Fact vs. fiction: What Montana livestock investigators actually do, beyond 'Yellowstone'

Snow-dusted peaks towered in the background, cows lowed in the expansive rangeland and cowboys on horseback moved heifers and steers off trailers.

There wasn’t a film camera in sight, but it sure looked, sounded and felt like a scene straight out of the hit television show "Yellowstone.”

And Wes Seward certainly looked the part donning his black cowboy hat and worn-in cowboy boots, with a gun holstered on his hip. 

But Seward isn’t an actor pretending he’s an agent of the show’s fictional Montana Livestock Association. He is a district livestock investigator for the very real Montana Department of Livestock, a state agency with a history that reaches back to before the state’s formation and a mandate to ensure law and order within the state’s expansive ranching industry. 

"Yellowstone" hasn’t just borrowed from Seward’s reality, though.

It has changed it, bringing in more people, more animals, more money and more pressure on livestock producers who already face long days and long odds to make a living and to keep Montana’s ranching tradition alive.

With me today is Ted McDermott a reporter with Lee Enterprises’ Public Service Journalism who recently reported on the world of livestock police and the effects of the TV show on life in Montana.

Montana Untamed, hosted by Thom Bridge, covers the state's rugged landscape from hook and bullet to policy and science.