"One time, this was all open range," the white-haired man says, gazing north across the valley. Now the land is crisscrossed with his neighbors' fences. "You used to just turn the cattle loose and let them graze where they wanted for the summer. No more, not ever again."
Elmer the 57, was born on Riverside, a 25,000-acre ranch in the Smith River Valley of central Montana. His grandfather homesteaded there in 1881. Today his two sons and son-in-law help him and his wife Marie raise his cattle, 2,800 head of Angus and Hereford. But such is the state of ranching economics today...
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