the Swiss Mufflered Rotax really didn't make enough noise to get their attention. 2 weeks ago, I had to darn near run my Airstreaks over them to get their attention, needed these cans.
