Howard Council

It was a good day for a fleece lined jacket, or even a quilted down coat, if you had one. The southwestern Oklahoma wind blew cold on that Christmas Eve of 1953. The Christmas party’s host was a roper, so naturally many of his guests were cowboys as well. Famed Oklahoma roper, Dee Burk, was in attendance and he’d brought his brother-in-law, Amye Gamblin, with him. Amye was also a good roper and horse trainer from California. Dee’s talk about the good job that Amye had out west was only reinforced by the new Lincoln parked outside with California plates.

Dee introduced Amye to a young man who liked to rope calves. Amye liked him instantly and invited him out to his car. It was a dark night, but Amye opened his trunk by the light of a flashlight and there, sitting on its side, was a Chuck Sheppard saddle, which had been built by Rowell Saddle Company in California.

“Here’s the best tree I ever rode,” Amye said to Howard Council. “You should try to get some of them.”

“I liked the looks of it,” remembered Howard, almost 50 years later. “It had some swell to it, but it still had just a two-and-a-half-inch cantle. What I liked about the original Chuck Sheppard was that it had some swell, like an Association but lower. I guess that’s what Chuck liked since he was a bronc rider. Later they started calling a lot of saddles ‘Chuck Sheppard’s’ and they weren’t anything like that.”