‘Real fence is bullshit’

Garrett Godfrey, ranch hand at J Lazy S Angus Ranch, moves cattle with Chyenne Smith on a Bureau of Land Management grazing allotment near Salmon, Idaho, in May. Credit: Louise Johns/High Country News “It watches with argus eyes the inside and outside, up, down, and lengthwise; it prevents the ‘ins’ from being ‘outs’; and the ‘outs’ from being ‘ins’; watches at day-break, at noontide, at sunset and all night long.” — Glidden Barb-Fence Journal, 1885 Drool glinted in the sun as the cattle in a small enclosure on the McFarland White Ranch tossed their heads and, one by one, funneled into a steel chute designed to hold them still. Metal screeched as the gates opened and closed behind them. Some mooed as Harrison White approached, carrying a thick black polymer collar. White’s multigenerational family ranch lies a dozen miles away from tiny Two Dot, Montana, in the forested foothills where the Crazy Mountains slump into the Musselshell River Valley’s rolling plains.

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