I remember back in the 80's this was a big problem then, 86/87?
Then dropped.

Articals are dated from June, though is the "Problem" getting worse? Or...?

Cattle Rustling A National Problem

On the front page of the June 6 edition of The New York Times is an article about cattle rustling, "Texas Still Has Its Rustlers, And Men In White Hats Chasing Them," by Dan Barry, Groesbeck, TX.

An excerpt from the article reads, “Whoever was stealing cattle had to have some cowboy in him, the theory went. You could tell by the seamless way he could lure more than a dozen animals at a time out of their pens, onto his trailer and into the endless Texas night, like some Pied Piper of bovines. This was not the handiwork of some crack addict, risking a kick to the addled head for the low yield of a heifer or two. This was a cow whisperer, cattle people told themselves. One of us.

"The reports started piling up across South and East Texas. On March 15, for example, 26 calves vanished from a sale barn in the Houston County town of Crockett - the same night a livestock trailer was stolen in neighboring Walker County. On May 3, 18 head of cattle disappeared from a sale barn in Milam County. Two nights later and 160 miles away, 28 head went missing from a sale barn in Nacogdoches County.

"Enough was enough; these cattle didn't just wander off to take in the night air.”

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East Texas cattle thefts rise

LONGVIEW,TX (KLTV)- With cattle prices rising and the economy still struggling, cattle rustling appears to be making a come back. It has statistically gone up in the past few years, costing ranchers millions of dollars in Texas and Oklahoma.

"Cattle are the highest I've seen them. Some bull calves are bringing $900 a piece," Gregg County rancher Bob Griffin said. "Surely I'm concerned. I live on my ranch and that helps a whole lot, but they wouldn't have to get too many of them before it's a lot of money."

Special Rangers with the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association have investigated nearly a thousand cases over the past year in primarily livestock theft. And its not just cattle that are being stolen. Investigators report that farm and ranch equipment is being stolen at an alarming rate.

"Most of them probably carry guns. A thief is a thief and they'll steal anything they can get their hands on," Griffin's ranch hand Jeremy Peyton said.

Branded cattle are almost impossible to sell. Rustlers simply pull trailers into grazing areas and load up a trailer. Calves are prime targets.

"I'd advise any ranchers to count their cattle and brand their cattle," Griffin said.

Special investigators said they recovered more than $3-million in stolen livestock and equipment in 2010.

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Dated Augest 10th

Cattle Rustling Makes a Major Comeback


Life on the ranch has a rhythm. The days are long, beginning before sunrise. The work is hard under the unrelenting summer sun, and the chores are endless.

The rancher's rest comes only when the sun finally disappears. Nights on the ranch are peaceful.

But something has interrupted that rhythm, something that has Oklahoma rancher Jeff Emerson up at night.

"It's a feeling like someone broke into your house ... kicking your door in and stealing your stereo," he said. "Only mine is a four-legged stereo ... it's a hell of a stereo, though."

Emerson is very much a victim of a crime right out of the Old West. In a period of 90 days, he says, about 30 of his specially bred cattle have vanished.

"We get about $3,000 an animal, so I'm out about 90 to 100 grand," he said. "It's really tough on a small business man ... and that's really what I am."

Emerson and his wife, Chris, own an organic food store in Tulsa, where they sell hormone-free steaks from the cattle they raise just a few miles away. As he says, getting Oklahomans to go organic is tough enough without someone stealing so much of his product.

"You might as well rob a bank," he said. "It's easier and it is air conditioned, and they get out here in the heat and the weeds and the mulch and the blood and the manure ... and steal a cow," he said. "Why in the world do they want to work so hard?"

Ted Allen of Bixby, Okla., has spent every one of his 78 years on a ranch. He thought cattle rustling existed only in the Westerns he loves to watch. Then, rustlers ripped off a dozen of his beloved cows last year.

"I couldn't believe anybody would steal a cow," he said. "Just didn't make sense to me ... but when you can't find them, and they can't fly, somebody had to help them."


Cattle Rustling and the Economy
Cattle rustling has made a major comeback. In Texas alone, more than 6,000 head of cattle were stolen last year -- that's triple the number from the year before. This year is set to break records in ranching states across the West.

"I don't think it's good people out there stealing for their children to eat," Allen said. "I think it's hoodlums taking advantage of easy money."

Maybe so, but the special rangers assigned to catch cattle rustlers say the crime has everything to do with the recession.

"Cattle rustling is definitely here, and I think it's here to stay," said special ranger Brent Mast of the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association. "We have a lot of people who are out of work, and I think thieves have kind of figured out it's pretty good money."



Lucrative Profits for Thieves
Veteran cowboy Bill Cawley of Willis, Texas, says cattle rustlers can do it in a matter of minutes armed with little more than a bag of feed.

"The thief doesn't need a horse, he doesn't need dogs," Cawley said. "He needs a paper sack. He can put a couple of rocks in the sack and shake it, and those cows will come straight into the pen. He can load up two or three calves if he knows what he is doing. And once he pulls on the state highway, he is home free."

The thief's next stop? A cattle auction. This is one of the only crimes where a thief can count on getting full price -- up to $1,000 a head.

It's difficult to know if a cow is stolen. Behind the scenes, inspectors take note of brands and rangers look for anything suspicious. Sometimes they get lucky.

read more @ link--> http://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=....
A good video!

video----> http://abcnews.go.com/video/playerIndex?....
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Dated june 12th
GROESBECK, Tex. — Whoever was stealing cattle had to have some cowboy in him, the theory went. You could tell by the seamless way he could lure more than a dozen animals at a time out of their pens, onto his trailer and into the endless Texas night, like some Pied Piper of bovines.

This was not the handiwork of some crack addict, risking a kick to the addled head for the low yield of a heifer or two. This was a cow whisperer, cattle people told themselves. One of us.

The reports started piling up across South and East Texas. On March 15, for example, 26 calves vanished from a sale barn in the Houston County town of Crockett — the same night that a livestock trailer was stolen in neighboring Walker County. On May 3, 18 head of cattle disappeared from a sale barn in Milam County. Two nights later and 160 miles away, 28 head went missing from a sale barn in Nacogdoches County.

Enough was enough; these cattle didn’t just wander off to take in the night air. On May 6, Hal Dumas, a special ranger for the unique Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association — part industry advocate, part law enforcement agency — joined the Milam County sheriff in sending out a be-on-the-lookout alert, telling ranching communities everywhere of the rustler among them:

Locations are being hit in the early morning hours. ... Suspects will probably be hauling a long goose-neck trailer between midnight and 3:30 a.m. ... The stolen cattle are generally calves weighing between 350 and 500 pounds. ...

Though the vigilante, string-’em-up response to cattle rustling has faded into the sepia-toned past, livestock theft still carries the whiff of the low-down cur. In the last decade, special rangers for the cattle raisers association investigated more than 11,000 cases of livestock-related thefts, and recovered or accounted for more than 37,500 head of cattle.

Stealing a cow is like stealing a factory, ranchers say, given that a healthy, breeding cow can return dividends for years. Some ranchers even grow fond of the animals they raise, no matter how abruptly these relationships may end at the stockyard gate.

Most of all, livestock are living bonds of communal trust — precious things of value, grazing close to the road. And when ranchers are ready to sell, they often unload their cattle into the easily accessible pens of sale barns a day or two before auction. The barn might have a security camera or a night watchman; then again, it might not.

Still, you can trust your mother, but cut the cards. That is why the 15,000-member cattle raisers association, founded in 1877 by a band of rustler-weary ranchers, has 29 special rangers, including Mr. Dumas, all with the power of arrest, all wearing guns and white hats. Using sophisticated databases (including a file of more than 100,000 registered brands) and plain common sense (checking cow pies for tire tracks), these rangers investigate thefts of livestock and property and inspect millions of cattle a year.

The rangers have the respect of cattle rustlers; they know this because a rustler said so. A few years ago, they helped to pen Jerome Heath Novak, a clever, clean-cut cattle rustler from a proud ranching family in Brazoria County who was so audacious in his nighttime thefts that he even stole livestock from Nolan Ryan, the baseball legend and Texas icon. He was caught only after taking to auction a stolen calf with a distinctive barbed-wire scar, which someone noticed.

Before being sent to prison, a remorseful Mr. Novak, then 27, sat down with rangers to help them understand the mind of the cattle rustler. He confessed to not liking sale barns with motion lights or people living on site, and said he avoided ranches and sale barns that had the cattle raisers association’s blue membership sign on display.

“I tried to keep away from that because it’s a band of members that will hold together and push the issue,” said Mr. Novak, who goes by Heath. “Someone else is there, behind them, backing them up.”

When he was done explaining, one of the rangers asked the larger question: “Why? Why, Heath?”

read more @ link--> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/06/us/06l....

Texas Still Has Its Rustlers, and Men in White Hats Chasing Them