cowboys and bombers!

just south of where i grew up, the us goverment established the BARRY GOLDWATER BOMBING RANGE  for the pilots who fly out of luke air force base. for years this was open range all the way to the papago reservation or mexico , depending on where you traveled. when uncle sam established that range ranchers were told to keep their cattle out. but no fence existed. there was a mile wide buffer zone clearly posted around the perimiter, but most of the cattle couldnt read english! in the summer time if a monsoon rain came up out of the south it would leave puddles that the cattle would follow down into the range.  if found there by pilots many considered them fair game as target practice. many times the cattle didnt need to be on the range.
   i guess at a thousand feet up doing 400 miles per hour it was kinda hard to read the sighnes also.  the correct procedure if you had cattle down there was to call the range officer in gila bend ask if they were flying that day and if not you could retrieve your cattle. but that didnt always work. many s the time i was in pursuit of strays when a jet would appear and drop bombs near me. many times i have had them coast up on me then hit the gas and scorch  me when they went by at 50 feet off the deck! after a while i learned to hate the sight of those grinnin jet jockys. a few times i even had time to get off my horse, gather up some rocks and chunk them at the plane as he whizzed over. it is really hard to hit one of those big ole birds when they are doin 200mph! the pilots would just grin or laugh where i could see them making it worse.i can honestly say that in the years  i spent down there i only lost maybe 6 or 7 head and those i wasnt sure if they died of thirst or were shot up or bombed! but to be sure i blamed the air force for it! as years went on after i left that old country the goverment finaly fenced off the range. but you would still have to ride the boundry because the illegal immigrants and drug dealers would cut the fence. some times 2 or 3 places a nite. glad i left when i did. that country is a real war zone now. what with border patrol, air force police and the county sherrifs  all tying to catch the elusive latin american!