Homeless on the range

By GIL BRADY
Star-Tribune correspondent

Filed 12.21.06

JACKSON -- Before the resorts and the subdivisions came, old paintings suggest, all you had to do was head west to find these people pulling calves or guarding small herds on horseback -- sturdy wanderers roaming the open range like blackbirds on buffalo.

Then the ranchers and developers squeezed the free-rangers out, until someone got the bright idea to hang their likeness in galleries, or immortalize them on license plates and on billboards selling cigarettes.

Recently, movies and cable TV became places where you could pay to watch them -- tending sheep, having love affairs, and riding bulls for big bucks. But it’s getting harder and harder to find a cowboy in the Cowboy State without somehow paying for it.

However, if you had hung around federal court here recently, you could have seen one raising hell for nothing.

A homeless man, found guilty in November of letting his horses damage forest vegetation and shed their waste near waterways, was sentenced last week to nine months' probation, ordered to keep his livestock off national forests until next fall, and pay $105 in court costs.

(Click & Read on courtsey of the Casper Star-Tribune)

Photo Captions & Credits: "Terry & Pan, Teton Valley, WY, near Idaho border" by Gil Brady for The Cowboy Times.

*Correction: Amrein's probation sentence was 1 year, unsupervised, not 9 months as stated above.