ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- A pair of cowboys said Friday they were abandoned and nearly starved on a remote Alaskan island ranch, but their boss called them inexperienced wranglers who should have stayed home.
'You cannot hold the hand for a cowboy,' said rancher Stevan Ge'czy of Anchorage. 'Not in Alaska, you can't.'
Thomas Cornelius, 34, of Redmond, Ore., and Ron Winkle, 36, of Terrebone, Ore., were sighted by a fishing boat after spending five months on Chirikof Island in the Gulf of Alaska. ACoast Guard helicopter lifted them off Wednesday.
They reported starvation conditions -- saying they existed for nearly three months on old 'C' rations, dog food, wild berries and an occasional slaughtered beef.
'They said they were unable to do any work because the cattle wouldn't behave and the horses wouldn't listen to them,' scoffed Ge'czy. 'So I hire the children to do a man's job. I made a boo-boo and hired some cheechakos (greenhorns).'
'Those cattle hadn't been worked for 10 years and they were just like elk,' Cornelius complained. 'We couldn't get near 'em. The horses were scared of the cattle and you couldn't get within a quarter mile of them.'
The two cowboys, who were resting up from their ordeal at an Anchorage hotel, also told authorities they had found two human skeletons on a beach.
'We just kind of wondered if we was next,' Cornelius said. 'It was disheartening.'
'We find skeletons about every week in Alaska someplace,' Lt. Bill Kaufman of the Alaska State Patrol said. 'Ninety percent of the skeletons tend to be black bear,' which look much like a man when the flesh is gone.
The cowboys were flown to the 34,000-acre island about 165 miles southwest of Kodiak, Alaska, on April 24 to herd 250 head of cattle, mend fences and prepare for a fall roundup.
They said they ran out of food June 27 and survived by eating Japanese C rations that washed up on the beaches, wild berries, dog food and and an occasional slaughtered beef.
Their last match was used on July 1, and they had to cut wood by hand and keep a fire burning continuously, they said.
'Our original deal,' Cornelius said, 'was he was supposed to come out every two weeks and supply us and bring us our mail. We were to send our paychecks back home to our families. We were supposed to kill older bulls and ship them back in with the plane every two weeks.
'He just abandoned us.'
But Ge'czy said Cornelius was told he would be on the island ranch until late September.
'We went to a wholesale grocery store and I let him loose to purchase food for a period of four, five to six months,' Ge'czy said. 'He loaded in an airplane a load of food, more or less canned goods - because I gave him permission to get all the fresh meat that he needs.'
The cowboys had a 30.06-caliber big-game rifle with 20 bullets and Ge'czy gave them a .22-caliber rifle with 500 rounds with which they were to kill fresh beef as needed.
'Now, if a ranch foreman cannot kill at least a calf for food then it's pretty sad,' he said.
But the .22 was 'kind of like shooting a BB-gun at those bulls,' Cornelius said.
Cornelius was $600 a month plus room and board, Ge'czy said. 'The second guy was supposed to get $333 a month. More or less, he was on a vacation, and so was Tom Cornelius.'
Ge'czy said he would 'pay them off and kiss them goodbye.'
But that may not be so easy.
'I signed on for $1,000 a month,' Cornelius said. 'He owes me $5,000 now. I hired Ronnie for the same amount, $1,000 a month.'
