Rustlers keeping special cattle rangers busy in Central Texas and across the state

From wacotrib, April 13, 2009...

Andy Wilkins was 15 when he tried cattle rustling for the first time. A pilfered yearling he sold to a wheat farmer brought him about $175.

“Man, it was easy,” he said. As he got older, he grew bolder.

Wilkins, 38, boasts that he can load 16 head of cattle onto a truck by himself in 30 minutes. If a cattle thief is lucky, the rancher will have animals already in a small pen, meaning the bulk of roundup work is done. “You just . . . pull up and load them up, and get out of there,” Wilkins said.

Hal Dumas comes at cattle rustling from the other side.

Dumas, one of more than two dozen special rangers stationed throughout Texas and Oklahoma, supervises a vast area of South and Southeast Texas.

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