[photo courtesy pixabay]

There never seem to be enough of them.

The concept of a freedom-loving person who lives on a horse on the wide-open ranges somewhere: now, that is a popular one. While most of us have not chosen “cowboy” or gaucho, vaquero or huaso as our profession, almost anyone you talk to, anywhere on the planet, likes the idea of having them around.

An estimate from the Working Ranch Cowboys Association, or WRCA, puts the number of working cowboys in the USA today at around 600,000. Although the American cowboy has dwindled in numbers, and the Australian cowboy, called a stockman there, seems to have done the same, they still exist. There still seem to be vaqueros in Mexico, gauchos and huasos in Patagonia (southern South America, including Argentina and Chile). And maybe there are still more out there.

Online you can see a YouTube video or two of Patagonian cattlemen at work and play.

And hear some traditional gaucho music:

Although there are “authorities” who say that the Argentinian gaucho and American cowboy are lost in the past, there are enough of them around, there is enough fiction and film devoted to them, with enough equestrian paintings, statues and rodeos, to keep the idea alive forever. There never seem to be enough cowboys for the readers and other fans who admire them.

Besides the demand for them, there’s the supply side of things: a certain percentage of the population may just want to be cowboys, period. Or cowgirls.

All of this makes it look pretty good for their future.

We may need to discover some vast new frontiers somewhere, on which wayward cattle can be driven to roundup again and where there can be wild lonely songs beside campfires under the stars.