Allie Bear calls Elko, Nevada and the Great Basin home.  She divides her time among selling her long ranch ropes, roping as a pastime, and representing Superior Livestock Auction Company.  When Allie is not at someone’s ranch videoing taping and visiting about cattle and horses, she likes to team rope, participate in team branding contests, and do day ranch work.   She can also shoe her own horse if the need arises.  On top of all this, Allie holds a real estate broker's license.  Allie is also active in several horse and cattle associations.  Allie Bear has the unique ability to successfully do two or three mental and physical tasks at one time.      Allie was born and reared on a buckaroo outfit in Pumpernickel Valley 15 miles south of Golconda, Nevada, east of Winnemucca, Nevada.  Her parents ran a cow-calf operation. The nearest phone was 15 miles away.  She now has two cell phones, two house phone lines and the Internet.  She grew up without power or a light plant; lights were carobide piped into the house; water was gravity flow from the spring.  She attended elementary school in a one-room school at Golconda with 1st through 4th grade in the same room and finished her upper classes at Lowery High School in Winnemucca, Nevada.  After high school Allie attended University of California, Davis and then graduated from the University of Nevada in Reno.  She always enjoyed roping and riding and was 2nd in Breakaway Roping, at the National High School Rodeo in Topeka, Kansas in 1968.      She has participated in all phases of the livestock business.  Allie has had cows and horses all her life.  She understands the livestock business from the bottom up.  She has run her own cow/calf and yearling programs on her ranches at Winnemucca and Elko, NV.  Presently her home is on acreage outside Elko where she keeps her horses, some roping steers and a pen of buffalo.  She uses the buffalo to work her horses because they last longer than cattle.  She says they seem to get along ok with the cattle, but she keeps them separate.  Her horses got used to them fast.   Bits and Spurs      Allie Bear was an owner of J.M. Capriolas Western store and the Garcia bit and Spur Company in Elko, Nevada from 1978-1985.  The J.M. Capriola Company has been in the Bear family since 1958 when they bought it from Joe Capriola.  Since leaving Capriolas she still maintains her connections with the same craftsmen from near Puebla and Amozoc in Mexico that have made the Garcia-Elko Nevada stamped bits and spurs since 1973.  J.M. Capriola Company bought the Garcia bit and spur business from Les Garcia in 1978.  Today Allie designs custom event silver trophy bits and spurs and her own line of bits and spurs for the horse person.  Her satisfied customers range from working cowboys to high-fashion riders dazzling the horse show scene.  She creates the designs and then sends them to be produced by the Mexican silversmiths. Long Ranch Ropes      As a ranch woman herself, Allie knows and appreciates good equipment.  Beginning in 1990 she decided to help make available to the cattle rancher and the buckaroo good long ranch ropes because they were so hard to find.  These ropes are especially popular in the Great Basin country where “slick horn” roping is done, roping without rubber on the saddle horn.  Her ropes are available in various lengths and honda styles.  Today she sells her own line of ranch ropes, bits and spurs from her company Allie’s Long Ranch Ropes and has her own web site at www.ranchropes.com. A Superior Livestock Representative      As the owner and manager of a western store and saddle shop for 13 years, Allie had occasion to meet a lot of ranchers. She has put that knowledge to good use in the last seven years as a Superior Livestock Auction representative. Her territory is primarily Nevada and California, as well as parts of Idaho, Utah and Wyoming.      Allie is constantly on the road representing Superior Livestock Video Auctions through out the Great Basin and the west.  Allie is one of two women among over 350 male Superior Livestock representatives.  In 1995, Jim Davis a Superior Livestock Auction Company Representative from Boise, Idaho asked Allie to start helping him sell cattle from the ranches in the Elko area.  Now she ranks in the top 10 percent of representatives in numbers of cattle shipped.       At the July 2002 video auction held in Winnemucca, Nevada, Superior offered 190,000 head of cattle for sale in four days.  The Winnemucca sale was the largest sale in the western United States in 2001.  Allie brought over 17,000 head of cattle to the 2001 sale.  Superior Livestock also presents some major horse producers' sales in which Allie is involved.       Allie says that generally video marketing techniques offer buyer and seller a practical alternative to the sale barn auction and country cattle and horse buyers, particularly in isolated areas such as the Great Basin in the Western United States.       As a Superior Representative, Allie contacts cattle producers across her territory.  Once the producer agrees to consign the cattle, she views and films the cattle in their natural surroundings. A consignment contract which describes the breed type, base weight, number of head, frame size and condition, feeding program, weighing conditions and health program is completed and signed by the livestock producer.  The video is edited by the company staff and shown on the day of the sale.  Buyers and sellers are either at the auction site or viewing the auction via a nationwide satellite TV broadcast. The auctioneer conducts the auction during which load lots of cattle are sold to buyers bidding either at the auction site or via telephone. Video auctions are particularly successful because they show the animals moving.  You can tell a lot more about an animal if it is in motion.  Video really expands the market area.  Allie has sold Nevada cattle as far east as Minnesota.  Without modern media, buyers and sellers that far apart would never meet.  Auctions are held every three weeks in the summer and every two weeks in the fall and spring.  There is also a weekly Internet auction.       Following the auction, the Superior representative contacts the successful bidder to arrange a delivery date. All cattle are sold F.O.B. the consignor's farm or ranch.   On the day of delivery, a Superior representative is present to oversee the sorting and loading of the cattle onto the buyer's truck. At delivery, the seller is issued a check drawn on Superior’s bonded custodial account.  The cattle are weighed and shipped directly from the ranch to the buyer's feedlot, farm, or ranch. This greatly reduces stress and potential health problems to the cattle.       When Jim Davis asked Allie to join the Superior team, he felt she would be a natural for the job.  How right his choice was is very apparent if you have ever watched her operate around livestock people.  She speaks the horse and cattle owner’s language and knows the ways of livestock marketing.  One of the most valuable assets an auction representative can bring to a transaction is their ability to match livestock lots with the right buyer.  Allie has that knack.  She is constantly on the telephone making potential buyers aware of upcoming sale lots that fit their particular needs.  Allie has an edge in what is often a man’s world.  One buyer said they liked dealing with Allie better because she had a better eye and described detail better than a man salesman usually does.  If a woman is good at what she does nobody seems to care that she is a woman.  Allie has the respect of livestock people throughout the west and rightfully so.           by  Mike Laughlin               Eureka, Nevada                      Photos by Lee Raine  A version of this article appeared in the April, 2003 issue of Western Horseman Magazine.