Longhorns Hook 'Em High

Insight on the News, July 5, 1999 by Gerald Mizejewski

Gritty-looking men in jeans and cowboy hats stand watch as crowds fill the dusty bleachers and spread folding chairs, cracking open cans of Miller Lite and marking pictures of cows in a catalog. "We're going to have a hell of a sale today!" booms the auctioneer from the microphone behind a small corral. "Let's sell cattle!" The corral doors swing open and a Texas longhorn cow dances out, followed closely by her calf, as the auctioneer begins his cadence and bidders up the price. "Sold!" cries the auctioneer, "for $3,600."

Cattle breeders, farmers and beef men from across the country pay as much as $14,000 apiece for cows and bulls like the ones paraded inside the Culpeper Agricultural Center in Virginia. Practically speaking, however, longhorn cattle aren't worth much. They're bony and yield little meat, although very lean. But they are durable American legends, and they still can turn heads.

"Everybody's into horns. You gotta have horns," says Jim Atwell, 63, a Grifton, N.C., breeder who sold five of his 110 head. "A longhorn's like a collector's item."

The Culpeper auction is one of only five held each year along the East Coast. (Similar events are held weekly Texas.) No vegetarians here. Children munch on free hamburgers. A cardboard cutout of John Wayne proclaims, "I eat Texas longhorn meat, Pilgrim."

Longhorns have roamed the United States for 500 years, munching on roughage and other food that most cattle won't touch. They are genetically healthy and fertile. "What else has the long-running history that this breed has?" asks Darol Dickinson, president of the International Texas Longhorn Association and owner of Dickinson Cattle Co. in Barnesville, Ohio.

In Texas and the Midwest, the cattle have become status symbols. Bankers, lawyers and company executives vie to buy the ones with the longest horns. Atwell boasted that two of his head are among the top 40 in the country in horn length. Each year, the Texas Longhorn Journal publishes a list.

Not just a source of pride, horns also are a sign of purity. But buyers look at the animals' ancestries as well as the size of their horns when shopping around at auctions. There are seven families of longhorns. A family tree, of sorts, is listed beside each longhorn's picture in the auction catalog.

And rightfully so, says Wendell Gephart, 46, a buyer from State College, Pa. Longhorns are serene animals but very protective of their young. He points to his eyebrow as he tells a story about a longhorn cutting him when he tried to separate her from a calf.