Born in California, but we left soon enough I don't have any memories of my infanthood there. I did get to grow up in a traditional home, same parents, until death did them part. I am the victim of one older sister with no younger siblings to take my revenge out on.

West Texas was my forming ground and New Mexico became my finishing school. I grew up in a horse training family and actually got acquainted with ranching & rodeo in High School.
My dad found a niche for me in starting colts, and I was the proverbial duck & horses were my pond. I've been able to dabble in a lot of equine disciplines and work with a lot of different breeds.

The horses actually led me to the complicated relationship of horses and cattle to land (resources), and the wild variety in where & how people, cattle, horses, land & weather all interact to make a livelihood. I've been stuck somewhere in that rut every since.

While still single I tried to take it all in, working on ranches or starting colts from Texas to Montana and even New York (shortly) as well as a six months sabbatical to Australia where I got to work on 2 separate cattle stations. The bulk of my adulthood has been in commercial beef production, cow/calf operations and the only yearlings I dealt with were ranch raised replacement heifers. I do have experience in purebred operations where the main product is bull and replacement females (no steers on a purebred outfit)

A twist of fate led me to working for the USDA, Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) where I ironically found another dimension to the “human/horse/cattle/land & location” system. I also learned bureaucratic behavior from the best.

Along the way I did meet my current & only wife, Cindy and we somehow raised 2 children, that are now married, one to a farmer in Colorado, the other to a Barrel Racer in Texas. Two granddaughters are on the ground and a third is expected in December.

I am currently working as the Resource Manager on the O RO Ranch, Prescott, AZ. It is a 257,000 acre commercial cow/calf operation, and I oversee the hunting, wood products, brush control and water development. I was actually working on this same place when I first met my future wife.