Good Years for the Buzzards [Hardcover]

John Duncklee (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1994

The mid-1950s were good years for the buzzards in Arizona, when the Southwest saw its worst drought in centuries. It was not a good time for an upstart cowboy to try to make a go of ranching, but John Duncklee did-and succeeded. Transfixed by the rodeo at Madison Square Garden, young Duncklee decided to forego an Ivy League education and instead worked his way through the University of Arizona as a horse wrangler. After serving in the Navy, he returned to Arizona to lease the O Bar J Ranch on the bajada of the Sierrita Mountains southwest of Tucson. His account of those years is both a testament to determination and a window on modern-day ranch life under adverse conditions.The O Bar J had two deep wells that enabled Duncklee to maintain his herd; even so, he had to burn the spines off cholla cactus to provide forage. During those years he learned a lot about the care of cattle, the importance of neighbors, the vagaries of nature, and the ins and outs of ranching as both a business and a way of life.After the drought broke in the fall of 1958, Duncklee was able to sell his herb at a profit, but it wasn't much until much later that he learned how harsh an introduction to ranching he had received, for the drought of the fifties affected vegetation patterns and even the entire cattle business in the Southwest. Yet he had fulfilled his dream of becoming a cowman, an experience that instilled in him a self-confidence that would carry him through other changes in his life. Good years for the buzzards? John Duncklee will tell you, "They turned out to be good years, too, for the kid from New York."

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

In 1956 the author, recently graduated from college, fulfilled his childhood dream of becoming a real-life cowboy. He had just leased 14 sections of desert grazing land southwest of Tucson and purchased the landowner's cattle to go with his new ranch. What Duncklee had no way of knowing was that the drought of the 1950s, already well under way, would become the worst drought of the past 400 years in southern Arizona. This absorbing firsthand account relates his trials and triumphs on the O Bar J from 1956 until 1959, when he sold the last of his cattle and got out of the ranching business. This is the author's personal story of running a ranch, surviving the drought, and dealing with neighbors and cattle. After his ranching days, Duncklee went on to become a cattle buyer, graduate student, university professor, and freelance writer. Recommended for public and academic libraries.
William H. Wiese, Iowa State Univ. Lib., Ames
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author

John Duncklee is the author of twelve books and numerous short stories, essays and poetry. Prior to his writing career, John was a university professor in both the United States and Mexico, a cattle rancher, Quarter House breeder, designer of mesquite wood furniture, and served his country in the U.S. Navy during the Korean War. He lives in New Mexico with his wife, Penny, an illustrator and painter. He is the author of two bilingual children's books Manchado and His Friends/ Manchado y Sus Amigos, a story of a spotted burro and A Candle for Miguel/ Una Vela Para Miguel, involving a political intrigue south of the border. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 165 pages
• Publisher: Univ of Arizona Pr; First edition (July 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0816514542
• ISBN-13: 978-0816514540
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,961,139 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Well written, informative, entertaining . . ., July 28, 2006

By 

Ronald Scheer "rockysquirrel" (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Good Years for the Buzzards (Hardcover)

Ranchers are not the mythic figures that cowboys became as the cattle industry spread across the American West 100 years ago, and the stories of ranchers make up a smaller part of Western literature. But for readers interested in the business end of raising cattle, there are several good books to entertain their curiosity. This is one of them.

Duncklee, while a young man in his twenties, leased a small ranch south of Tucson for three years during the long drought of the 1950s. This well-written account of that experience, building a herd and keeping it fed and watered, provides a fascinating look into the heart and mind of a rancher, whose intelligence is pitted against a number of challenges: unpredictable weather, less than scrupulous stock buyers, the fluctuating markets for both cattle and feed, the vagaries of government programs, untrustworthy neighbors, and the risk of loss as disease and mischance threaten to make any of his cows a meal for buzzards.

Ths story is told with good humor, intelligence, and some sentiment, and the men whose work lives engage with the author's come to life on the page, especially the 80-year-old vaquero, Chico, who works with him and becomes a dearly loved friend. Also recommended: John Erickson's "Panhandle Cowboy," David McCumber's "The Cowboy Way," and Linda Hasselstrom's "Windbreak: A Woman Rancher on the Northern Plains." Also, for a good history of the cattle industry, read David Dary's "Cowboy Culture: A Saga of Five Centuries."

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A RANCHER WHO WAS PUT TO THE TEST, May 1, 2005

By 

Gail Cooke (TX, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Good Years for the Buzzards (Hardcover)

According to Duncklee, the drought of the fifties that affected the entire Southern tier of states and Northern Mexico was good for the buzzards and not much else. Describing one of the greatest challenges a cattleman can face in that manner tells you a lot about the author.

Raised in the East and rocked in the cradle of Ivy League tradition, Duncklee had wanted to be a cowboy since the day his father took him to a rodeo at Madison Square Garden. At the age of 12 he was sent to a private ranch school in Arizona, where he studiously applied himself to helping the neighboring ranchers. Later, he turned his back on Dartmouth, worked his way through college as a horse wrangler, then leased an Arizona ranch in the middle of the Southwest's greatest drought in 400 years.

"Good Years for the Buzzards" is a chronicle of how he maintained his herd during the drought, learned much about the forces of nature, and a great deal about the importance of neighbors.

The author lived his dream of becoming a cowboy and rancher and, evidently, became a fiercely independent individual along the way. He later earned his living by writing and making furniture.

- Gail Cooke

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars an engaging ranch memoir by a real cowboy, john dunklee, October 9, 2004

By 

R. Stein "hachet reviews" (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Good Years for the Buzzards (Hardcover)

I actually got more out of my second time through Good Years for the Buzzards because I kept referring to the sketched map of John Dunklee's O Bar J Ranch opposite the preface as I was reading. This is helpful because Dunklee's chief concern in this engaging ranch memoir is the practical problem of managing the O Bar J cattle ranch through the drought of the late 1950's-- the worst period of drought, we learn, in the Southwestern United States in 400 years.

Little rain meant scarce feed for Dunklee's cattle. This confronted Dunklee with the problem of optimizing the forage and water of the harsh desert range to keep his cattle fed and his cowboy dream alive. The trick was keeping his cows on the move to where the forage was, and keeping the precious water flowing from the ranch's two deep wells, the mellifluously named Pozo Hondo and Pacheco wells. Navigating the map gives one a feel for the logistical difficulty of Dunklee's problem.

After studying agriculture in college and adventures serving in the Navy during the Korean War and cowboying for wages in Alberta and Wyoming, Dunklee learned that the O Bar J ranch, two large desert pastures on the slope of the Sierrita Mountain range southwest of Tucson, was up for lease. Dunklee signed a lease in the spring of 1956 and bought the owner's cattle, thus beginning a four year battle with drought, cunning order buyers, thieving neighbors, drunken cowboys, careless hunters and miners, wild heifers, government drought relief scams, and various other crafty characters of all types.

Apart from being an entertaining portrait of the cattle industry in the Arizona border country in the late 50's, the text is a minor classic of applied, or practical operations, versus academic theory. As such the book would be useful as a narrative companion to theoretical texts in university level business, economics, agricultural economics, or business law courses.

After a particularly contentious sale of O Bar J calves pursuant to a contract calling for "weighing the calves at the Southern Pacific yards off the trucks" during which the buyer-because of currently falling prices-tried every trick in the book to shrink the calves before weighing (calves lose weight while being shipped on trucks or standing in corrals with no food or water, costing the seller money), including showing up a half hour late claiming a flat tire and telling the truck drivers to take extra time driving to the stockyard, Dunklee reflects:

"While attending the university I had enrolled in a course called Livestock Marketing taught by the chairman of the department. I remembered how his lectures were straight from the text. Neither professor nor textbook mentioned such things as pencil shrink, finagling order buyers, or Twinkie-eating rodeo-hand truck drivers-probably because the professor had never marketed any cattle."

Dunklee won that battle, however, as the stockyard boss put the cattle in a corral with a trough of water, letting the cattle drink back the lost weight and then some.

"Get those (...)out of that wet corral!" yelled the buyer, seeing too late that his flat tire ruse cost rather than saved him weight.

This memoir deserves a far wider audience than it has heretofore gotten-perhaps a general business audience, as it recounts an informative history of entrepreneurship and risk taking, determination, work, and sound management. As a young cowboy riding for wages, Dunklee had naively believed that the first concern of the rancher was caring for cattle and riding. After leasing the O Bar J, however, Dunklee shortly learned otherwise. During his years managing the ranch, the husbanding of the herd became something of an afterthought to be fit into early mornings, late nights, and spare time, while his primary duties concerned the finances, marketing, contract negotiations, and general wheeling and dealing necessary to keep his operation alive during the drought.

If you were a cow, however, you could have done far worse than being in John Dunklee's herd, as ranching was plainly more than his business, it was a calling-Dunklee was constantly occupied during his tenure at the O Bar J looking after the cows, tending to their health, and working them with the objective of disturbing the herd no more than absolutely necessary. The yielded the result that even during the drought, the average weight of his calf crop increased significantly over the prior owner's. The drought, however, took a toll on the herd in spite of Dunklee's best efforts, and the book contains more than one heartbreaking scene when the buzzards of the title get the upper hand.

Leasing the ranch thrust Dunklee into the actual business of raising cattle, with opportunities and problems in all directions. His first responsibility became making good decisions: To cut his losses and sell the herd, or risk everything in an attempt to outlast the drought? Who to hire? Who to trust? Which calves should be sold at auction? Which cattle should be kept? It was a second education in self reliance, lessons that plainly served Dunklee well in his subsequent careers as a cattle order buyer, college professor, furniture designer, and author-some of the history of which is recounted in the author's other memoir of the U.S./Mexico cattle trade in the early 1960's, Coyotes I Have Known.

It was touch and go at first on the O Bar J, as Dunklee learned his trade and came to understand how truly tough it would be surviving this drought. But he learned on the job, and slowly he gathered the information and skills to tough it out. One summer day in June, 1956, just as Dunklee was beginning to think his situation hopeless, as he was scanning the Arizona Cattlegrowers Weekly Newsletter, sort of a pre-Internet message board used by ranchers for sharing rain reports and tips, he came across a "note from a rancher in the Prescott area which mentioned that he was paying fifty-three dollars a ton for 2:1, including delivery, from Western Cotton Products in Phoenix," far less than the going price of range supplement in Tuscon (2:1 being a type of feed for when there's no forage). The following day Dunklee was in Phoenix checking it out, and when the quoted price turned out to be valid, his mind was made up.

"I was going to fight the drought!" he writes. It's a triumphant moment.

Dunklee's book is moreover an entertaining chronicle of the wild cattle markets of the times, as prices careened up and down in reaction to the drought. He plainly relishes recounting the details of the cattle auctions, contracts, and freewheeling negotiations which were his primary activities as a rancher managing a going concern.

Though raised in New York and New Hampshire, Dunklee writes with the plainspoken, independent voice of the westerner. His prose is direct and spare -plainly a product of self reliant western culture-and at times wryly humorous.

One day Dunklee came across a bull which had become addicted to prickly pear, a cactus plant which slowly and surly kills cows by puncturing their innards, as prickly pear spines don't digest like the spines of cholla cactus. One of the symptoms is really bad, black diarrhea. As Dunklee drove the bull off to auction, a brand new white sports car driven by an impatient young woman pulled up behind the truck, beeping the horn . . . and you can guess what happens next. There's a lot to laugh at in Good Years for the Buzzards -Clearly, John Dunklee was the kind of cowboy who kept his sense of humor no matter the hand he was dealt.