Welcome to Hanson Livestock
by Lin Hanson

This combination of law and horses may seem strange to you. I’ve told people for twenty-five years or more that I’m married to “a cowboy who practices law to support his habit.” He excels at both!

Steve has been involved with horses all his life. He grew up riding with his dad, moving cattle, competing in 4-H and local horse shows, and roaming the hills of North Dakota’s Sheyenne and Maple River valleys. After college he purchased an Arabian mare and began breeding and showing. Impatient with the fuss of the showring, he turned to endurance riding. Fifty and hundred-mile races preceded by endless hours of training and conditioning filled most evening hours and weekends. In the early 80’s a friend gave Steve the opportunity to spend time at a large cattle ranch in eastern Montana for branding in the spring and roundup in the fall of each year. Next thing you knew, we’d up and moved to the Big Sky country. The switch to cutting and ranch horses was inevitable for this cowboy at heart.

Steve has spent more than thirteen years now learning the ins and outs of the cutting pen and the bloodlines of the American Quarter Horse. Winter evenings he pores over pedigrees and show records, making phone calls, and thinking genetics. Then along comes Fort Worth each December when he gets the chance to check the pulse of the market and watch the best from across the country. But his greatest joy comes each spring when babies arrive and the proof of all his hours of research and planning hit the ground.

Training the young horses is Steve’s specialty. From the minute they are born, he’s imprinting and teaching. There’s lots of time to devote to each youngster when you only have a couple foals each year. By the time a horse is two years old, Steve has it well started and ready to send to a cutting trainer or to start working on the ranch. I truly believe he enjoys getting them going more than the showing or any other aspect of raising horses. Dr. Mathew MacKay-Smith bought an outstanding endurance horse from us many years ago and wondered why Steve would sell him. He was sure something must be wrong with the horse. I assured him that there was nothing wrong with “Fred”; I think that’s when I first realized that Steve just had young horses at home in the pasture to get started and that was more fun for him than continuing on with a "made" horse. Someone else could go out and win on what he’d started. That’s what it’s all about for him.