When Gary Shoun finally caught Roger Allen Marlow, a notorious rustler who would admit to stealing 785 head of cattle from three states, he fought the instinct to string him up and instead wanted to ask questions.
“I was curious how he was doing it. He was pretty good,” said Shoun, who, after 20 years on the job as the state’s brand commissioner, is hanging up his 10-gallon hat at the conclusion of this year’s National Western Stock Show & Rodeo.
Marlow, who operated in the late 1980s, would locate isolated herds and tie a strand of horsehair around pasture gates to see if anyone was checking on them. If not, he’d return with his trailer and two border collies to haul the cattle out of state.
“He told me that one time he backed up his trailer to a gate, let the dogs out to round up the cattle and was gone in 17 minutes with 22 head,” said Shoun. “Those two dogs were actually smarter than he was.”
Supervising a posse of 65 brand inspectors scattered across Colorado, Shoun’s agency is charged with checking the ownership of each animal that is being sold, slaughtered or transported more than 75 miles or across state lines – 4 million head last year alone – and for maintaining the state’s hallowed brand registry.
“This job is not so complicated, but what makes someone successful is knowing where the bodies are buried,” he said. “The things we do day in and day out haven’t changed a whole lot since the brand board started in the 1860s.”
On eight giant Rolodexes, Shoun keeps file cards on each of the 36,839 brands registered with the state, including hundreds dating to the 1890s and still being seared into the hides of cattle in places like Haxtun and Toonerville and Sunbeam.
Considered a piece of property that can be bought or sold, a single-character brand like a T or an X these days can fetch upwards of $5,000 on the market.
Shoun conservatively estimates that 30 percent of the brands now aren’t even used on livestock; they’re renewed every five years for $225 to be kept as family heirlooms or novelties or used simply to mark the sign hanging over the driveway of a 35-acre ranchette.
Shoun’s own Lazy J-S brand, registered by his father in 1947, can be found only on his platter-sized silver belt buckle.
Although he doesn’t keep any cattle at his Westminster home, Shoun, 59, is cowboy through and through. His office in the Livestock Exchange Building is adorned with numerous branding irons, spurs, a Navajo blanket, a sepia-toned vintage state map and a sign touting his brand inspectors that reads “Warning: We don’t give up until the cows come home.”
With his drooping mustache and black cowboy hat, he could have stepped out of a John Ford movie, although it’s a cellphone – not a six-gun – that Shoun keeps in a tooled leather holster on his hip.
Born and raised in Cañon City, Shoun “worked like a mule” for his father’s small cattle operation in his younger years, but took a job at the local Cotter Corp. uranium mill when his father sold out.
“Earl Brown, the brand commissioner, was a friend of my dad’s, and he said I ought to take the brand (inspector) test,” Shoun said. “One day, Earl called me. It just so happened that I got into a big argument with my boss about an hour later.
“I’m not one of those who likes to put a Band-Aid on a cut-off leg,” he said of his decision to leave the mill after that fight.
Shoun started as a brand inspector in Fort Collins in 1972 and quickly worked his way up the ladder, becoming second-in-command after Brown’s retirement. In 1987, Shoun became the state’s fourth-ever brand commissioner.
“This outfit is probably as different of a state agency as you’ll ever see,” he said. “A lot of people don’t even know we still exist.”
The number of livestock inspections has remained fairly stable for the past 20 years, but Shoun expects that demand will drop as the region’s urbanization continues and more ranches are taken out of production.
Although about 600 animals are reported lost, stolen or missing each year, actual cattle thefts are rare, and most are simply a case of animals jumping fences or getting mixed up with others on open range.
“There’s a lot more livestock stolen on paper than there is with a long rope and a fast horse anymore,” said longtime brand inspector Tom Moss of Alamosa.
Shoun, who will hand the reins to his deputy, Rick Wahlert, at the end of the month, still issues his inspectors the traditional lariat for roping cattle and hair clippers for finding brands under a thick growth of hair. But he notes that investigations are becoming increasingly high-tech.
For example, Marlow would pay ne’er-do-wells to sell stolen cattle for him in Arkansas, where there is no brand inspection.
Shoun eventually linked Marlow to a couple of far-flung cases, tracking him only through meticulous detective work and the relentlessness that brings him to work every morning by 6 a.m.
“You ask any of the brand inspectors,” Shoun said, “and they’ll tell you that to find a stray for somebody or to catch a crook, that makes your day. Sometimes it makes your month.”
Staff writer Steve Lipsher can be reached at 970-513-9495 or slipsher@denverpost.com.
