Isaac Eger: ‘It was just Florida as it’s meant to be.’
By Ramon Lopez
Original Air Date: April 9, 2025
Host: Did you know there’s a cattle drive in Florida? Ramon Lopez recently put on his boots and hat, and he has more on that.
[Music: “Rawhide” by Frankie Laine]
Ramon Lopez: Move over, Billy Crystal. There’s another “City Slicker” right here in Sarasota. Of course, we’re talking about the 1991 movie about a regular New York City guy who decides to go on a wild west cattle drive with two equally-unqualified buddies.
But real life sometimes mirrors the movies, and Isaac Eger, a local free lance journalist, participated in the 2022 Great Florida Cattle Drive and recently published a book about it.
Eger grew up in Sarasota and had never been on a horse before. But he slipped onto a saddle in late 2022 when Elizabeth Moore, a wealthy conservationist and philanthropist, had to give up her slot in the grueling seven-day, six-night ride across 80 miles of rural Florida.
Along with 348 other riders, some as young as eight and others as old as 90, Eger and a photographer pushed 500 head of cattle, reenacting the centuries-old cattle drives of our ancestors, seeing fragments of a long-ago Florida that few people will ever get to see. No Holiday Inns for these folks. They camped out every night.
Isaac Eger on horseback.
Isaac Eger: You got to see long stretches of Florida without any development whatsoever. In parts of wild Florida, you see prairie, and it looks big. Florida looks huge. It really is. We would go long periods of time where we would just be trudging through Prairie or South Palmetto, and then the occasional oak hammock, cross some water, but for the most part it was just Florida as it’s meant to be.
RL: The cattle drive was anything but straight for those dressed in cowboy hats and cowboy boots. Not a baseball cap in sight. Followed by old-fashion horse-drawn wooden chuck wagons, they meandered and looped through pine forests thick with palmetto to open prairie that went on and on until they stumbled upon pockets of old hammocks that sat in the middle of the steamy land, offering a brief oasis of shade.
The Cowpoke Correspondent said it was no picnic in the park for the participants.
IE: Mostly people from out of state. I didn’t get an exact number, but there are folks from all over the country who came and who are big cattle folk and love to ride their horses, and this is a great opportunity for people to see what real Florida looks like.
I saw one lady get tossed off her horse by another horse. She was riding, and this other horse tried to mount her horse, and she got knocked off and had to be hospitalized. And a couple people couldn’t make it from the heat, and they got knocked out.
I saw one feller had heat stroke. But for the most part, everybody could handle it.
The Great Florida Cattle Drive cover.
RL: Organized by the Florida Cow Culture Preservation Committee, the cattle drive celebrated the 500th year of the arrival of cattle to mainland America.
WSLR News asked why he wanted to be a Wrangler Reporter.
IE: I grew up in Florida not knowing what it meant to be Floridian. I rejected this place for the first 18 years of my life because I didn’t really know what it was—because no one taught me. iI was only until much later in life now—I’m 37—that I see what Florida really is and what it should be, and I feel like I’m making up for lost time now.
RL: Eger said the 2022 Great Florida Cattle Drive provided a real reminder of what life is supposed to be.
IE: We’re all so alienated, and so we’re all looking for this thing that ails us. And the truth is, it’s a lot more simple. People think it’s nuanced. It’s pretty black and white. The truth is, what we’re supposed to do is work the land. We’re supposed to be people of the land. And there are still people here who are doing that, and there are far fewer every year.
RL: And that’s a real tragedy for Eger. The drive was a celebration of memory, stated Eger in his coffee tabletop book.
“I saw all that we are losing, and perhaps what we can save. Florida will change. It always has, but we need to remember what came before, for something not to be remembered is for it to die twice.”
Eger said he’s going to do it all over again, if given the chance.
This is Ramon Lopez for WSLR News.
[Music: “Rawhide” by Frankie Laine]
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