Pilot Butte Hereford Ranch

Family run since the late 1880s

Doug Breese moves through the bellowing and jostling cattle with the ease that only comes with years of experience.

Never moving abruptly, he sorts the calves that need to be branded from their mothers and a couple of surly-looking bulls. Breese and an ad hoc group of ranch hands rode horses to bring the cattle over the ridge from the other end of the ranch earlier in the day. But once in the corrals they go afoot in a process one of the cowboys derisively calls “herding chickens.”

Doug just kind of smiles. He’s been doing this too long to get caught up in the cowboy mythos. He doesn’t need a Resistol hat to prove he’s a cattleman or a cowboy. A crumpled and dirty ball cap — probably a freebie from a supplier — serves just fine. Getting the job done is what matters, and it’s one he has done for most of his 65 years on this very piece of ground. Learn More