GEORGE F. LEE / GLEE@STARBULLETIN.COM
Retired cowboy Claude Ortiz, 81, of Pupukea, now subcontracts with the city and county to round up stray livestock from Oahu's roads. "When the bulls charge, they close their eyes," he said. "The cows do not. They keep their eyes open and turn on a dime."
A stray heifer or horse on the
road at night calls for a qualified and
hard-to-find breed of cowhand
Wanted: Pound keeper/master
Job Description: Round up stray livestock
Hours: Must be available 24 hours a day
Pay: $10 per animal on Maui, $100 a month on OahuFor 10 years, no one on Maui has answered the help-wanted ad.
There are no takers for the job on Oahu, either.
Yet officials say the jobs need to be filled for the public's safety. It doesn't happen often, but motorists can be injured seriously when they run into a stray horse or cow blocking the road at night, said Aimee Anderson, Maui Humane Society animal control supervisor.
But not just anybody can do the job.
Qualified candidates must be equipped with a horse, trailer and ranching skills to capture stray pigs, cattle, horses and other livestock, said Claude Ortiz, the 81-year-old cowboy who holds the job on Oahu, where he is known as a pound master.
The minuscule -- and antiquated -- pay is partly to blame for a lack of interest from qualified cowboys or cowgirls, authorities said
The $100 monthly salary on Oahu hasn't been changed for at least 20 years, and the compensation hasn't changed on Maui for the last 40 years. (The pound masters also receive expenses.)
Honolulu Zoo Assistant Director Tommy Higashino, who oversees Oahu's three pound masters, said raising the salary would help.
"I think that would be an incentive," he said, adding he doesn't know what the appropriate salary should be.
GEORGE F. LEE / GLEE@STARBULLETIN.COM
Claude Ortiz displayed the missing ends of his fingers and a missing thumb, a record of his rough and tumble career.
Ortiz said he understands the odd hours and low pay aren't exactly incentives for qualified candidates.
On top of the unpredictable schedule and low pay, the work may be hazardous to your health, said Ortiz, who is in charge of picking up livestock from Kahana Bay to Kipapa Gulch.
"When you have a rope on some animals, you have to watch out or they'll kill you," Ortiz said.
Rancher Wilfred Souza, who was the last pound keeper on Maui, said a person rounding up strays also needs a smart horse.
"You can't get any horse," said Souza. "It's real dangerous."
For the public, the danger is in driving on a dark country road at night and suddenly coming upon a stray horse or cow blocking the highway.
Maui's Anderson said so far, no drivers or passengers have died in that fashion on the Valley Isle, but the likelihood grows the longer the livestock remains on the highway. Anderson said the society's animal control officers are not equipped or trained in rounding up livestock.
She said without pound keepers, she and other animal control officers are called upon to drive sometimes for hours to a far end of the island to supervise and possibly assist in the capture of strays.
Anderson said finding a rancher to help can also take several hours.
Ortiz has been a cowboy for more than 60 years and a pound master since at least the early 1970s.
While being a cowboy requires quickness, it also calls for patience and knowledge of animals, he said. For example, young heifers can be more dangerous than bulls.
"When the bulls charge, they close their eyes," he said. "The cows do not. They keep their eyes open and turn on a dime."
Ortiz said catching wild cows on the Big Island was more dangerous.
"Those cows so mean, when they hear you, you don't have to go looking for them, they come looking for you," he said.
The good part of the job is that the pound master can go for a couple of months without having to do any work, Ortiz said.
Occasionally, perhaps once or twice a month, some animal will wander from the pasture and become a potential hazard on the roadways, Ortiz said.
"It always happens about 1 or 2 o'clock in the morning," said Richard Teixeira, another Oahu pound master. He is responsible for the area from Hauula to Pearl City.
Albert Silva, pound master for the Leeward coast, said he's been chased, too. But luckily, he's never been trampled by a stray. Silva, 73, a former president of Hawaii Rodeo Association, said he gets help as pound master from a number of cowboys, including Buddy Gibson, Ralph Fukushima and Bobby Napier.
"My hat is off to them. They do a lot," Silva said.
Silva said pound masters don't do the job for the money, but do it to help the community.
"It's more volunteer than anything else. What's amazing is, we still have people who really want to be helpful," Silva said. "Lucky we still have people around like that."
Kauai and the Big Island don't seem to have the same problem.
On Kauai the community is so small the police usually are able to find the stray's owner quickly, said Dr. Becky Rhoades, executive director of the Kauai Humane Society.
The Big Island has two animal control officers from the Hawaii Island Humane Society who are equipped with a trailer and trained in capturing livestock.
Ortiz, who lives in a rural section of Pupukea and manages a nearby 1,400-acre ranch, said he became a cattle hand in the mid-1900s when most sugar cane plantations had cowboys who provided beef for their workers.
As a young man at sugar plantations in Waianae, Kahuku and Waimanalo, he acquired the knowledge about ranching from other cowboys and perfected his skills by competing in rodeos.
His rodeo specialty was bulldogging, a sport that requires a rider to jump off his horse onto a bull and turn the bull's horns enough to throw it on the ground, so that its four feet are in the air.
Ortiz said he still holds the Hawaii bulldogging record of 5.3 seconds. The record has come at a price.
Ortiz figures he's got about 52 fractures and has broken just about every rib.
He's been kicked and dragged by a horse and chased by a good many bulls.
