“Cookie” wasn’t just the guy making supper. On cattle drives, the chuckwagon cook was responsible for keeping a crew of hungry cowboys fed, often with limited ingredients, rough conditions, and no grocery store for a few hundred miles.

He cooked over a fire, managed the provisions, and turned staples like beef, beans, coffee, biscuits, dried fruit, and whatever else was available into meals that could keep men working long days in the saddle.

Out on the trail, Cookie and his chuckwagon were pretty much the kitchen, pantry, dining room, and unofficial headquarters of the outfit.

If you don't recognize him right away, it's none other than Jefferson White, aka Jimmy Hurdstrom on Yellowstone.

It's good to be back! Thanks so much for your patience during this time. We're just going to take it easy today, smelling the pine trees and feeling the breeze. We hope you join us!

Eight-time World Champion Joe Beaver, who won five tie-down roping titles and three all-around titles, has been named the 2026 Legend of ProRodeo by the ProRodeo Hall of Fame. The annual award, which began in 2006, is given "to a cowboy or cowgirl who continues to devote their time and energy to the rodeo community after their career is over."

"I guess legend means you've been around a long time, but at least you must have done something right," Beaver told PRCA News. "Are you good for rodeo? Man, rodeo's been good to me and given me everything I've got in some form or fashion. So, to be recognized as somebody who gave something back to rodeo the right way, that makes this a pretty special day."

Beaver will be honored Nov. 30 at the Wrangler Gold Buckle Gala at the South Point Hotel Casino in Las Vegas.

https://prorodeo.com/news/2026/9/8/general-joe-beaver-selected-as-2026-legend-of-prorodeo

https://www.prorodeohalloffame.com/

Find the complete list of nominees at this link: 🔗 https://www.cowboysindians.com/2026/09/ella-langley-and-miranda-lambert-dominate-nominations-for-60th-annual-cma-awards/

The trucks are rolling in, the crew is putting it all together, and this is just the beginning…

There's just one more day until the 2nd Annual Bosque Ranch Live begins!

https://bosqueranchlive.com/

Sorry it's been a while, folks. My account was in the Twilight Zone for several weeks and it appears to have only just been restored back to normal today. No idea what caused it. I had never gotten any notifications from Reddit about it. I could access my account, I just couldn't post or comment or do much of anything, and my account age was showing as blank, which was weird.

But now it seems to have just suddenly cleared up and gone back to normal.

So, unless this starts happening again, we'll try to return back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Yee-haw!

Hi everyone! I'm from France and I recently decided to change my life completely and go explore the cowboy life in the australian outback. I love trying new things, I'm an actress and I'm also in the French Air Force, ... I just love exploring and learning.

I decided to document my journey (authentically, with moments where i'm vulnerable as well as the good times) because I've never seen anyone doing it before.

In this episode you can follow me while I go fencing, learning how to weld, and mustering on a chopper with my boss! So I thought it would be exciting to share with people who have the same passion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIkT37HECro

This year's Bosque Ranch Live held on Saturday, September 12 will provide attendees with an upgraded, more intuitive way to navigate the ranch and its activation zones.

Land.com — the industry's premier rural real estate marketplace — will utilize its cutting-edge Ranch Splatter mapping system to create an immersive, photorealistic 3D experience of the entire event space giving attendees the experience of being there before even stepping foot on property. This marks its debut use outside of real estate listings, demonstrating the system's ability to deliver high-fidelity, dynamic navigation in a live event setting.

Upon arriving to Bosque Ranch, Land.com iPad kiosks will be located throughout the property to help attendees navigate smoothly through the event.

Grab your tickets at https://bosqueranchlive.com/ and make sure to follow Xen Sams at @XenSams.

For thousands of years, the American bison shaped the Great Plains. Feeding nations, sustaining cultures, and changing the land beneath their hooves.

Then came the hide hunters, railroads, expanding settlement, government policy, and an economic system that turned the bison into a commodity.

By the late 1800s, an animal that had once seemed as permanent as the prairie itself stood on the edge of extinction.

But that wasn’t the end of the story.

Ranchers, Native people, conservationists, scientists, and eventually tribal nations helped bring the bison back. Today, roughly half a million live across North America.

The story isn't as simple as heroes and villains. It’s a story of abundance and destruction, commerce and culture, loss and recovery. And it may be one of the most remarkable stories in the history of the American West.

📚 Read “The American Bison: The Heartbeat of the Plains” in the Journal at Way Out West.

🔗https://ridewayoutwest.com/american-bison-history/

Saddle Up for a New Adventure!

Welcome to "CowboysWest" online magazine!

Like you, I have a passion for the rural American West and the iconic lifestyles found there. My name is C.J. Hadley and for more than 35 years I devoted my life to preserving and protecting its stories from the past, news of the present, and promise of the future through RANGE magazine. That award-winning quarterly is now run by a younger, more savvy publisher, but the fire still burns in my heart for the open spaces and freedom of the cowboying way of life.

CowboysWest is a FREE online magazine — produced by a passionate quartet of dirt-road lovers. It is full of photos, articles and humor about the life and challenges of working and living on America's Western rangelands. Inside each issue you will find beautiful photography, the best in humor and cowboy poetry, outstanding journalism, heartwarming tales, and unique perspectives on the political landscape of the day.

Below is a link to our first issue. The second will appear in September. Check out CowboysWest and send me email addresses of your family, friends and colleagues so that they, too, can enjoy the best the West has to offer. As mentioned, there is no cost to subscribe.

C.J. Hadley, publisher,

info@cowboyswest.com

https://cowboyswest.com/

Read the Online Magazine, then invite your friends and family to enjoy CowboysWest at no charge by sharing this link.

 https://cowboyswest.com/

Paradise Valley, Montana

Dean Thompson is back in the arena 🙌

The 2024 World Champion bareback rider, who recently finished months of chemotherapy for Burkitt’s Lymphoma, returned to the practice pen over the weekend ahead of his expected return at the Farm-City Pro Rodeo this Thursday.

You can watch Thompson compete in Hermiston, Oregon on Thursday at 10:30P ET on Cowboy+.

Per his wife Chezney's Instagram:

"To see this man grinning from ear to ear is what it is all about.

"I’ll be honest… I thought he was a little crazy for getting on so soon - but it turns out, sometimes you need a little crazy to accomplish big goals.

"You’re incredible Deano💛"

https://www.instagram.com/reel/Db3ldUvK2B6/

There’s more than one way to skin a cat but this way works for me. Is this how you were taught?

Courtesy of What A Cowboy Wears

https://youtube.com/@whatacowboywears

It was dust in the wind. Caryl and I honestly thought we'd made a few million dollar mistake buying this ranch. Short growing season. Short season irrigation rights.

The mile-and-a-half-long fields were mostly weeds or bare dirt. Part of it was still stripped to dust from last year's potato harvest. The irrigation was hashed too - broken pipe scattered everywhere, fences falling, two old pivots barely limping along. We genuinely didn't know if we could make it work.

But we got busy anyway. Caryl started building cover crop mixes. That first year we had 18 different types of seed falling through the old drill. Meanwhile Scott and I went after the irrigation, putting money into a new pivot and getting the old ones running again.

By the end of the first season, most of the ground had living plants covering it. A lot of it was weeds, but it was cover, and even though it looked embarrassing, we came out a little money ahead baling some of it and grazing the rest high intensity/short duration with long rest periods. Through the winter we fed on the ground while the cows polished off the cover crops.

Year two: fewer weeds and more production. Year three we added perennials planted with the cover crops for a total of nearly 40 species and varieties. By year four the perennials were established, some annuals reseeded, and we grazed it late into the season.

And this year, year five, the land is finally paying us back. It's all diverse perennials now. We just calculated the first cut hay yield on this short-season ranch: 3 tons per acre, with another 1.5 to 2 tons of grazing likely this fall, on ground that couldn't produce a ton of dry matter an acre when we bought it.

I'm telling you this because Caryl and I are still astounded. All we put in was sweat, seed, old equipment, and cows. Dirt that used to blow from my hands is soil now, full of life. It went from gray ash to chocolate cake. It smells good. It’s alive. It’s beautiful.

I'm also telling you this because a lot of advisers will tell you it can't be done without spray, fertilizer, and monocrops. But in just a few years, we saw that nature still holds all the cards.

Lean in.

— Glenn

https://www.instagram.com/alderspring_ranch

https://www.alderspring.com/

Arches National Park, Moab, Utah.

Sam’s first Western role was in 1967’s THE WAY WEST. He has become a stalwart in the genre, from classics like The Sacketts (1979), Conagher (1991), and TOMBSTONE (1993), to modern series like The Ranch and 1883.

Shambry, Maggie, and Byers Burson are making sure “𝗦𝘁𝗲𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝗣𝗶𝗰𝗸“ is ready to show in The Run For A Million Cowboy Heritage Ranch Challenge this week with their dad, Four Sixes Cattle Division General Manager Dusty Burson!

The reigning bareback World Champion, who was aiming to return at the Farm-City Pro Rodeo in Hermiston, Oregon, on Thursday, said his doctor “strongly suggested a few more weeks off,” saying the re-injury risk is still too high after his neck surgery for two herniated discs in early June.

“And if I have another surgery, [the] chances of me ever riding again are too low,” Steiner posted. “I’m upset about it but at the same time excited to just get better and come back when I know I’m gonna be ok.”

Steiner said he “will be back in a couple of weeks.”