Welcome, Commercial Drone Pilots!
Join our growing community today!
Sign up

Cattle Drive

We have a yearly cattle drive where I live, I think it is the only one that uses a major highway during the drive. I decided to film a little bit of it this morning since my cousin wanted to become a movie star, lol.

Thanks for sharing. Reminds me of when visited my brother-in-law on the Western slope of Colorado. 12 hour cattle drive up the mountain to where they would graze for the summer. I was just a City boy. Never rode a horse before. Made it two hour before they put me in the follow pickup truck. Hat kept falling off, so they tied it on with rope. Instantly branded as "Chin Strap" from that point on. What a great memory!
 
It's true, the dogs do most of the work.

Ya know.... you could have volunteered to "drive" the cattle with your drone ;)

Seriously though I believe I've heard (herd!?) of someone doing that before. Thanks for sharing the vid!
 
One of the reasons there is no closeups is that very reason. The rancher is a friend of my cousins and we talked about the video prior to the cattle drive. It is interesting many of the ranchers in this area get together to assist in this drive. I've got them all interested in using drones to locate their wondering cattle.
 
One of the reasons there is no closeups is that very reason. The rancher is a friend of my cousins and we talked about the video prior to the cattle drive. It is interesting many of the ranchers in this area get together to assist in this drive. I've got them all interested in using drones to locate their wondering cattle.

We used to have a horse ranch - I found that with horses at least, above 30 feet they did not care, below 20 feet they became concerned enough to start to move off.
 
Did you get any sense of what altitude the drone would affect the cattle? Looks like you were around 200 ft. Is that correct?
 
Anything below 75 feet seemed to annoy them. I flew that at roughly 130-140 feet, and avoided flying right over them. I was using a 15mm lens on the X5s camera. That is the only lens I have for it now. I thought about using the Mavic because it is quieter stuck with the Inspire 2.
 
That is sooo cool! I know I live in a lttle bit of a bubble, but I had no clue that cattle drives still existed. Really cool to watch the dogs working. How do they train them to do that?

Maybe not the most cinematic videos I have seen here but definitely one of the most interesting. Had me captivated.

Might be neat to add the theme song from the old Rawhide TV show from back in the 60s to the video. ;-)

Thanks for sharing!
 
Thanks Bryan, I'm not a professional videographer by any means. As you can see the dogs do all the work, most of the are Australian Shepherds. The area I live in is primarily cattle country so the ranchers pretty much do what they want.
ABC in Fresno CA asked me to shoot it, they cleaned it up and it looked pretty good when they aired it.
 
Thanks Bryan, I'm not a professional videographer by any means. As you can see the dogs do all the work, most of the are Australian Shepherds. The area I live in is primarily cattle country so the ranchers pretty much do what they want.
ABC in Fresno CA asked me to shoot it, they cleaned it up and it looked pretty good when they aired it.
It was not meant to be a dig when I said it wasn't cinematic just that it was still very compelling to me. Thanks for sharing your world with me. It is very different than mine. Perhaps that is why it caught my attention.
 
@BryanD - Cattle drives are still pretty common in many of the western states. Especially during the time of year when the cattle are moved to summer pasture, from one grazing tract to another or when being gathered in the fall to bring to the auction yards.
THIS was one in Montana
 
It was not meant to be a dig when I said it wasn't cinematic just that it was still very compelling to me. Thanks for sharing your world with me. It is very different than mine. Perhaps that is why it caught my attention.

Not to worry, I took no offense, I know my limitations most of the time. Our family is a combination of farmers and one rancher. Wife's cousin raises Black Angus, in our area the cattle are moved at the beginning of summer to the higher elevations and better grazing. We also have a lot of open range in our area, and more water available, and in California water is like gold once was.
 

Members online

Forum statistics

Threads
4,277
Messages
37,605
Members
5,969
Latest member
KC5JIM