Mackey Hedges
Mackey Hedges was born in 1942. His 90 year old mother says that she can never remember a time when he wanted to be anything other than a cowboy. "He and his younger sister would play by the hour pretending that they had a big ranch where he was in charge of the cattle and she was the ranch nurse or cook. We got him his first horse when he was six and he has been riding ever since."
The first book that Hedges can remember his father reading to him was Will James' Lone Cowboy. "He loved that book and studied it like a preacher would a Bible" says his sister Carolle Craig.
Mackey grew up listing to tales of how, during the depression, his father and another man had bought train carloads of mustangs, breaking the younger ones before selling them to local ranchers and farmers. He listened to his father tell of the terrible winters in the Laramie, Wyoming valley where ropes were tied from the cook house to the bunk house so men would not become lost during the ground blizzards that were so common in that area. From others he heard tales of chasing wild horses on the Nevada deserts and, he dreamed of the day when he too could spend his summers in the mountains working out of some isolated cow camp.
By the time that Mackey went into the Marine Corps at the age of seventeen his family had lived in Nevada, Washington, New Mexico, Texas, Kansas and finally Nebraska. It was while living in Nebraska at the age of 14 that he got his first real riding job. One of his friend's dad owned a feedlot and he hired some of the local boys to ride pens on the weekends. When school let out for the summer Hedges was hired on full time. That job led to a colt-breaking job south of Omaha. He was still at that job when he decided to go into the Marine Corps.
After coming home from overseas and being discharged, he headed straight for the mountains to fulfill his lifelong dream. He packed in the Sierras, wintered in isolated desert cow camps and went out on the wagons of several big outfits that branded 5,000 to 7,000 calves a summer.
In 1967 Mackey married Candace Susan Kidd. After spending their first summer in the Sierras with him working as a packer and guide and Candi working as a wrangler and camp cook, they moved to the isolated Soldier Meadows Ranch where he started (broke) colts and his wife worked as the ranch cook.
That was the start of a rather hectic life for his poor wife. Over the next 40 years, they drifted from ranch to ranch working in Nevada, California, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming. However, through all these many moves they continued to call Nevada home.
The Hedges have three boys: Buck, Jed, and Sam. All three boys were home schooled because of the isolated ranches where they lived during the time that the boys were growing up. Mackey says that it is something of a family joke that even though he could pump up a Coleman lamp and chop firewood, Jed was seven years old before he learned to turn on an electric lamp.
The Hedges boys are grown and gone now. Buck, the oldest, has a small alfalfa farm in Idaho where his wife raises and trains horses. Jed lives in Winnemucca driving truck for a gold mine and day-works for local ranches when he has time off. Sam is a buckaroo on the Tree Top Ranch near Burns,Oregon. Candace also lives in Winnemucca, Nevads where she cares for her 96 year old mother . Mackey is employed as a buckaroo on the Rodeo Creek Ranch, located near the small desert town of Gerlach, Nevada. The Rodeo Creek Ranch is a part of the huge Estill Ranch operation. Mac tries to make it home three or four times a month but time, distance and ranch responsibilities sometimes interfere.
When asked about his lifestyle Mackey says, "I use to dream about having my boys with me when I got old but the life that I grew up with is pretty well gone. I wouldn't wish what's left of this onto them. Low wages and the constant battle with the environmentalist and the Bureau of Land Management have taken a lot of the enjoyment out of being a Nevada rancher. It's a good-enough life for a few old drifters like me but it's sure no life for a young man with a family."
Sigman Note: Mac Hedges is proud to tell you that other than the four years he served with the United States Marine Corp., he has never made a dollar from anything other than working with horses. Mac and his Family live in Winnemucca (Win-ah-muc-ah) the county seat of Humboldt County in the U.S. state of Nevada and the site of a September 19, 1900 bank robbery by Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch. As of the 2000 census, the city had a total population of 7,174.
No one has ever told Mac about retirement, and at sixty plus years he is still ridin' and ropin' as a Buckaroo . He works l o n g days...doing what he loves. Mac is surrounded by wonderful family, good friends and loyal stock amid the mountains, plains and valleys that Mac calls "Home."
