Moncrief do you even know what a shepherd is I used to work on a cattle ranch so I know a bit about this stuff To quote the Wikipedia article on shepherds A shepherd is one who takes care of sheep usually in flocks in the fields Unlike farmers shepherds were often wage earners being paid to watch the sheep of others The 1960s weren t Biblical times Shepherding had long since become one of those crappy jobs that down and out laborers got when they could get it In fact that s an important part of Proulx s story characterizing them as a particular kind of wretched of the earth Calling them cowboys is yet another example of arrogant coastal ignorance I am more sensitive to the argument that they only worked on the sheep operation that one summer Afterwards Ennis worked with cattle and Jack worked most of his life in an office job not as a rodeo cowboy to whoever made that remark However the bulk of the movie painstakingly details that crucial first summer the summer that so defined them Therefore I d say that the relevant description especially in this paragraph discussing THAT SUMMER would be shepherds That however is more up for debate I would settle for calling them laborers who got jobs herding sheep Although anybody who s ever worked on a ranch or knows a damn thing about ranching knows that that s just a circumlocution for shepherd But since I don t want to make a personal hobby of constantly changing this page I ll settle for that as a compromise Chris