Cutting is about cattle. But cutting competition is about the right cattle, one at a time. I am always reminded of this when I think about the late James Kenney, a hero to a lot of cowboys, including current NCHA Super Stakes and Derby champion Boyd Rice.

Rice, who settles a lot of herds during the NCHA Triple Crown events in Fort Worth and is featured on an NCHA video about cattle selection, showed Kenney’s stallion Bobs Hickory Rio to earn the 2005 NCHA World Championship and was privy to many of Kenney’s reminiscences about his West Texas boyhood during the 1920s.

One of my favorite Kenney tales involves a lesson learned at an early age about sizing up both cattle and cowboys. Kenney was working at “the Medlin place,” under a cowhand named Gabe Beacham. Gabe had already taught Kenney one valuable lesson about keeping his eyes open when holding herd. But on this particular day, he had asked young Kenney to ride out and check on some heifers in a remote pasture.

“So I trotted off over there and when I got back about noon, Gabe asked me how those heifers were doing,” Kenney remembered.

“I’d heard those old-timers talk about cattle licking themselves when they were doing good, so I said, ‘Oh, I think they’re doing real good. They’re licking theirselves.’

“‘Reckon they got lice?’ Gabe asked me.

“That was a big disappointment,” Kenney admitted. “I thought I was really telling him something. From then on, if the cattle looked good, I just said, ‘Yeah, they’re looking good.’ I didn’t say anything else.”