My picture of the ozark mountains

[redrobin]

This is south of me about 20 miles.
More bears than people

 

[Big Muddy rancher]

That's pretty, any ranching in that country?

Anymore daughters getting married this summer?

 

[Faster horses]

The Ozark mountains are beautiful. Lots of history there...I was born in Springfield MO, close to the Ozarks but not quite in them. MO is a beautiful state, except for the humidity. First time I ever saw cows in a pond up to their neck trying to cool off and they were Charolais cows!

 

[redrobin]

That's pretty, any ranching in that country?

Anymore daughters getting married this summer?

Ranching in the sense that you're familiar with, no. Lots of smaller cow deals with a few bigger deals as you head north. 100 cow ranches or farms , whatever you'd like to call them are pretty wide spread but smaller outfits would be more common. I've heard they'd turn cows in the mountains to summer a century ago with a few belled cows amongst them and go get the survivors in the fall with dogs and horses.
Now , if you mean by ranching , 40 cow deals that are horse back and might rope and drag calves to work them, then yes, that's fairly common but really not so much this far into the mountains. All the open ground pictured will have cows on it and a lot of the timber is government land. You can't graze ranger ricks land here.