But they were both just sheep-curious, right?
Isn’t the proper term “shepherd”? Or is there some terminological difference between shepherds and sheep herders that I’m not aware of?
A shepherd has a curved staff . . . 
I started this thread mostly tounge-in-cheek, mostly because of the controversies and the traditional cowboy/sheep herder fued. (which still goes on). However,
is interesting, on a more serious note. I have always understood “Sheep herder” as a different thing than a “Shepherd”. One’s on a horse, the other’s in the Bible. Is there a difference? I know a lot of sheep herders who live around here, but I’ve never met a person who describes themselves as a SHepherd, except a pastor or two in the metaphorical sense.
Heh, I saw an article about that in the newspaper this morning when I was looking for movie showtimes.
The term “bi-cuious” is descriptive, not proscriptive. Just because a term did not exist at a certain time doesn’t mean that there weren’t people around who met that description, and thought of themselves that way, even without the term itself.
Hal Briston, I think. 
Oddly enough, “cowboy” has aught to do with what you herd; it’s a guy on a horse, a horseman. From Spanish “caballero,” meaning horseman or knight (among many other meanings), formed from caballo, horse. All other definitions (and there are many) seem to derive from this one.
I figure they were failures as cowboys, so the only job they could get was herding sheep.
They have access to a thousand sheep, yet they have sex with each other?
In Scotland, New Zealand and Australia, they must consider this a fantasy film.
This is not the etymology of the word.
“Ennis, there’s been some talk about you around town. I want to know the truth.”
“I can’t go on living a lie! It’s true! I’ve been having an affair with another man!”
“Yeah, sure, we all knew that. Who cares? I’m talking about you working with cattle.”
And the wistful, “Every Rose Has Its Stem”
And in Spanish, the term for the character is vaquero, literally “the man of the cows”, from “vaca”= cow.
I assume that’s where we got the term “buckaroos”, as well.
Or is that one of the etymological things that’s so obvious that no eytmologist will agree with it?
According to the OED, buckaroo is a corruption of vaquero. Is rejecting obvious word origins a habit of etymologists? In my experience, they merely reject spurious word histories, like “f.u.c.k” an acronym and “nast-y” from the cartoonist and cowboy from the Spanish, even though it originated in England and referred to boys who tended cows long before there was a cowboy business in the American west.