Sherry McKay Reynolds, the daughter of Dean and Betty McKay of Gillette, started working on the family homesteads claimed by her grandparents as a girl. She has spent years ranching with her husband, Butch. Among the ranches where she worked are the Wagensen, Keeline, Richard Davis, Don Marquiss, and Jacobs Land and Livestock. She also did day work for a number of other ranches. At brandings she took part in roping, wrestling, branding, vaccinating, and cooking the meal. Other jobs during the years included chopping ice in bitter cold to make sure livestock could drink, feeding hay and corn from a team and wagon or the back of a pickup bed, trailing yearling cattle to grass and then gathering them in the fall. Sherry has been described as rugged enough to work side-by-side with the men but soft enough to love kids and animals. One story she laughs about is the time she was chasing a calf down a fence line. She threw her rope, but snagged a fence post rather than the calf. She says it would have been a better outcome if she hadn’t been tied on hard and fast. The post came lose and hit the colt she was riding.
Sherry Reynolds
