RL Hubbard passed the test today at 4:20 pm. He is gone… We aren’t sure what to say yet, or to who or how, so let this be his day to shine: October 29, 2010. WE love you and we miss you , Robby.

Beef Day by Robby Hubbard

BEEF DAY – Dec. 29, 2008
Another installment in the A Day in the Life of Montana” Mini-Series
By Robby Hubbard
We’ve hit a bit of a speed wobble in the beef processing here. Dad’s been waiting through two weeks of subzero just plain cold as all get out days to be able to get some more beef slaughtered quartered and hangin on the rail to age in the cutting room. In particular, he’s been anxious to do the last two of his own. But it’s gotta be warm enough outside for him to be able to kill ‘em, hang ‘em up and move ‘em about, and then skin and gut ‘em without freezin to death himself. Apparently he has decided that anything over twenty-five degrees is gonna hafta be good enough. Unbelievably enough he seems fairly comfortable at that temp in a rolled up long sleeve shirt and bare wet hands holding a knife, as long as he keeps working. Yesterday was about 20 degrees and overcast in the morning and dad thought it was gonna warm up cause that’s what the weatherman said it would do. So about 8:30 am he asked if I would run the winch for him cause the wiring lead is funky and has to be held just so, so that it’ll work, and of course he didn’t want to be bothered fussing about that after shooting a beef. It’s all business at that point. I got my boots on and arrived out by the pen in time to close the gate for Pop as he was gettin ready to pull away with the larger beef already hangin off the boom truck. Guess he got the winch fibgured out on his own.
As I’m closing the gate I look at the remaining beef looking at his buddy hangin in the air by one leg with his head cut off and I think to myself, “he has seen this happen four complete times now. He has got to have made the connections connect by now. I know they’re not real bright animals but c’mon – they are a mammal, and even a damn plant can tell when the sun is out! He has gotta know.” Anyways, whatever, onward, there’s work to do.
The great concern that’s been being talked about for several days is that the lone beef will get out once Pop kills the second to the last one of them. It seems that beef are inherently social and like to be together. Whenever one has gotten out in the past he just cruises around the outside of the fence and the ones on the inside follow him around, and in this way I guess, they are still together.
Well, it had not been but a half hour after the death of the larger of the last two beef when the phone rang. Our nieghbor, Ken, next door at the old Terra ranch called. Thinking I was dad like everyone else does, he proceeded to tell me that my beef had jumped his fence and was wandering down his driveway and toward the hiway. Without even telling him, “no Ken, this is Robby, but I’ll go alert Pop and we’ll be down shortly”. I just said “Yeah thanks, I’ll be right There.” Three minutes later Ken called back and said, “He’s now out on the hiway running toward Whitefish.” Now me personally, I think the thing knows its gonna die and there is no one left to keep it company in this knowledge and misery, so it has bolted, but that is only my opinion. My boots were almost on again when I hung up the phone, and out to the kill floor I ran, panting and yelling. Pop looks up from the beef he is busy skinning wondering what I am blathering about while I try to explain that we have to, “go now cause its’ on the hiway headed south.”
It’s hard to imagine, but none of this seemed very acceptable to Dad, who grimacing, immediately started saying things like, “doggone that stinkin thing!”, “I didn’t think he’d get out that fast!” and “next time I’ll just shoot ‘em both at once!”
“Let’s go!” So off we went in the boom truck down the hill over to the nextdoor neighbor’s. Being a rather decent and helpful neighbor as he is, Ken has been good enough to already drive down and head the,”stupid thing,” as dad’s taken to calling him by now, back north and in through his gate where he is standing in the middle of the driveway as we turn in.
I jump outta the truck and get in between beef and fence so that he won’t try to double back as we push him farther up the driveway towards home and all that it holds. Goings-on of this nature are fragile and open for mid flight course adjustment at every moment as you might expect. Once the fence opens up into the larger yard, Mr. Beef meanders up onto the guest house lawn acting as though he’s looking for something to eat. Cows in the end are incredibly simple creatures! So I run up there to head it back down into the drive, and it starts running, so dad’s screaming, “Don’t run it! Don’t run it!”, and i swear i am not running it. Really. It is running itself. So it ends up down in this corner by the horse barn and all the horses are on the other side of the fence. Apparently it is still seeking companionship. Ken and and I are about twenty feet apart with our arms out and dad’s in the truck in the driveway but the beef wants to be over in that corner with the horsees. This is not part of the plan and once more falls squarely in dad’s ‘totally unacceptable’ category. so he’s outta the truck with the gun in hand and impatience written all over him. At this point I have a flashback to a time in Sandpoint when we were trying to keep some cows in a pen and they started to get away and Dad shot four as fast as he could. Woulda got more but the woods were too close and they got away.
I look at Ken and Ken is cringing in a way I can recognize, so I yell at Pop something about getting it outta here and away from the horsees and he says, “don’t run it!” I got it to amble somehow, and finally it crosses the road and goes over behind Ken’s haybarn where it is cornered again by a fence behind that barn. Dad’s outta the truck again with the gun and I am walking along with Ken and Ken is saying something like, “well how is he going to get it in the back of the truck?” See, the boom is on the front of the truck, and Ken is thinking we are going to shoot the cow then load it in the back of the truck with the boom, but he knows this can’t happen. And I am trying to explain that it’s not going in the back, we’ll just hoist it up in the front and haul it home that way. Dad is sighting off the corner post of the barn about sixty yards from the beef. He’s lookin through the scope and waiting for the beef to turn its head. At this point I think Ken starts to get an idea what is really going on and he starts saying things like, “Oh god does he hafta do it here.” BANG!
Cow is dead. Ken Says, “Wow that didn’t take long. He’s a good shot.” And I am thinking to myself, “if you cannot shoot a cow between the eyes at sixty yards you probably shouldn’t have a high power rifle.” Dad’s already over to the beef with the boomtruck letting the cable down as Ken and I are walking up and Ken is muttering, “oh no there’s gonna be blood here.” And I am thinking, “oh god, you haven’t seen anything yet.”
We get to Dad and the still wiggling beef, and Dad has it’s hind leg in a sling and is starting to hoist the leg. The beef is quivering and twitching. It’s eyes are open and it’s ‘looking’ right at Ken and I. Ken is still cringing slightly and is now in a suspended state of minor intermittent mumbled phrases like, “Oh god the poor thing is still alive . . .” and “ohhh, shoot it again . . . just . . .” Dad is completely and totally oblivious to the fact that anyone in the world would mind being here watching all this, or that blood letting is a problem for some folks, especially on their own lawn. The beef is now all the way in the air still twitching in disconcerting ways. Dad runs over to the truck grabs a knife and proceeds to cut the things throat as it thrashes about some more. Blood erupts down onto the lovely fresh white snow as the cow is slowly spinning and wiggling. This, Ken was not completely prepared for, as testified to by the fact that he looked at me and said, in a complete sentence for a change, “What is he doing to it?” followed by, “Oh god, Oh no, there’s blood everywhere!” and I answered, “bleeding it.” At this point Dad threw in, “I’ve gotta get the blood out of them right away.” Ken just looks at me. Trying to do damage control or just be nice or something, I volunteer that I would happily come back down shortly and shovel up the twenty square feet of blood soaked snow and haul it up to the gut pile for him. He says that would be nice.
By this time the blood is done doing its projectile gushing, slowing to a medium drizzle, and Pop is over there cutting the head off. Ken’s body sorta twists as he grunts something like, “ooooUUUHHHH oohhhh!” and then mentions, “Well, that certainly is a sharp knife!” Pop, who now looks like he just killed and bled a cow, hauls the head over and tosses it in the back of the truck. Blood continues to rain from the stump of its neck. Ken remains calm and freindly though obviously shocked and uncertain about something that he may not even be certain of, and Dad remains perfectly oblivious to the fact that Ken would really rather not have had this sort of thing happen at his place.
Dad is telling Ken that the blood will just go away when it rains. Ken is telling Dad that he’ll just get the tractor and push the blood outta the way (but he’s obviously not real excited about any of it), and I’m telling Ken that I’ll come down and fix it. And at this moment I notice that the tail of the very dead cow is waving around in the air like an epileptic’s arm. I can’t resist and I nudge Ken and point. He just lets out this defeated sound and shakes his head. Pop and I jump in the truck and head back home, going up the back way through the ranch with the hanging headless beef proceeding us . . . still dripping red everywhere as it swings around. The snow is unplowed and pretty deep and I am imagining what it will be like if we get stuck in the middle of the road with a decapitated hanging cow out in front of the other neighbor’s house and down from Ken’s house. Dad says if the other neighbors say anything about seeing the headless cow going by that he will just take ‘em a package of hamburger and say, “yeah, it’s from the black one you saw go by.” I hafta smile at this.
We made it back though. The trusty old Dodge really gets around. Hurriedly we set down the newly dead cow and Dad got back to finishing up the first one. As usual, the weatherman was inaccurate and it’s still 24 and the wind is swirling snow around. The concrete is covered in water and blood and its freezing as soon as it hits the floor. So we spray it off with more water but then there is a veneer of sheet ice underfoot. Dad is not impressed with the weathermen and is comparing their existence to that of politicians while trying to stay standing up and cutting at the same time.
After a bit of clean up and tail holding, I told him I was going to take the truck and go down and clean up the blood at Ken’s. He said, “What!?! Are you kidding?! Why would he care if that blood is there?” and looked at me with complete disgust written in his face.
The only response I could think of was, “Dad, he’s from California! I don’t think he’s really used to this sort of thing.”
“And then as an afterthought I added, “Besides, he thinks Obama’s gonna save us! What would you expect?”
It’s possible this made more sense to Dad than anything else I have ever said.
I get back to Ken’s and start cleaning up the mess and Ken shows up with his tractor and loads five or six bucket fulls of red snow into the back of the truck. Jacque, the old French guy from up by Orvin’s shows up in his tractor and says to Ken, “hey what happened down here?” or something like that. And I hear Ken say with this odd pressured tone in his voice, “Leroy just shot his beef” pointing in the direction from whence the bullet arrived, “and cut its head off RIGHT here, right where all this blood is,” pointing.
“Welcome to Montana Ken,” I say, “Now you’ve had the full experience.” He replies, with a note of sarcasm, “Oh yeah Robby, I always wanted to be a rancher!” I walk over to introduce myself to Jacque as Ken is getting in his tractor. Shaking his hand, I say, “Yeah, I guess it didn’t really occur to Dad that the blood would be a problem for anyone.” From under his furry hat, Jacque smiles in this old foreign man kinda way like you would get from a minor character in a movie, and he says with a thick french accent, “Blood makes great fertilizer.”
What can ya say to that? I had to laugh.
[ Disclaimer:
This story contains small variances from the exact sequence of events and the comments made by those participating in those events. There is at least one minor creative liberty employed by the author; however, it is still orders of magnitude more accurate than any reporting you will ever see on TV. The author apologizes for his own defecits and those inherent in the language he employs here. There is only so much you can do with a string of words.
Really, You had to be there!]