Well first things first, I am one of those “inbred bastards” from Utah that arrived with “funeral plans”. When I was driving Saturday morning I-15 south just past St. George, I caught up to 3 Horse Trailers with around 15 horses and I instantly notice they were all pre-saddled and ready to go. I knew then that there would be many more and we were going to take the cattle.
9:00am I arrived at the Bundy Ranch. Shortly after, the cowboys had all organized and were parading with several flags across the bridge. They continued up to the top of the nearest hilltop and staked in the American Flag. They had a riderless horse being led up the hilltop to represent all of our fallen soldiers. They led us in a Flag Ceremony followed with songs including the “star spangled banner”.
The Sheriff arrived to meet with Cliven Bundy. Cliven said he would not speak to the Sheriff in a “backroom” and called him up to the stage. The Sheriff announced that the BLM were going to cease their operations to round up anymore cattle and would be making plans to leave. Cliven got back on the mic and demanded that the Sheriff make them start immediatly. He gave an ultimatum of one hour to have certain terms underway or else the people would do it themselves with force. He instructed the Sheriff to go advise the BLM and called on the media to follow so they could report back in one hours time and let us know if they had made any progress.
After one hours time Cliven came back to the mic and requested a progress report from the media and Sheriff only to be met by silence. He continued making requests for about 15 minutes. After waiting with no response, he instructed everyone that all that needed to be done, was to open the gates and the cattle would just follow the wash right back to the river in their pasture. He ordered that we shut down the freeway just long enough to get the gates open, release the cattle and the cowboys would take it from there. He then declared that we would all do this peacefully and that “no American will get hurt today”.
When I pulled off to the side off the freeway I saw a very large SWAT vehicle pull in and I could hear a long line of sirens coming north from Las Vegas. There was probably 100 BLM vehicles in their compound on the north side of the freeway. It was a scary feeling to be gearing up with my deer rifle and look on the other side of the road and see the SWAT team gearing up with bulletproof armor, riot shields and fully automatic weapons.
We all kind of grouped around Ammon Bundy. Someone in the group cut the fence on the south side of the freeway and we headed down towards the wash. We then rounded the corner in the wash to see many rifles pointed at us from behind lined up vehicles. Ammon then requested that someone lead us in a word of prayer before we moved forward. We all knelt to our knees in prayer. It was very spiritual. We then moved foward and took shelter in the shade under the first overpass to wait for the cowboys to arrive from the ranch. There was a fox news guy with us in the wash and he was the first to advance towards the gates and he was filming both sides of the standoff.
The cowboys arrived and formed a line in front of the group. Then we all began to move toward the BLM, SWAT. We approached to less than 50 yards from the SWAT who had spotters in the back assessing the threat level of every person and were pointing out the people with rifles over the shoulder of the other agents. They had warnings over a loudspeaker telling us to disperse or we may be fired upon. They were saying we were in violation of a court order and also threatened to use non lethal force. At that point I was expecting to be shot with tear gas. At no time were the Bundy supporters threatening with our weapons. It was made clear that we would not fire unless fired upon.
At that time discussions began from the leaders of both sides. The BLM continued demanding that we leave and Ammon kept saying, “No. You Leave”. He was arguing that BLM had no authority here, and that “We the People” were here to release the cattle and kick the BLM out of Bunkerville. We were then told that the cattle would be released in one half hour if the group would back-off back under the first overpass. A majority of the group moved back to the cover a shade and we all continued to wait. The half hour then turned into three hours and the cattle were released to silence. The group held all applause until after the cattle passed under the second overpass so as not to spook them.
Shortly before the cows were released, Sheriff Mack and Stewart Rhodes arrived and entered the wash from above. I was able to simply shake their hands. They thanked everyone for standing up, not backing down and acting with level heads.
After the release of the cows I headed back to the Bundy Ranch. I got stuck in a traffic jam on the freeway and, I did not mind having to wait. I passed the BLM compound and every Federal vehicle was gone. Every single one. There was about twenty local police vehicles mixed with highway patrol but they were only directing traffic. The only thing left in the compound is a bunch of knocked over corral panels and some heavy equipment that couldn’t just be driven down the freeway. When I was coming down the hill to the gathering at the Bundy ranch I looked out to the river and I could see the first set of cows all spreading out in the virgin river valley. It was a beautiful sight.
Back at the ranch there was a number of Victory speeches by people including, Cliven Bundy, Ammon Bundy, Richard Mack, Stewart Rhodes and Peter Santelli. Santelli then kind of took over and seemed to be doing some sort of a podcast or something while he was interviewing supporters. He kept referring to the next interviewee as “the next caller”. After about an hour of Santelli, Ammon Bundy came on stage and told him that we love him but we were all tired of hearing him and requested the supporters hold the mic and pass it to eachother. I stayed until dusk and then drove home to my family.
