Goats and Fishing do mix

by Pete Robbins



Mark Tyler's parents must not have read him much Dr. Seuss. His life is focused on little more than goats and boats. But before we get there, let's establish a foundation of truths we can all agree upon.

Truth Number One: There have been many goats in sports history.

In 1945, the Chicago Cubs were supposedly cursed by a Greek tavern owner who was angry that the team's management had ejected his pet goat from the stadium.

There have been no shortage of other goats in sports – perhaps the most notable was Bill Buckner of the Red Sox, whose botched handling of a simple ground ball contributed to the Sox losing to the Mets in the 1986 World Series.

Truth Number Two: Many bass pros have deep ties to the animal kingdom.

Some seem to consider their fishing careers secondary to their efforts to raise livestock. FLW Tour mega-winner Darrel Robertson raises several hundred head of cattle on his Jay, Oklahoma ranch.

Others take a less consumptive approach to animals. BASS stars Steve Kennedy and Mark Menendez are frequently associated with their canine companions Louie and Barkley, respectively. The former is an often-sombreroed Jack Russell Terrier and the latter is a yellow lab who is afraid of the water.

Some pros, like Gary Yamamoto, have dipped their toes in both pools. Yamamoto often takes his diminutive dog Bella out in the boat. When he's back home in Texas, he keeps busy overseeing his "Wagyu" beef operation.

Truth Number Three: There ain't no one who has combined Truths One and Two like Mark Tyler, currently of Oklahoma, by way of California and Arizona.

By his own description, Tyler grew up "as a city boy in the California Bay Area." He didn't dislike animals, but until two years ago, he "didn't even have a dog, let alone a goldfish."

Now he has three dogs, six horses, two cats and – get this – the centerpiece of his menagerie, thirty something Boer goats.

It all started with Walter.

During the 2006 BASS Elite 50 on Eagle Mountain Lake in Texas, Tyler and his girlfriend Stacey camped out at the marina that served as the tournament launch site. The marina operator had a number of goats, but one small one had been orphaned and needed to be bottle-fed. Stacey was immediately smitten, and before Tyler could say no, she had the goat, now known as Walter, on a leash, wearing a hat, and ready for the trip back west.

The only problem was that he was living in Scottsdale, Arizona, in a condominium, hardly the ideal or typical environment for young livestock, but that didn't deter them one bit.

"We just had a goat in diapers running around the place," he said. "They're a great pet. As soon as it gets dark, they're dead quiet. They don't make a lot of noise. As we speak, I have two goats we're bottle-feeding in the house. They wear diapers and Stacy puts them in a onesie or a little dress."

While Louie and Barkley may look natural on a bass boat, most people wouldn't brag about seeing a goat in a boat, afraid that they might be carted off to a locked room with padded walls.

"Walter was in the boat out of the gate," Tyler said. "He loved it. He'd sit on a fender and watch me do my tackle."

But there was a complication: "As much as goats like to eat, they also like to poop, so now we have a rule. No goats in the boat. No goats in my shop."

One goat was great, but the logical next step, according to Tyler at least, was to "get it a buddy." But a full herd was probably out of the question so long as he stayed in the condo. But he'd been looking to move a little bit further east for a while.

His search ended in Vian, Oklahoma, not far from the Arkansas border, where he saw a 300 acre parcel advertised in the newspaper and bought it shortly thereafter. "It was something we could grow into," he said. "And then we went from two goats, to fifteen, to twenty to twenty five and now about thirty goats."

Given goats' reputation for eating anything not nailed down, and perhaps a few things that are, has he discarded his wastebaskets?

"I haven't found that (stereotype) to be true," he said. "What I have found is that they're very curious animals and they like to climb up as high as they can get. I was thinking they'd do my weeding for me, but instead I found them on the hood of my car. They busted out the windshield on my jeep."

Despite that minor obstacle, he's found himself to be more Eddie Albert than Eva Gabor. In other words, farm living suits him.

"The last few days (in between Toho and Falcon) I've been on the tractor from dawn to dark. It's really refreshing and therapeutic. I can get things like Florida out of my mind. I've found where I belong," he said.

"We're still in the herd acquisition phase," he added. "When they have babies if they're female we keep them and if they're males we take them to auction."

But they're not being auctioned off as pets, that's for sure. "They are meat goats," he said bluntly.

Unfortunately for Tyler (but fortunately for the goats), the baby-to-plate process has been complicated by the fact that Stacey has named every one. "I couldn't tell you all of them, but Stacey could," Tyler said. "I've been lobbying to put an end to the naming cycle."

They're also planning to enter the cattle ranching business as an additional means to make money – not a bad life, fishing during the warmer months and then ranching when it turns cold.

His avocation turned second job is not as odd as you might think. Type "bass fishing magazine" into Google and you get a reasonable number of meaningful hits, but type in "goat magazine" and you get ten times as many. The first page alone features www.goatmagazine.info, www.goatrancher.com, www.goattracksmagazine.com, www.goatbiz.com, www.sheepandgoat.com , www.goatconnection.com , www.boergoats.com , and www.abga.org (American Boer Goat Association). Maybe ESPN and Irwin Jacobs are wasting their time investing in this podunk sport of bass fishing. They'd be better served putting some cash into the rapidly burgeoning goat scene.

The word is spreading among the Elite Series pros, too. Tyler reported that fellow Oklahoman "Jeff Kriet got two of them and he's been calling me all winter for goat advice. I know he has a daughter, and once you get some goats they're infectious."

Dr. Seuss was way off. Apparently goats and boats do mix.