Ranchers Running and Ruining The West- A Case Study

[Jcrowley]

A Nightmare Continues!

I am now a FELON because I attempted to protect my mother, a victim of Alzheimer's, from a herd of wild cattle (including bulls) on our own private FENCED property near Snowflake, AZ.

The rancher refused to remove them, so I tried to scare the 30-40 cattle back through our gate with the noise from a .22 rifle and in the process one was killed. It must have been a ricochet since I know that I did not try to hit one.

Only later did I discover that the cattle had gotten to our gate because someone had cut our neighbor's fence (and removed 40' of 4 strand barbed wire). Our property is completely surrounded by fenced private property so, no cattle could possibly get to our open gate unless they were delivered through a cut fence! Some ranchers believe their cattle have a right to any grass or water (fenced or not). The laws in Arizona are so one sided, in favor of ranchers, that a rancher can legally shoot your dog justifying the act later by simply stating that the dog was bothering his cattle (for other ranching abuses go to cowcrap.org).

I have spent over $40,000 in legal fees and when we attempted to settle, the only response from the prosecution was ........ "we don't want to settle, we want to make an example of you." Early on in the proceedings, the judge stated ?this is a simple case and it will remain a simple case? as if he had already tried and convicted me! The judge was enraged at me once when I stated that I was the victim; in AZ, ranchers are always the victim!

The rancher (Dee Johnson), has 60 FELONIES against him for CATTLE RUSTLING. He is a cousin to both Jake Flake and Jeff Flake, in the AZ Legislature and US Congress respectively. Is it possible that politics has something to do with this?

http://www.cowcrap.org/

[yardwork]

1. Another good reason not to eat beef

[kenny blankenship]

2. Shades of 'Shane'

Couple of things: keep your gate closed and fire up in the air--it's not that hard.
A .22 killing a cow doesn't sound like a ricochet to me.

Beware a man named Wilson. He'll be wearing a black hat and he'll smile a lot in a very unsettling way.

[AzDar]

3. Kick n/t

[natrat]

4. guns and beef are for morons

[Sammy Pepys]

5. I've seen bits and pieces of this story floating around...

...and that version reads a little different from what I had read. I heard that that guy had actually left his gate open.

I'm on this guys side, but he brought a lot of this trouble on himself by killing one of cows. And I can't imagine firing a .22 at them would've done all that much to disperse them off of his property in the first place.

Antiquated or not, the current laws do not seem to be on his side.

[Change has come]

6. Strange story

This picture from the website is supposedly of cow shit



Looks like horse shit to me. Cow shit looks like a large Frisbee. If 30-40 head of cattle were grazing on this man's property, there would be ample samples of the real thing to photoghraph.

[Monk06]

7. Marx: He who cannot protect his captial shall lose it.