Wise and Diversified

Versatility and self-sufficiency have been the trademark of 2023 Working Cowboy Award recipient Jimbo Humphreys since he began working on ranches more than 50 years ago. 

By Ross Hecox 

The clack, clack, clack of a hammer driving a hoof nail echoes against Jimbo Humphreys’ corrugated metal shed. The tall, lanky cowboy holds his bay horse’s front hoof between his bent knees and wields a shiny new hammer. 

“There aren’t many 70-year-olds that get a shoeing hammer for their birthday,” Jimbo says with a laugh. “My son just got this for me. It’s really nice.” 

When finished, Jimbo leads his horse into a small pen near his saddle house. His property on the outskirts of Dickens, Texas, could very well serve as an exhibit on cowboy self-sufficiency. The pipe corrals he welded together hold the horses he shoes and trains himself. The saddle house, which he erected along with other outbuildings, holds bits and spurs that he crafted in his shop nearby. An authentic chuckwagon he constructed sits near the house. And the house, which he of course designed and built for himself and his wife, Winona, features a rock façade on the front and burrows into a hill on the backside. The horses sometimes graze on the roof of the Humphreys’ dugout-style home. 

Jimbo has worked for Guitar Ranches for the past three decades, but during his 52-year career he has pursued a wide range of trades, from farrier to fence builder, chuckwagon cook, bit- and spurmaker, day-working cowboy, ranch manager and professional horseman. 

“I always was interested in every facet of the ranching industry,” he says, his baritone Texas drawl resounding from underneath a long, white mustache. “Whatever I did, it was still tied back to the ranching life. Just always been around it and never tried to get away from it.” 

A love for cowboy traditions and old-time methods has defined Jimbo’s livelihood. But his admiration for old ways hasn’t made him resistant to progress, according to Phil Guitar of Guitar Ranches. 

“Jimbo manages our ranch division in Spur, but he also is over the entire nutritional program on all the places,” Guitar says. “He’s been our go-to person with things such as nutrition or our vaccination program. He’s big on pasture rotation. He’s taken leadership in how we handle our cattle, but he’s not just thinking about how we gather. He takes a big interest in every little inch of the ranch. He is a wealth of knowledge on anything because he researches everything.” 

Modern advances and new technologies have reshaped agriculture and the cattle industry drastically during the past 30 to 40 years. However, Jimbo has embraced the era. 

“I’ve lived through a lot of the changes. I feel blessed about being able to experience it,” he says. 

Through it all, however, what has captured his attention is that ranch life has also experienced a renaissance of cowboy traditions. During the early 1980s, popular culture fell in love with the cowboy image, thanks to the blockbuster film Urban Cowboy. Whether they were inspired by the sudden popularity of an American icon or countering the “drugstore cowboy” craze, real-life ranchers and cowboys began organizing events and associations that were much more authentic in nature. 

The first ranch rodeo was held in Wichita Falls, Texas, in 1981. Cowboy gatherings and Western festivals gained nationwide popularity after the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering debuted successfully in Elko, Nevada, in 1985. 

During the 1990s, the Working Ranch Cowboys Association held its first world finals in Amarillo, Texas. Organizations such as the Ranch Horse Association of America and Stock Horse of Texas were founded. 

Ranch horse sales became popular events, and a group of talented bitmakers, braiders and saddlemakers formed the Traditional Cowboy Arts Association. 

Around the same time, prominent cattle outfits such as Haythorn Land & Cattle, Moorhouse Ranch and Pitchfork Land & Cattle returned to running a wagon during spring brandings and fall works. 

Due to his versatility, Jimbo has made an impact on all those fronts. 

“I never have felt like I was born 100 years too late,” he says. “I feel like I was born when I was supposed to, and into a lifestyle that I was supposed to live.” 

Born in 1953, James “Jimbo” Humphreys was raised on Pitchfork Land & Cattle in Guthrie, Texas. His father, Jim Humphreys, managed the historic cow-calf operation for many years. 

Jimbo began riding out with the cowboys while in junior high and high school. The ranch was run almost entirely horseback, and modern conveniences were just beginning to take hold. 

“When I was a little kid, the cowboy crew had only one pickup with the stock racks on it,” Jimbo recalls. “The campers [cowboys who lived in remote ranch camps] were still using wagons and teams. They didn’t have pickups. Some didn’t have electricity. 

“Then they went from the wagon to using trucks and trailers. And then there was a phase of using a helicopter to gather. Later, when Bob Moorhouse took over [as manager in 1986], the Pitchfork brought the wagon back out.” 

Some of those evolutions took place while Jimbo still lived on the Pitchfork, while others occurred after he moved to Lubbock, Texas, to attend college. He began taking classes at Texas Tech University in 1971, but getting drafted during the Vietnam War disrupted his college education. Rather than serving oversees, he was given the opportunity to enter the Texas National Guard and be stationed 30 miles away in Levelland, which he gladly accepted. During his six years in the service, he shod horses. He never tried to go back to college. 

“I never could get too involved with the education deal,” he says. “It never appealed to me.” 

While living in Lubbock, he met Winona. After six months of dating, they were married. 

Both had family in the area around Dickens and Spur, and within a few years they moved to Dickens. Nearby ranches, including the Pitchfork, began hiring him to build fences and corrals, and Jimbo added welding to his repertoire. He expanded his business into construction and later bought a lumberyard in Dickens. Ranchers were its principal customer base. 

Despite owning a store in town, Jimbo wasn’t one to stand behind the counter. He began working with teams and rigged up a wagon for many of his fencing contracts. 

“We built a lot of fence,” he says. “We used a team of horses to build seven miles of highway fence from the Pitchfork headquarters to the Four Sixes.” 

The fence-building business led to chuckwagon cooking. 

“I couldn’t keep a crew together if we brought them home every night,” he says. “So, I rigged up a little ol’ box in the back of a pickup or a wagon and loaded some tents. We left on Monday morning, and when those boys put their 40 hours in, we’d come back to town. My crew was mostly young guys. They liked the camping out, and I was cooking for them.” 

Jimbo continued to perfect his Dutch oven skills and prided himself in his sourdough biscuits. Handy as a cook and a teamster, it was only natural for big outfits to hire him to run their chuckwagon during spring and fall works. 

“He built a chuckwagon pretty much from scratch,” Moorhouse says. “He did a lot of horse shoeing and built pens for the Pitchforks. Then he got into the spur and bit making. In everything he does, he’s a perfectionist.” 

Along with the Pitchfork, Jimbo began cooking for the outfits owned by the Haythorns, Moorhouses (managed by Moorhouse’s brother, Tom), Guitars and Buster Welch, the legendary cutting horse trainer and rancher. By then, Jimbo had gotten out of the lumberyard and construction business and focused on cooking nearly year-round. 

“For about 6 years that’s all I did,” he says. “I enjoyed getting to go everywhere. At the Haythorns’, there were probably 25 to 30 cowboys to feed every day. They needed five or six bed wagons because there were so many people out on the wagon. 

“The remuda had almost 200 head of geldings in it, and they’d run them into a rope corral and rope them in the morning. They drove the remuda with the wagon whenever we had to move camp. It was neat to see.” 

While it was awe-inspiring to witness the grandeur of cowboy life on big outfits throughout the country, he says there were moments that were more reckless than romantic. 

“The first time I moved the Pitchfork wagon, we moved it from the headquarters down to Batch Camp,” Jimbo recalls. “It’s a pretty long haul. The cowboys were moving the remuda, keeping it behind the chuckwagon. When we got there and went through that last gate, they turned the remuda loose, and it split the chuckwagon, running along both sides. Of course, the team ran off with them. There was kid on the wagon with me, there to help. Well, he bailed off. It scared him. The team was going at a pretty good clip, but it was a ‘controlled runoff.’ We didn’t wreck or anything.” 

Eventually, Jimbo’s sons Will and Matt were old enough to join him. But after six years, lifting heavy Dutch ovens and spending long hours working over a fire and hot coals was taking its toll. Sometimes after a long trip, Jimbo would spend two or three days in bed with an aching back. Fortunately, in 1995 he received a phone call from Phil Guitar. 

“Phil called me one night and offered me a job,” Jimbo says. “It had been 25 years since I had drawn a monthly check. I thought about it a while and then I said, ‘I believe I’ll just try that.’” 

Jimbo began managing the Spur division of Guitar Ranches, located just a few miles from his home in Dickens. Although he had been day-working for area ranches whenever he wasn’t on the wagon, hiring on with the Guitars gave him the opportunity to cowboy full-time, as well as take his horsemanship to a new level. 

Throughout Jimbo’s life, it seems that one thing has literally led to another. It was while he was stirring dishes under the fly that he learned the ingredients for a kinder, gentler way of working with horses. It was a completely different method from the brute-force approach he’d learned while growing up on the Pitchfork. 

“Half the horses we rode had the end of their ear chewed off, and I had chewed several off myself,” he says. “Mugging horses was part of the deal. It was a rough, tough way of working with horses. At some point I had thought, ‘This ain’t no good. There’s got to be something different.’ That stuff is part of what caused me to quit riding so much.” 

He says legendary horseman Ray Hunt visited West Texas ranches during the 1980s and 1990s, introducing revolutionary horsemanship ideals and teaching cowboys how to build trust and form a partnership with their horses. Jimbo was exposed to Hunt while cooking at some of his horsemanship clinics, listening and watching as much as he could between meals. 

“I thought, ‘There is something real here,’” Jimbo recalls. “That’s what got me drawn back into the horse business. It was a big impact on me.” 

Jimbo first applied Ray Hunt’s methods to his teams, and later to his saddle horses. A few years after hiring on with Guitars, he needed to prepare one of the ranch mounts for an upcoming ranch sale, so he attended his first a Stock Horse of Texas clinic. Through clinics and competition, the young organization was promoting a new concept called ranch versatility, and many of the training philosophies it taught were influenced by Ray Hunt. 

“The first thing I had to do—and this sounds strange coming from someone who rode horses most of their life—but I had to learn how to ride a horse,” he says with a big laugh. “That old cowboy deal just don’t work in the show ring. 

“When I was cooking for Ray Hunt, they’d always have a big powwow after supper, sitting around and talking about horsemanship, and I’d be washing dishes and listening. Someone asked him, ‘How much do you use your feet and legs when you’re riding a horse?’ He said, ‘About as much as I do when I’m walking.’ And that stuck with me. 

“All I had been taught as a kid was, ‘Kick him to go, pull on him to whoa.’ That was about the extent of my horsemanship.” 

Jimbo began showing in the open division of SHTX, and he claimed multiple year-end titles. His best horse, Josephs Catchum All, was the all-time leading point earner until earlier this year. Jimbo also taught clinics for the association, became a director, and was instrumental in the American Quarter Horse Association launching its versatility ranch horse shows, which now rank among AQHA’s most popular classes. 

During that time, he was also taking orders for his handmade bits and spurs. 

“When I was getting back into the horse deal, I needed some bits and equipment, and I couldn’t afford to buy any,” he says. “I was welding and had repaired a few bits for cowboys. Every time I repaired one, I’d study it and then make me a pair. One thing led to another, and I began taking orders. The business got too big, really. It got sort of like working in a factory.” 

As with many of his other ventures, he decided to move on. 

“I guess I’m the sort of guy who, once I’ve learned how to do something, I’m probably through with it,” he says. “Once the challenge is gone, it gets monotonous.” 

By 2012, he had his hands full, taking on a bigger role with the Guitars and managing the cow crew. He spent a lot of time traveling to the ranch’s four divisions. 

His boss says he handled the promotion with flying colors. 

“Anything he puts his mind to, he’s going to accomplish it,” Guitar says. “I think Jimbo could have been a brain surgeon or an astronaut. He could be anything he wanted to be. He’s got that mentality to excel at anything.” 

Today, Jimbo’s role on Guitar Ranches requires less travel, which gives him time to spend with Winona, their two sons, and their families. With five grandkids between the ages of 3 and 9, there are plenty of tee-ball games and horse shows to attend. Josephs Catchum All, now 22, packs the youngest generation of Humphreys at local playdays and other shows. 

Although Jimbo never fancied a college degree, he has always been a student – as long as it was outside the classroom. Now he understands the importance of passing down his knowledge, whether it’s teaching his grandkids about horsemanship or mentoring the younger Guitar cowboys. 

“I’ve enjoyed the whole process of learning different things,” he says. “I wanted to understand how everything worked. Everything I’ve done is all fitting together now. We’re to prepare the next generations. That’s what we’re here for.” ★ 

 

The National Golden Spur Award and the Ranching Heritage Association Working Cowboy Award are the most prestigious awards given by the ranching and livestock industries.  Annually, the Western community comes together to recognize the inspiring honorees of these accolades through the National Golden Spur Award Honors.

The 45th Annual National Golden Spur Award Honors will take place Friday, November 3, 2023, in Lubbock, Texas.

Learn more about the event and purchase your tickets at GoldenSpurHonors.com. 

This article appears in the Summer 2023 issue of the Ranch Record.  Would you like to read more stories about NRHC and ranching life? When you become a member of the Ranching Heritage Association, you’ll receive the award-winning Ranch Record magazine and more while supporting the legacy and preservation of our ranching heritage. Become a member today.