By Dawni O'Bryan
I guess you could call him a cross between Crocodile Dundee and Marlin Perkins of Wild Kingdom. Lloyd Brown has led an interesting and exciting life wrangling critters outside of his normal cattle and horses. Brown was born in Elkhart, Kansas and raised south of Walsh near where the Cimarron River crosses the southeast corner of Colorado. He attended Walsh High School and married his high school sweetheart, Karen, in 1969. He was drafted by the Army in 1969 also and was shipped to Alaska, where both of his children, Audrey and Matt, were born. Audrey married Scott Mauch and she operates her own hair salon and he works at Beegles Aircraft Service in Greeley. Matt is also in the Greeley area and works for Patterson Oil Company.
After their stint in Alaska, the Browns moved back to southeast Colorado in the Two Buttes area with farm and ranch ground still near Walsh. Lloyd enjoys having his ranch horses, some cattle, and is also known for having a few buffalo around. He opened his Farm Bureau Agency in 1990 (32 years) in Lamar and has valued raising his family in a rural community. He appreciates the friendships that a rural area brings and specifically mentions the young people that grow up here. He says, “I can pick out the kids that have been in 4-H, FFA, go to church, and know how to work. The way they walk, the way they talk, let’s you know the values that are here in our rural areas.” Rural America has parent involvement, mutual respect, values taught at home, and townsfolk looking out for your kid when you are not around. Rural America has neighbors feeding the cows if a situation comes up and help is needed.
Here is where the Wild Kingdom stories begin. First, Brown is telling me how he ropes prairie dogs with a fishing pole. He puts grain around their hole for a period of time and wintertime has them hungry and looking for food. He can catch one when they stick their head out for food and find themselves lassoed by Brown. Probably one of the wildest stories involving Brown is the roping of a bobcat. He wanted to catch the bobcat to put him in a live catch cage. His dogs treed the bobcat and Brown proceeded to climb the tree, as well, with his rope. He tried several loops with the bobcat swatting at each throw. Finally, he got a leg caught and drug the cat out of the tree. As he was dragging it toward the cage, he noticed a release in tension from his rope. The feline had decided to attack his intruder. The bobcat bit and scratched through Brown’s clothes, which included a goose down jacket and foam insulated coveralls. He didn’t let the bobcat go and eventually got him into the cage. He was bleeding and probably needed stitches, but he showered and glued himself back together and went into the office (CFB). This all happened west of Lamar, south of Colorado Beef. His advice, “Don’t ever rope a bobcat.”
Brown had a friend that owned some land in Africa and started a safari company. Being the adventure seeker that he is, Brown has gone 10 times to Africa taking family, friends, and even two Denver Bronco football players. He has gone to Botswana and Zimbabwe, taking up to 13 people one time. He actually provides a great service to the African area that the media distorts and never talks to the actual natives of the region about. Very often in these countries, the wild animals will cause destruction and death that is devastating to the villages. Whether it is elephants totally destroying a year’s crop, or lions killing the family’s livestock or crocodiles killing people trying to get water out of the river, it is pure devastation.
Pictured here is Brown with a crocodile he killed and then donated the meat to an orphanage that was ecstatic about receiving such a gift. Safari hunters, such as Brown, are celebrated, thanked, and then even requested to come again and help the villages. The meat is donated, and problems are diverted.
Maybe they will cast Brown in the next movie of Jumanji.
Happy Trails.
