SEM 230, Don Robertson, Director of Natural Resources for the Seminole Tribe

Transcription

1 ,, Director of Natural Resources for the Seminole Tribe Because of his long-time work with the Seminole Tribe cow and calf operation (5), Robertson offers considerable insight into the recent history and current efforts in the industry. He explains that the Tribe is trying to breed Black Brangus back into the herds, which the Tribe used to have but bred out (3). The shift to beefmaster cattle was costly since they are not high quality but produce hamburger meat; they will damage a reputation (7). Robertson is striving to change the quality of the Tribe s herds, not the numbers (8), and he will do it through breeding (11). He has some idea about the government cattle program of the 1930s the poor condition of the cattle, that it was the beginning of some cross breeding Herefords with local stock (4). He believes it would be ideal for the Tribe to have their own feed lot to eliminate middlemen and cut out the transportation costs in their calf sales (21). Although some women work in the cattle industry, they are outnumbered by men; women have to be careful because men are stronger and they can move around better. (13). There are more cattle at Brighton than Big Cypress, and some land 11,000 acres is leased on the Miccosukee reservation to keep 3,000 head of Tribe s cattle; much of the herds at Big Cypress and Brighton are of individual owners (15). Extension work with the herds is by the University of Florida s IFAS through their agents at Fort Pierce, Ona, Immokalee, and Gainesville, and Robertson does a lot himself (15). He discusses briefly the improved pastures and agricultural leasing the Tribe engaged in, and mentions US Army Corps of Engineers and Tribal water management changes as new developments in the last thirty years (17). The environment and resource use has not changed too much, to his mind; hunting, for example, has always occurred, and still does at Big Cypress, by tribal members and through the hunts they sell (20). Over the last twenty to thirty years, rodeo has changed considerably, with prizes well more then ten times what they were a couple of decades ago (14). Seminoles who are involved with the rodeos have the EIRA and also the PRCA. Robertson used to rodeo with the Indians in the 1950s through the 1970s, before he worked with them; They have always been in rodeo, and it is pretty strong still with the Seminole Tribe (14). Over the last two years, the Tribe has grown sugarcane. More recently, a couple of individuals have begun to plant it. Cane does well, it diversifies their agricultural efforts, and it may be more profitable than cows. They have contracts with US Sugarcane to grind it, another company to harvest. All the cane is at Brighton (17-19). Ninety-seven percent of the land is used for cattle. Although some of it is suitable for cane, most of it will remain in cattle (19).

2 SEM230 Interviewee: Interviewer: Rosalyn Howard 24 April 1999 H: I am meeting today with. We are at the Cattle and Range office right after the cattle sale, April 24, Don, can you tell me what your position is with the Tribe? R: I am the Director of Natural Resources, that is all the natural resources with the Seminole Tribe of Florida, Inc. I am the cattle manager. I am over cattle operations and land operations. H: What was your function here today at the cattle sale? R: Well, I coordinate the sales, all the cattle sales for the Seminole Tribe, whether it is a private treaty, or you send it to the livestock market, or it is sent over the video sale like we had today. I coordinate and sell all the cattle, and then at shipping time I am the one who coordinates everything and handles the shipping. H: How long have you been doing this with the Tribe? R: Since I came to work in Ten years. H: What are the differences in the cattle breeds people have today versus twenty or thirty years ago? R: Well, we are kind of changing our operation, our cattle breeding. It started about four years ago. Prior to that they had Brahman cattle, Hereford cattle, using Brahman bulls, and then they used Hereford bulls, and then they went to

3 Page 3 Beefmasters that is a breed, called the Beefmaster and they were using Beefmaster bulls, and Brahford bulls, and Beefmaster cows. Now we are in the process of changing to get more genetics into our herd and get what the packer wants and the consumer wants, the type of cattle that do well in the feed yards and that do well when you slaughter them at the end product. So that the meat is more palatable, it has a more consistent taste to it. This is the kind of genetics that we are trying to put in our cattle. We have switched to using Brangus bulls, which we started about four years ago. We are upgrading, through the cows that we have now, trying to get everything to Black Brangus. For that reason, like I said, we are going to put genetics, we will put better grading in the cattle, better quality, and that is the kind of cattle that they are looking for in the feed yards, that the packers like to buy, that feed. And then they slaughter better. So, we are in the process now of changing, which hopefully in the next four years we will be all black everything, all our mother cows, all our brood cows. By keeping the heifers and buying replacement heifers we will be keeping all the black ones and pretty soon we will have the whole herd black again. At one time there used to be Brangus cattle here in Big Cypress, just Big Cypress. Most all of the cows here were black at one time. But then they changed and went into the Beefmasters, and finally they just kind of bred the black out. I think that was a mistake. I think they should have stayed with the black cattle and the Charolais-type cattle. Just like on that sale today, the black

4 Page 4 calves and the Charolais-type calves, they brought the most money. Compared to the Beefmasters, the Hereford, [and the] Brahford-type cattle that were sold, those cattle were anywhere from three to five cents a pound more. We have been trying to gear up to get from point B to point A, to that deal, and that is what we are striving now to do. We have been buying black bulls now, Black Brangus bulls, for four years, and mostly here we have got this just about all covered with black bulls now in Big Cypress. We are about half because we started here quicker. H: So, in Brighton it is about half as many, you are saying? R: Yes. Only about half of the bull battery that we use is black and the other half is still Beefmaster and Brahford bulls, which we are going to phase out. We are phasing them out each year. We will go buy maybe anywhere from thirty to fifty bulls at each place, and we get rid of forty or fifty bulls of the Beefmaster and then we are replacing them with the Black Brangus. So, I would say that about two more years and we will have all the bulls changed, and in maybe four years we will have all the females changed, maybe. H: So it is the black that sell better? That is the more palatable kind of beef? R: Yes.

5 Page 5 H: Do you know anything about the cattle or ranching practices before the government introduced cattle to the Seminoles? R: No, not really. I just know that the government sent all those Hereford cattle here out of Arizona, way back there in the 1930s, I believe it was. They sent them in here from those drought-stricken areas of Arizona and New Mexico. Of course, that is the kind of cattle that was out there, the Herefords. They sent them in here on rail cars. I do know that they went to Cornwell Cornwell, Florida and they unload them at Cornwell, which is North of Brighton, and quite a few of them were dead because they came out of that drought and they were poor. The ones that survived, they drove them to Brighton, and that is how they got a lot of the Hereford in their cattle, starting there. And then they started cross-breeding and all, and then they began to come up over the years. I do know that much about it. H: Can you tell me about the differences between Brighton and Big Cypress, besides that they have a little bit different stock of cows? Are there more cattle ranchers on Brighton reservation than there are on Big Cypress? R: Yes, there are probably ten or twelve more cattle owners in Brighton than there are in Big Cypress. One reason, there is probably more pastureland, and that is why they have more cattle owners. There is more pastureland available up there.

6 Page 6 H: Besides the calves, are there any other products from this cattle industry? R: Well, whenever a cow has run its course, or it has gotten old and its production has gone down, we sell them. We sell those cows. Sometimes we ship them to a packing house where they are slaughtered and most of that beef is used for hamburger meat. Or we send it to the livestock market and they buy it off the livestock market, cows that are worn out, or crippled, or [there is] something wrong with them that they are not in good production anymore. We send those in. Plus bulls that are crippled, or bulls that got too old, or their semen is no good anymore, we send them to the livestock market and they are sold there. But basically our deal is calves, we sell the calves off. Like today, we sold those calves on this video sale, what we call contract calves. We are contracting those calves. They were sold here today, April 24 th ; well, the delivery date on those cattle, to those people who bought our calves, will be in August. August first we will start shipping these calves out. We will just take them right off their mamas right then and they will be loaded. They will be sorted for sex and weight and then they will be put on trucks and sent to the destination of whoever bought our cattle. I will know that in a few days, who bought our cattle, the different people that bought our cattle. They are sent to their destinations in which they will raise them from then on. But we are a cow and calf operation, is what we are. H: What kind of changes have you seen in the commercial livestock industry over the past thirty years?

7 Page 7 R: Well, there has been a lot of changes. Compared to what they used to raise, I mean, the cattle have gotten a lot better than they were thirty years ago, in quality. You just mean with just the Seminole Tribe, or do you mean all over? H: The Seminole Tribe. R: Yes, the quality has gotten better. When they first started they were using Brahman bulls on Hereford cows and they were getting a pretty good hybrid cross. But the packers and the buyers, they do not like that heavy Brahman cross, they just do not do well. I mean, it makes a good female, a good crossbred female to breed Brangus bulls, or Angus bulls, or Hereford bulls to, but they have changed their cattle. Their cattle have gotten better. Then, when they went to the Beefmasters, that breed, for some reason, was hot at one time. I mean, people liked them, but they did not kill good. H: What do you mean, they did not kill good? R: The end product. When they finished them, they went to feed lots, and they killed those steers, they did not grade very good. You have your Standard, you have Select, and then you have U.S. Choice, and then you have U.S. Prime. The correct grading, probably, you would like at least everybody tries to shoot for this and it is hard you would like to have at least eighty percent of your cattle grade Choice when they come out of the feed yard. When they are finished feeding them, and they are ready to be slaughtered, and then they slaughter

8 Page 8 them, then they inspect the carcasses. The USDA [United States Department of Agriculture] inspects the carcasses, the graders. You would like to see eighty percent grade Choice and then the rest, twenty percent, can be Standard and Select. That is a lower grade of meat. The Beefmasters were probably grading about twenty-eight percent Choice and about the rest would be Select. And that is a lower grade of meat. And so, this is why we have tried to put these genetics in our herd now, because the black cattle, the Angus cattle and the Brangus cattle, for some reason that English breed of cattle grades, they grade. They have a higher percent of grading Choice than... they probably grade better than any breed of cattle there is. So we are infusing that black-hided cattle into our herds to get where we were. We were kind of losing our reputation for a little while with these Beefmaster cattle. They just were not grading and buyers just will not buy it. I saw that today. I saw Beefmaster cattle sell today that were five cents under everything else. They were straight Beefmasters. That is one reason that we are making a change. But they have come a long way in their cattle from way back there in the 1930s up to now. And we still have a long way to go. I mean, we are fifty percent of what I would like to see them be. That is why I said in maybe four more years we will be at the point that I think we will be raising some real good reputation cattle again. When you get cattle that will do like that, that will meet the criteria that those packers and feedlot people are wanting to buy, when you

9 Page 9 get to that point, they will be wanting your cattle. They will pay a premium to get those cattle because those cattle perform for those people. They will gain good in the feed yard, they will grade good, and they will cut out good when they slaughter. And when you get people wanting your cattle, and you get several people wanting your cattle, that is what makes that price go up. But if it is just that you have cattle out there that are just fairly-doing cattle, they are going to pay you that fairly-doing price. They are not going pay that premium. That is where I am trying to get our cattle herds today, into that pricing. And it has moved. It has come a long way from what it used to be. H: What do you see as the future for the livestock industry here with the Seminoles? You mentioned you want to improve the grade of the cattle. Do you see this industry as a tremendously expanding industry, or the size of it remaining about the same but the quality changing? R: I believe the size will probably stay. It may get a little bigger, but we have a ways to go on the quality. That is what I am striving for, to get a better quality. I would rather have 5,000 real good quality cattle than I would 10,000 just mediocre. I mean, that is in comparison; you can do a lot more with better quality cows than you can with just cows. If we work at it, and the industry is changing so fast as it is now, and we can catch up with it, then I would say we are going to have to go to good quality or we are going fall by the wayside. I mean, people that are not going to make these changes in the next ten years, they will either go out of

10 Page 10 business or they will just get paid for ground beef. I mean, their beef, that is all it will be good for is to grind it up. They call it grinders. This is what I have been striving for ever since I have been here, to raise good quality cattle. Because if you do not, with the technology that they are doing now, with all this ultrasound.... They are ultrasounding these carcasses, they are ultrasounding live cattle to see what size rib eyes they have, and they are testing all of these sires now, bulls that they are raising and selling. They are testing them for what they call a sheer test on their meat, their offspring. That sheer test is for the tenderness. They are trying to get a consistent product. You can go to a store now and you can buy a U.S. Choice piece of beef at Publix, you can go over to Winn Dixie and get the same, that says U.S. Choice, New York Strip, and you can take them home and cook them and sometimes they have two different tastes. One will be real good and tender and the other one will be kind of tough. That is what is hurting the cattle industry today, they are not raising a consistent piece of meat. Until they get it down to where most of your animals that go to slaughter, steers and heifers, if they have the right palatability, they have the tenderness, they have the juiciness, and their product is consistent most of the time, that is what they are going to now. And the people that do not get on to that program, that do not start raising beef like that, that beef is just going to be what it is for. They going grind it up and make hamburgers and you are going to be paid for hamburger meat. They are using electronic tags now in these cattle

11 Page 11 that go to feed yards. They are putting electronic tags in their ears and they know exactly where those cattle come from when they kill them. They will have, for example, Seminole Tribe. And if those cattle do not perform in the feed yard, that guy is not coming back and buy your cattle. He is going to say, to hell with the Seminole Tribe, I am not going go back and buy their cattle any more, if we are not raising the right kind. Because they are spending a lot of money. Just like they are ultrasounding cattle now, they are ultra sounding the backs on these steers and heifers. Say they have been in a feed yard one hundred days, and they have another fifty days to go to finish those cattle, they will go in and ultrasound these cattle with a machine, it is called ultrasound, and they will ultrasound those ribeyes and they will know just exactly how big those ribeyes are in that animal, or the back fat on them and all. They are not going to feed that animal if it has not got the right size ribeye. They will cut him right there. They will cut him out and he will go to slaughter, and he will be made as hamburger. They will go ahead and finish that carcass, take it on the next fifty days, because it is costing them so much money to feed those cattle, and then they get to the end product and it is no good and they have wasted a pile of money. This is that technology that I am talking about. It is moving in that direction so fast, I thought it would be ten years; it is not going to be ten years. I thought that four years ago, it is going be ten years or twelve years before they ever get to that. Heck, it is done it in two or three years now. They are moving

12 Page 12 into that, and that is what is going to happen. And if you do not raise the right kind, you are just going to be an ordinary rancher, they are not going want your cattle. And then, the ones that do, they are going pay a premium for that kind of cattle. And that is what I am trying to get us to, where we are raising high quality beef that at that end product will be a high quality carcass. Then that way they will want to buy your cattle. And they will pay a premium for them. H: So, the changeover that you are trying to achieve, are you just trying to do it by the breeding, or are you going to buy a herd of the black cows? R: We are going to do it by the breeding. We are going to grade up through using high quality bulls, bulls that are proven, that have performance data behind them. They have bred cows, they have taken those calves and put them in feed yards or grassed them and put them in feed yards and they gained three or three and a half pounds a day, and they slaughtered U.S. Choice, and they have all this data behind them. I try to buy bulls out of herds, out of people that have the data behind their bulls, and buy those high quality bulls, and we will upgrade our cattle through a breeding system. H: Is the price affected to any degree by the transportation costs, because of where you are located? R: Yes. The same calves that were selling in Texas were a little higher today, you could see that up here. They do not have that freight. There is about a seven

13 Page 13 cent per pound, seven dollars per hundred a hundred weight, difference in transportation. So, a calf they pay eighty-five cents for here, they would probably pay ninety-one or ninety-two cents in Texas because they do not have that freight in it. And that hurts us, that hurts us from way down, because all your packing houses, all your feed yards, are all out there. And that is the only place you can feed cattle because it is too hot here, it is too humid, too much rain. They are in those arid areas where it gets cold and cattle do well on feed out there. Like I was telling Carolyn today, it is easier to transport the cattle to the feed than it is to bring the feed to us. And if we had a feed yard, it would get too muddy here in the rainy season. It would get too muddy, and cattle would not do good. But those areas are suited better to feed cattle in feed yards out there. So, yes, that transportation, it is costly to us. But we do not have any other way. We do not have any feed yards in Florida because of what I said. That is why our cattle are a little bit cheaper than anybody else s in the United States since the closer you are to the feed areas, the less the freight is. H: Although your costs are comparable because you still have to feed cattle, and I imagine the prices for that are the same. Can you tell me about the differences, or are there differences, in the work that men versus women do in the cattle industry? R: Well, there are probably way more men that work in the cattle industry than there are women, but I do know some pretty good women who ranch. We have some

14 Page 14 here who ranch, that are cattle owners in the Seminole Tribe that are women, and some of them do a good job. I mean, they are out there checking their cattle and feeding their cattle hay. But there are way more men that work cattle. And it is a little dangerous, I mean, to get in the pens with cattle and move them around and work them, give them all their health shots and de-worm them and stuff like we do. It does get... it is really... women have to be careful because men are stronger and they can move around better. But there are some good women cowboys that I do know. Or cowgirls, I should say. [Laughter] I know some that can rope just as good as the men. Maybe better. Who knows? [Laughter] But there are a lot of women on the outside, out in Texas and in the West, there are a lot of women cowgirls out there. But there are more men that do the work. I mean, it is mostly men, really. H: Tell me about rodeos. Are they larger and more important events than they were thirty years ago? R: Yes, ma am. The rodeo business has gotten way bigger. There is a lot more money nowadays than there used to be, and it is more organized. There are a lot more rodeos over the United States and even in Florida. There is a lot more than there used to be back when I used to rodeo myself, and the money is way bigger now. The Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association, the PRCA, they are big. I mean, I remember when you were lucky to win $500, where you can win $5,000 now at an event or $10,000 at an event. Back in my day, you were lucky

15 Page 15 to win $500 in any event. Nowadays it has gotten up there. It is nothing for some of those bull riders in that Professional Bull Riders Association to win $150,000 or $175,000 a year, just in winnings, where you were lucky to win $12,000 or $10,000 a year, back a long time ago. H: Did you used to be involved in the rodeo? R: Yes, ma am. I used to bulldog. They call it steer wrestling or bulldogging, but I used to be in it. There are a lot of Indian cowboys here. H: Yes, and there is an Indian Rodeo Association, isn t there? R: Yes. Over here, where we are, they call it the EIRA, the Eastern Indian Rodeo Association, and there are some good Indian cowboys that rodeo. They have their own, and then they rodeo in the PRCA also. There are a lot of good Indian cowboys all over the United States. And it is pretty big in the Seminole Tribe. I mean, it has been here a long time. And when I was not working for the Seminole Tribe, I used to come out to Brighton because I was born and raised in Okeechobee and I used to come out to Brighton and practice with them, back in the 1950s, the 1960s, and the 1970s. I used to come out there to Brighton and practice with those Indian cowboys. They have always been in rodeo, and it is pretty strong still with the Seminole Tribe.

16 Page 16 H: What about extension help for people who are raising livestock. Are there extension agents, or who would they go to for that type of [help]? R: Well, of course, IFAS [Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences at the University of Florida] has an experimental station at Immokalee, and Ona, and in Fort Pierce, and, of course, Gainesville. We get assistance from them. And then we have Sabrina Tuttle. She works with the extension office in the University of Florida plus with the Seminole Tribe. H: And she lives here? R: She lives in Okeechobee. She works at all the reservations. It is through a grant that we have her or an extension agent, but a lot of the technical advice comes from me also, for the 4H, the cattle owners, and the cattle program, and the Man U program. H: So, you are in charge of cattle for all the different reservations? R: Yes. The cattle are on this reservation, here on Big Cypress, and at Brighton, and then the Tribe has a herd of its own over here. We lease part of the Miccosukee reservation. We lease 11,000 acres from them, just down the road here, it borders the Big Cypress reservation. And that herd of cattle, we have 3,000 head there. That belongs to the Seminole Tribe of Florida, Inc. Mitchell Cypress is the President of that. That is a Tribal herd right there, where Brighton

17 Page 17 and Big Cypress are individuals, they are individual cattle owners. We have forty up there and thirty down here. They are individual herds and I am the technical advisor over all of them, and then that down there, I manage that also for the Tribe. H: Compared to all the individual owners, what is the size of the Tribe s herd? R: Right now we have, at Brighton, counting the two-year-old heifers and the yearling heifers, we have 5,500 head up there at Brighton. Here we have about 3,500 head, counting the yearlings, and the two-year-olds, and the cattle owners cows. And that is not including the Bulls. We have about 160 Bulls here, and we have about 220 up there at Brighton. H: You say you grew up around Okeechobee, near the Brighton reservation. Can you tell about changes in the physical environment in this area over the last thirty years? What has changed? R: Well, the land has changed. Of course, when they first started out they had a lot of native pastures, just native grasses, and then they went into... they leased out the land to farmers, and they came in and planted tomatoes and different vegetables. And then after they grew their crops, the non-indians, they planted it back in grass and improved pasture. So, there has been a lot of land turned over in thirty or thirty-five years. It has turned over into improved pastures, and then we have a water resources [office] that works within the Tribe.

18 Page 18 H: Is that part of what you are in charge of? R: No. That is a different deal from me. They have come in with engineers from the [U.S. Army] Corp of Engineers, from South Florida. They have set up ditches, they have designed ditches to bring in water off of different canals, for watering livestock and irrigating the land. They have their own water quality where they test the water. This they did not have thirty-five years ago. And the water coming in for the tribe comes in from north of us, from Lake Istokpoga, and Kissimmee chain, and all that area. Where that water flows south, it comes onto the reservation, and they test the water every two weeks and they have, like I said, the water resources. They have that water quality where they test the water: when it leaves us it is clean, where it goes into the lake, since we are so close to the lake. The same way here: the water comes in from the North, they test the water and try to meet the environmental [regulations.] [End of Tape Side A]... some big change up there. And then they have their own environmental [offices] within the Tribe. We have to do just like the outside does. I mean, we are not any different than they are as far as restrictions and different environmental methods, and BMPs Best Management Practices that we try to do on the reservation and with the pastures or the land. We have to meet those standards also, like anybody else. So, there has been a big change. Plus, we have changed also. They did not grow sugarcane thirty years ago, and we are into sugarcane. We are into citrus. We also have some citrus groves, and we also

19 Page 19 have close to a thousand acres of sugarcane now, which we will probably increase a little bit each year, four or five hundred acres, or maybe more, if we can. But we are advancing and getting diversified, which is one of the things I thought we should have done, and which we have done. H: Has the sugarcane been profitable? R: Yes, ma am. We have only harvested twice. We just put it in a couple years ago. Carolyn, she is over at the sugarcane. We started it a couple years ago, myself, and Carolyn, and a couple more of us. It looks like it is going to be more profitable than the cows, to be honest with you. [Laughter] I never thought I would say that because I am originally a cowman. I wanted to go to sugarcane a couple years ago, and we got the approval from the Board of Directors, me and Carolyn. We kind of put our heads together and got it started. A lot of people were against it, to start with, but now they have seen the profitability that is going come off of it and the future of it looks real good. So, we are gradually getting bigger and bigger in sugarcane. H: So, do tribal members work in the fields? R: Yes. We have some tribal members in the sugarcane. And in land use, which I am over, we give them help. We help them with some of our equipment. We have some operators that disk up the ground. Of course, some of it is contracted out to people that have heavier equipment and stuff, or the engineer sets off the

20 Page 20 water system and all the irrigation and the drainage and stuff. We do some of the work, plus we contract some of it too. And we have two tribal members who have put in sugarcane this year, they went in and put in some sugarcane in for themselves, and this is new also. They just planted it a few months ago. But we have already harvested two crops. And it has been good. The tonnage and all has been real good, that we have cut, and the sucrose has been real high in it. It has done well. U.S. Sugar [Corporation, Clewiston] grinds all our cane, and we have a contract with Sugar Land Harvesters to do the harvesting of our cane. As a matter of fact, next Friday we are having our appreciation dinner for sugarcane. We have completed our second year of harvesting and we are having a little party at Brighton. All of the sugarcane is in Brighton. H: Since you said its looking more profitable than the cattle business, can you see a lot of the land that is now used to breed cattle being turned into sugarcane? R: Yes, probably ninety-seven percent of the land is used for cattle right now, or maybe a little less, but not much. Not all of the land is suitable for sugarcane. I mean, there are areas on the reservation that would not probably be profitable to grow sugarcane in. The quality of the dirt is not good enough, but where there are places that sugarcane can be grown, it might go that direction. It could. I do not think you will ever see it, we will still be big in the cattle, still a large amount of it will be used for cattle.

21 Page 21 H: As far as how much people relied on the environment to make a living, to survive, have you seen a big change in their reliance on the natural resources? R: No, not really. The ones who have been in the cattle business have been in it a long time. It is just like I said, the pastures have changed, and we do have environmental restrictions that we do follow, as far as water and the lease of the land. But I have not seen any real big [changes] except just the changes I said. H: What about hunting and fishing? Is that something that would come under your regulation? R: No, ma am. The Tribe has their own... Since the reservations, they hunt. Now, nobody is supposed to hunt except tribal members. But at Big Cypress here they sell hunts, they have a hunting deal where they sell hunts. They hunt wild hogs and they hunt different exotic game. They have an area over here that is probably about twenty-eight hundred acres, I think, that they use for hunting and they do sell those hunts over there. H: When you say they sell them, what do you mean? R: Well, they charge a fee for hunting. Anybody who wants to go hunting, he has to buy what they sell; like if they are going to sell a wild hog hunt, they get X number of dollars for hunting wild hog out there. And they have guides that take them hunting. But that is just a certain area. They call it hunting adventures.

22 Page 22 That belongs to the council. The rest of this hunting is done by tribal members only, and it is protected for them, just to hunt. No non-indians or nobody outside can hunt. H: Well, that is about all of the questions I have to ask you. Do you have anything to add that I have not asked that you think we should know? R: Well, we are always looking, trying to plan and put together. I would like to see some more things in the cattle industry done that we are not doing, which I discussed with Carolyn today at this sale. I would like to see us get into, maybe, owning our own feed lot out West and feeding our cattle instead of putting them on a sale and selling them like this. Just take them, raise them here, truck them to our own feed yard, and feed them. Our end product would be going into the packinghouse instead of the middleman, like we are selling now. Somebody buys them, and they take them from there, and put pounds on them on grass or feed. And then they go to a feed. I would like to see us breed our product, raise our product, and finish our product. I would love to see that happening to us. I think me and Carolyn are going to probably go, maybe in a few weeks or so, scout out some of this. We almost bought a feed yard eight years ago. It did not take place and I was pushing hard for it back then, and I still would like to see that done, [that] we raise our own beef and finish our own beef. You can make money in it like that, instead of giving up part of it like we do, now. You can make money on the end if your program is good and is run right, and managed right. It

23 Page 23 is just like anything else, if you run it right. I think they would see more money coming back to them that way than they do now. We are kind of at their mercy. We are way down in South Florida and we have to truck our cattle, and prices. We are kind of at the mercy of the buyer right now. I mean, I no-sold some cattle today, which last year I did not. I did not like the price, and I no-sold them and I will put them back on the sale. I hope I made the right move. Maybe they might be a little higher, this weight of cattle. I thought the other weights we sold were okay. But that five-hundred-pound calf, I thought he was sold too cheap today, so I no-sold him. H: What does that mean, no-sold him? R: I did not sell him. H: So, even if someone bid on it, they are not going to get it? R: No, they are not going to get it because I no-sold it at the end. Whenever they did not go any more and they said sold, then I was sitting on the telephone and I told the man up there at Superior Livestock Auction in Fort Worth, I told him nosell that lot. So they just no-sold it. They announced it. But, those cattle sold too cheap, I think. And I hope when I put them back on in a couple of weeks or maybe a month, I will put them back on the video sale again, I am hoping they are a little bit better. If they are not, I made a mistake.

24 Page 24 H: What was the price that was bid for them? R: They were seventy-four sixty. H: And what price did you want? R: I wanted seventy-eight cents. And the heavier cattle, the five-hundred-seventyfive-pound steers, they almost brought seventy-four cents. They brought seventythree fifty. And they were seventy-five pounds more. That should not be that close. There should be a wider gap there. Those cattle at seventy-three fifty was okay. I sold them. But that seventy-four cents for 500, I thought it should have been up there around seventy-eight cents. That was too close to the difference of the weight. It was too close in the price, I thought, so I no-sold those 500 pounders. That is what I am saying. If we had a feed lot, we could take those cattle and not even sell anything, just ship them right on to our feed lot when they got big enough. We could ship them to our feed lot and we could grow them out, feed them and grow them out. And I think the cattle owner and the Tribe would utilize more money by doing it that way than to go through selling them like we did. And that man is going to do the same thing, what I am talking about, he is going to take them and probably put them on grass for a couple of months, then take them out of the grass pastures and go into a feed yard and feed them for 150 days and then slaughter them. That is one kind of project I would like to see done. I have wanted to see that done for a long time.

25 Page 25 Me and Carolyn are going to probably scout that out, maybe this year, or this summer, or something, and maybe look for either a feed yard to buy or go get hooked up with a feed yard some way where we could feed our own cattle and do it that way. I think we could do better because we have done it. We have fed some of our cattle and we did pretty good. I mean, we have made money at it, made more money than we would if we would have had sold at that time, you see. I would like to see that happening. I would like to see, maybe, in the cattle business, us get into a big heifer program, raising heifers. Growing out heifers: keeping our heifers, growing them out, and breeding them. And selling them. This is the tribal herd I am talking about. And selling them as bred females. Because I saw some females sell yesterday that were bred heifers, having their first calf, and I saw some that had a calf at their side and were bred back, and they were bringing $800 and $900 a head. Yesterday, on that video sale. And I think, instead of selling a $350 dollar heifer, like we are doing now, keep it a year and a half and sell it for $800, and I think you can see a pretty good profit that way. Those are some of things I would like to see done. Plus, what I said, get better quality cattle, which I have been striving to do. Through genetics and using real good, high quality, good performance-tested bulls, performance data bulls, upgrade our cattle like that. Those are some of the goals I am trying to get done and hope that I will. H: Thank you, very much for your time.

26 Page 26 R: You are welcome.