1880s - The Cowhunters of Lake County
Excerpt from “Pioneers of Lake County” by William F. Gouveia (1989) P. 38-39
LAKE COUNTY COWHUNTERS
Before the arrival of the lumbermen, farmers, and citrusmen, Lake County was open
range and the domain of hardy cattlemen.
Their nearly forgotten story comes to life in the words of Lake County's premiere
cowhunter, Ben Reeves, and fellow cattleman,
Austin Merritt.
Ben Reeves and Austin Merritt, old trail-riding buddies, got together in later years
to recount the joys and rigors of cow hunting in Lake County:
Ben Reeves:
"My dad was in the cow business from the time I was eight years old until I was twenty-four years old and I was constantly in the woods looking after cattle. I worked for the Earl Cattle Co. of Plymouth,
Florida for about eight years looking after a stock of cattle west of the Apopka Canal that ranged from Howey-in-the-Hills to Bloomfield, Yalaha, Okahumpka, and down as low as Minneola.
We dipped the cattle in 1918 and 1919 for ticks, compulsory Dip Low...
It was free cow range.
We had small pastures built on Half Moon Lake north of Villa City and at Howey-in-the-Hills at the dip vats for hold up pastures.
"I used to cow hunt all down around Lake Louise, South Clermont.
At that time, if you hunted good and hard all day on a good horse and
just happened to miss one house, why, you didn't see anybody that day.
It'd be maybe the next day before you'd meet somebody.
It was good open woods.
You could crack a cow whip and hear it ring all around the bottom
of the hills.
"It was also the Earl Cattle Co.
who had approximately 3000 head of
cattle in these counties (Lake and Orange) and we had to gather them in
the Spring and in the Fall and transfer from lowland to highland and that
took in the area around Wekiva Springs, Rock Springs, Cassia, Paisley and
all up and down the St. Johns River and the Wekiva and Blackwater.
In them (sic) days there was all open range.
If a man had a little garden he had to keep it fenced up.
There were lots of cattle in the woods.
We would camp out from Monday morning 'til Saturday night and gather these
cattle and then we'd mark and brand in the spring.
Lots of fellas would meet.
We'd camp right out in the woods with just a blanket and saddle for
your pillow and a slicker to cover up with."
Ben:
"It used to be a free range over in that territory.
There were very few
places that was fenced up - just truck farms and two or three little groves.
Used to do a lot of cowhunting around Mr. Merritt's, around Big Prairie.
Uncle Tom Smith, he was a horse trader and I dealt in horses,
too,
and I
traded horses with him several times over there.
I was only about seventeen
or eighteen years old but had many a good time."
Austin:
"Them (sic) days they expected a lot more out of a boy than they do
now.
We didn't have too much teenage delinquency.
I don't think we were
any better than these boys are now but we just had more to
do.
I remember
one time my Daddy sent me about fifteen miles driving ten bulls, them ol'
range bulls, too,
spanish stock,
and four dogs and me.
Then on the way we
found another one that was worse
than any I had in the bunch.
We put him in
and carried him on and sold him,
too,
to Earl Bass of Kissimmee.
I came
home with $111.00 instead of $100.00 and my Dad thought maybe I'd picked up
somebody else's bull.
so he was kinda worried 'til he found out that I did
get
the old unbranded bull."
Ben:
"Uncle John Bronson had some of the best cow dogs that anybody ever
raised in the world. He could go in the woods and round up a hundred
head of cattle right by hisself (sic) and put one of them dogs up on the
side and holler to
'em,
'Go ahead of 'em and hold
'em, turn
'em'
He'd
motion with his hands and them dogs took
'em wherever he told
'em to take
'em.
We used to take our cattle from the Orange County side and put
'em
on the marsh in the winter time and we'd carry
'em in the Spring of the
year and the summertime when the wild oats bloomed over the hills.
We’d carry five or six hundred head across Double Run Swamp there at Astatula
and turn 'em loose on them hills and some of ‘em would go twenty-five miles
from where we left 'em.
Then in the Fall of the year when everybody began
to round up and bring to a central pen, we all parted, and if they found
one of my cattle down in their area,
they took care of him just the same
as if
it was theirs and I done (sic) them the same way.
Austin:
"Ben, I'll bet you left out something.
I'll bet you always had some
jerky in your saddle pocket.
You could whittle that off and then water it
to taste awful good because it happened to be pretty salty."
Ben:
"...Old man Bill Clay had about one-hundred twenty-five head of the finest
cows there was down in that country
- lived in Mabel, and he used to come up
there, rode an old sorrel horse with a blaze face and he went barefooted.
When he started home, if one of them cows run outta that bunch and started
to go back, he'd jump off that horse and run him right down, turn him around
and make him come back.
The old horse had a stiff front leg and he (Bill
Clay)
couldn't run him but he could jump off that horse..."
"This old gentleman lived down south - Monte Vista was where he lived -
and he had his cattle scattered all over the woods in Howey and around
Okahumpka.
His nome was John Bronson.
He could tell you the times when
he would leave his home on Monday morning and meet me
up in the Howey woods
up there and we'd have a piece of combread and a half-dozen or dozen biscuits
and some boiled eggs and some baked sweet potatoes and a little wallet of corn
for the horse.
We'd be up there for a week at a time and everybody was just
'crackers'.
Them was the good old days."
[Contributors: Ben Reeves, Austin Merritt, and William F. Gouveia]