As a Jill of all trades, Allie Bear has a long list of talents, including livestock marketing rep, realtor, silversmith, long rope maker and cowgirl, that she shares with the ranching community and Western lifestyle.
Bear has called the Nevada desert home since she was a child growing up on a buckaroo ranch outside of Winnemucca. Now she resides in Elko, where her family owned the J.M. Capriola Company, a Western store, from 1972 to 1985.
Too busy to be bored, Bear owns a real estate business, marketing ranch properties in Nevada. She also designs trophy bits and spurs and makes long ranch ropes, which are highly valued by working cowboys.
Network of Ranchers
Many years of Western store experience and running her own cattle operation helped her build a large network of ranchers. In 1997, Jim Davis, a Superior Livestock Auction rep from Boise, Idaho, asked Bear to help him market cattle from ranches in the Elko area. Since then, she has continued to grow her own customer base and helps ranchers primarily in Nevada and Idaho market cattle through video auctions.
“I like the people, and I like the cattle,” Bear says of her time in the industry.
Bear has been honored with marketing more than 500,000 head of cattle through Superior’s video auctions. For many years, she was one of two female reps of the nearly 400 who worked for the company.
“It was kind of a man’s world when I first started, then the buyers got to know me,” she says. “That’s history now. They trust and believe I know the cattle and represent them well.”
Once a customer consigns cattle, Bear views and records the cattle, is present at the video sales and then helps ship cattle for delivery. Being able to honestly assess the cattle keeps buyers and sellers happy.
“You have to represent the cattle the way they are and let the buyers know exactly what they are buying,” she says.
Bear works with feedlot and stocker operations all over the country and helps market and buy all weights of cattle, depending on the availability and needs of her customers. For example, she says a light calf can sell well in the summer because the California grass will be ready for fall grazing, but a light calf coming early fall is not going to bring the same.
Past, Present and Future
During her nearly 30 years as a Superior rep, Bear has seen many changes.
“The cattle have improved greatly over the years, and carcass weights are a lot heavier too,” she says. “There’s access to better bulls than years ago, and there’s so much more ranchers can learn now with the internet.”
Animal health and vaccinations protocols are another big improvement.
“Weaning and preconditioning are really important,” Bear says. “It’s getting harder and harder to sell a bawling calf. Especially with these high prices, the buyer is putting out $1,800 to 2,000 per calf, and they don’t want to take much risk.”
Bear doesn’t see the market slowing anytime soon either.
“I think this market will stay good for several years, just because there isn’t many cattle out there,” she says. “Our demand is good. People will be slow to rebuild herds, especially in this area since hay was so high last year and they had to sell.”
Bear’s customers range in size from producers who sell one load to those who sell 10 loads.
“Everybody has different needs, but it’s just as important to represent the small producer as it is to represent the huge producers,” she says.
Video marketing is beneficial for all sizes of cattle producers.
“For the small producers, it’s probably the very best option because you expose your cattle to a couple thousand buyers,” Bear explains. “It’s hard for a one-load producer to negotiate, but with a video, you have it in front of everybody, and the producer is going to bring the market or better than the market for that day. For bigger producers, the big buyers are willing to pay top dollar on a large string of cattle on the video.”
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