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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (May 13, 2016)
2C THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, MAY 13, 2016 Courtesy of Steve Stuebner Idaho sheep video gets 262,000 YouTube views The 23-minute video walks viewers through a year of raising sheep By SEAN ELLIS Capital Press W ILDER, Idaho — A 23-minute video about Idaho sheep has generated a lot of attention on YouTube and nobody is quite sure why. The video has been viewed more than 262,000 times since it was posted in June 2013. It features Wilder sheep rancher Frank Shirts and some of his 28,000 ewes and lambs. Shirts speaks openly about the love he has for the job and the challenges he faces. Shirts said though he’s “tickled to death over” the video’s success, he’s not surprised by it because a lot of people love sheep. “It wasn’t me,” he said. “The people that watched it won’t even remember my name. People love seeing those baby lambs.” Most of the 58 comments below the video are positive, and it has received 568 “likes” and 33 “dislikes.” Shirts said he’s most happy that the video has shed some light on ? 9-1-WHAT? THE BEST OF THE WORST CALLS TO ASTORIA 911 DISPATCH Courtesy of Steve Stuebner Wilder, Idaho, sheep rancher Frank Shirts speaks to a film crew while shooting footage for a video that has been viewed more than 262,000 times on YouTube. some of the positive aspects of the sheep industry. “If it can help our industry, that’s the main thing I’m happy to see,” he said. The video was produced by Steve Stuebner for Life on the Range, an Idaho Rangeland Resource Commis- sion educational outreach campaign that informs people about Idaho ranchers. Stuebner followed Shirts and his lock for an entire year as the sheep were moved from the low country near the Snake River to higher coun- try in the Boise and Payette national forests. “He just walked us through the whole process of raising lambs and grazing across public and private land to the point they are ready to get shipped to market,” Stuebner said. The 262,000 views is a lot for a simple farming video, said Jake Put- nam, broadcast services manager for Idaho Farm Bureau Federation. “It just shows the American peo- ple are very curious about where their food comes,” he said. “They’re also very curious about farmers and ranchers and they like to put names and faces to their food.” The Shirts video is one of 30 in the Life on the Range series and is by far the most popular, with second place registering 47,000 views. Gretchen Hyde, the rangeland and resource commission’s executive director, said she has no idea why the Shirts video is so popular. She said none of the videos is scripted. “It’s really them talking from the heart, which is the most effective way to reach the public,” she said. “I think that comes through really well.” The videos cover a wide variety of range-related topics, from how to get a BLM permit to photo monitoring to how ranchers are taking care of Ida- ho’s rangelands and managing them for multiple uses. “We’re letting people know the positive stories going on on the rangeland; the diversity of ranches and rangeland issues and how peo- ple are individually handling them,” Hyde said. To view the Shirts video, search online for, “A year in the life of rais- ing sheep in Idaho.” To view the other videos, go to www.lifeontherange. org. Continuous issues S o what do you do when your neighbor’s goat gets uppity on a Saturday night in Astoria? Call the cops, brah. Never try to reason with a goat. Or a neighbor ... Follow reporter Kyle Spurr on his 9-1-What? Twitter watch, where a few of the sometimes head-scratching calls to area dispatch take center stage. The full feed is at www.twitter.com/9_1_WHAT. 3 W AY S TO GE T Y O U R CO PY TOD AY ! OR DER ON LIN E w w w .DiscoverO urCoast.com /order S TOP BY ON E OF OU R 3 LOCATION S A storia • 949 Exchange St. Seaside • 1555 N . Roosevelt Dr. Long Beach • 205 Bolstad A ve. E. #2 o r CALL HOLLY LAR K IN S at 503-325-3211, x227 Em ail: hlarkins@ dailyastorian.com