Aubrey: What if someone didn't know anything about sheepherding in Wyoming, what might be a story you would share? 

Mitch: Well, that was me in 1971. I worked on a sheep ranch in Star Valley, which is the very western part of the state, south of Jackson Hole. That's what I always say because everybody seems to know where Jackson Hole is. And we were lambing, shed lambing, cabin, all that. Anyway, I got involved with that work. And it was springtime, early spring, and by the time that job was getting over, they were talking about needing somebody to go to the mountains with the sheep. And that was right down my alley, because I had spent all my life in the mountains before that. Every spare moment. But usually a foot this whole time we were going horseback. And so I did that. Did that answer that question?

How would you do it? Yeah, just go. Just go. There's not much, there’s not a lot to sheepherding. You got to be able to handle horses, usually, because you usually have a horse, but they usually give you gentle horses, but some of them aren't gentle. Yeah, just gotta go. 

I had people with me every summer that didn't know anything about it, Just like I had gone and I went with a guy, a herder I was in Wyoming, in most places, if it's a remote part of the world and you're herding on open range—which means there's no fences —you're out there all the time. And the Forest Service, if you're on a Forest Service lease, which most people are in the summer in Wyoming, if they go to the high country at all, requires two people, because it's dangerous. You can get hurt really easy, and if you have nobody else to help you you can die up there. 

So anyway, they have a camp tender and a herder. So when I went, I was the camp tender because I didn't know anything about it. And the herder, after two years, well, after about a year of being in the mountains, I realized he didn't know anything about herding.

A lot of ranchers, they get a herder anywhere they can. I had a friend, a sheep man, who told me he would go in the bar in Kemmerer, Wyoming and find the drunkest, drunkest guy that was still sitting on a stool and drag him out. And he said “They make the best sheep herders you'll ever find.” And there's a little bit of truth to that.

But anyway, yeah, this guy was from New Mexico, and they just thought Oh, he’s from New Mexico, and he knows how to herd sheep. So they hired him. Well, he didn't know anything about herding sheep. 

And I learned because I could get on a really high mountain and take my binoculars, and I could see a long ways away a Basque outfit from another part down the road from where we lived, it turned out. I didn't know it then, I could hear the sheep. And I watched those guys. That's how you herd sheep. It's just the opposite of the way the guy I'm working with is herding sheep.

Then it turned out that he liked to hang around camp because somebody might come by, you know, riding by. He really was lonesome, and I wasn't at all. So we switched jobs. He stayed in camp and watched the horses and cooked, and I stayed out with the sheep.

Note: The transcript above has been condensed from its original audio recording to improve the flow and readability of the story.