Kent Snidecor was born June 30, 1943, outside of San Bernardino, CA. He was acquainted with the horse at a young age. He and his friends labeled themselves the Flying Five and spent their free time getting into mischief on horseback. The more serious offenses got the attention of the law. Instead of fast cars to elude the police they rode fast horses. They always out ran them, it is easy to see the respect and appreciation that Kent has for good horses, for he has depended on them since he was a boy.
Kent left California when he was 17, the day he graduated from high school. He hitchhiked around working on ranches in Idaho, Oregon, and Nevada. The following summer he went to work for Arlington Cattle Company near Buckeye, Arizona, as a feedlot cowboy. Later that fall he heard of a job in New Mexico with the Mescalero Cattle Association. They ran a wagon and ran 10,000 head of mother cows. This sounded like an adventure so Kent moved on to Mescalero, New Mexico. They had 15 cowboys, half of them Apache, half white, and a remuda with over 100 head of horses. Most everyone had a teepee tent except Kent, and he nearly froze to death that year. He stayed there until November 1963 at age 20 and then eventually headed north and wound up in Sublette County, Wyoming.
Kent must have liked the girls up here, because he doesn’t like the cold. He went to work for Mary Faler, who owned Faler Hunting Camp. He spent his first three summers in Wyoming working for Mary as a packer and guide. After she passed away, the camp sold to Boulder Lake Outfitters. He worked for them another four years as manager of three hunting camps and over 120 head of horses and mules. During the winter months of these years, Kent would work at various jobs and spent time working for Darrel Winfield. One winter Darrel got him a job working at a feedlot near Riverton, where he had some cattle. It was an extremely cold winter; Kent remembers a lot of the yearlings froze their feet. Some of them froze so bad that the shells came off, leaving only stubs, unfortunately these had to be killed.
During the late 1960s, Kent met Cheryl Stone. In the fall of 1971, with Cheryl’s dad, Harve planning to leave the Hoback Stock Association and start ranching full time, the couple decided to take over the newly vacant riding job. Kent didn’t know the country of the Hoback allotment, so he spent the fall back-riding with Harve. Harve was a good teacher and Kent was a good student so he was able to get a pretty good grasp of how it came together. Cheryl was able to fill in the blanks of what he missed, as she had ridden the allotment with her dad since she was a child. Kent said the only part of that fall that he didn’t like was, although Harve had three elk hanging up in the meat house, every night when they came in from riding in the cold, they had to eat elk liver, before they could start in on the decent meat.
In the spring of 1972, Kent and Cheryl went to work for the association, which at that time consisted of 10 permitees and 3,000 head of cattle. Over the rugged, steep country the cattle needed to be dispersed as far up as they could be pushed. For good measure, Kent usually had a few barking dogs to help push those cows up mountain trails that even a Billy goat wouldn’t climb. Kent spent 10 years with the Hoback, always taking some colts to break as well as well as shoeing some outside horses to supplement the modest cowboy wages. During the winters of 1972-1978 he worked on the James ranch near Daniel, helping Steve feed with a team of horses and then calve in the spring. He also spent one of these winters in San Inez, California, exercising race horses. And one year he spent cowboying at a feedlot called “Three Brand,” a subsidiary of the Tejon Ranch near Schaffner, California. During one of these winters, sometime after Christmas, some cattle were spotted from a plane up Clause Creek on the Hoback allotment. Kent and Steve James went up after them. In places up the steep mountain the snow was up to their horse’s chests. They finally found the cattle huddled under a big pine tree. The cattle were starved down, eating the bark off the pine trees to stay alive. There were two pairs and a yearling, pretty much walking skeletons. But, they had just enough strength to follow the trail the horses had made and get down to the bottom of Cliff Creek.
Kent and Cheryl’s son, Boone was born in 1976, with that kind of a blood line it was inevitable that he would grow up to be a cowboy. Kent and Cheryl’s marriage ended when Boone was two years old, but they both still placed him as their very top priority, above all else. When Boone was old enough to handle the long hours a horseback, which wasn’t very old, Kent had him along punching cows much of the time.
After leaving the Hoback Stock Association, Kent spent a summer working for the Forest Service as a plantation rider, a fancy name for keeping the cattle out of seedling trees. The following summer he went to work packing and clearing trail in Grand Teton Park. He also spent a summer shoeing horses. During the winter months of these years, he took cowboying jobs in Jeffery City, Wyoming for two winters and the Mojave Desert for one winter. While working on the Mojave, Kent happened to meet Roy Rogers. He walked up to Roy and said, “you are the reason I am not worth a damn — because of you and your Saturday matinees, that cost me two bits, I got the bug to be a cowboy at an early age, and have been doing it ever since.” Roy laughed pretty hard.
Kent has always taken pride and strived to improve his ability to put a good handle on the horses that he rides. He took advantage of the opportunity to work with the horse trainer, Dick Hardy in California for a time. It proved to be a great learning experience until a colt that he was riding slipped in the mud and fell on Kent’s leg, breaking it.
One time a novice asked Kent why he worked so hard to train the horses he had. He replied that, “You can usually get the job done on just a horse, but it is a lot more exciting and smoother to do it on a horse that has some class.” Kent learned a lot about horse training by working for good horse trainers like Dick Hardy, Steve James, Will Howe, and Dave Williams, to name a few. He also went to lots of clinics, including Ed Connell, Bobby Ingersall, Buck Branaman, Les Vogt, and Will Howe. Will really taught him the art of making a bridle horse, in the California style.
Kent returned to the Hoback Basin in the spring of 1988 and went to work for the Little Jennie Ranch, night calving. When the cattle went to the forest, he went with the ones headed to Granite Creek, where the Little Jennie had a private allotment. There is a lot of larkspur up in that drainage, so his packing skills were put to use again, packing tons of Silent Herder to the cattle, in an attempt to keep them alive from the poison. He spent two years with the Little Jennie. The summers cowboying on Granite and the winters feeding with a team of horses until calving started, then tending to night calving.
After he left the Little Jennie Ranch, Kent went to work for the Fish Creek Cattle Association in the Hoback Basin. At that time Kathy Miller and Jake and Harmon Pfisterer were running cattle on this allotment. It was much the same as the Hoback riding job, just less cattle and more fencing. In the fall after roundup and in between back-riding, Kent helped Pfisterer’s with their fall cow work and shipping the yearlings. He worked for Fish Creek for four years and by now had punched cows in the Hoback Basin for a total of 16 years. Winter times during these years he went to warmer climates and cowboyed on ranches. He remembers one in particular that sure tested his abilities. The Ellison ranch in Squaw Valley, Nevada was out in the middle of nowhere and Kent had been told that the horses were pretty broncy and the cowboys were as tough as nails. Stanley Ellison owned six different ranches and at that time had the largest BLM permit in the state of Nevada.
When Kent showed up to go to work, the jigger boss who was on crutches opened up the closet in the bunkhouse and it was full of crutches from all the hands before him who had been bucked off. He told Kent “The horses are a little tough here. There was a rifle in the corner, when Kent asked him who it belonged to, he was told it belonged to the cook who shot himself last month. Merv Takis was the cow boss. He was a matter of fact, no nonsense type man that expected his crew to be cowboys and if they weren’t, he didn’t give a lot of second chances. The horses proved to be as rugged as expected. They were big, stout Thoroughbred cross horses, but if you could stay on them, they would carry you a long way in a day. Horse trailers weren’t used, the cowboys went where they were going on a long trot or what they referred to as the “Ellison Stretch.” Due to the vastness of the country there was a lot of mileage put between the crew and the bunkhouse on a daily basis.
When Kent headed back to Wyoming in the spring, he hadn’t had to borrow any crutches out of the closet nor had he been fired, so he did alright. Another large ranch that Kent worked on one winter was the Diamond A out of Seligman, Arizona. He rode with a wagon this time, another good experience and a few more nasty horses to add to his resume. Ed Ashurst was the wagon boss at this time, a good cowboy, with 15 cowboys working for him. Kent did get stacked up there, broke some ribs and ended up washing dishes for the wagon cook while healing up.
After leaving, the Fish Creek Cattle Association, Kent cowboyed for Larry Braun on top of the rim, going towards Daniel. He has also worked for Merrill Dana on Cottonwood at different times and worked a winter in Texas for him after Merrill moved down there. Kent’s son Boone later went to work for Merrell after he moved to Alpine, TX and Kent worked one winter there with Boone.
In 2003, Kent went to work for the Grindstone Cattle Company near Daniel as the cow boss on the Duke Place. He spent the next 10 summers up on the Duke Place, taking care of the cattle that summered there. During those winters Kent cowboyed for Tom Kay of the Las Juaritas Ranch near Arvaca, Arizona cowboying, dodging drug-runners, and starting young horses.
After leaving the Grindstone, Kent dedicated his time to helping Boone doctor, move, and ship a large herd of cattle that Boone had a contract to take care of on Cottonwood Creek. He also returned to the Hoback Basin in the fall to work for the Saunders Ranch bringing their cattle off the range of the Hoback allotment. And also helping with the fall shipping.
At age 79 Kent is still doing what he knows best, riding good horses and working cattle. He has slowed down a lot. He and Heidi go to Arizona but spring finds them back in Sublette County. The last couple of years he has started building holsters and cartridge belts. He is a perfectionist with these and really does a nice job on them. He still ropes at brandings and helps Boone take care of the cattle. He has a couple of good horses that know how to watch a cow. Boone says once he gets on, he is good for the day, just don’t let him get off, getting on the second time is a little rough.
Kent has been a great mentor to a lot of young people. There is an incredible amount of knowledge underneath all that gruffness.
Kent would say, “I was a half-assed bronc rider. I never spent much time in the arena roping, but I rode and roped pretty good in the real world, amongst the brush, trees and badger holes. I was pretty good with young horses. I tried to make my living a horseback for over 50 years, which wasn’t easy. I have always felt better about myself when I was horseback.”