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Beloved Yellowstone vet Cole Hauser is back in the role of Rip Wheeler for the neo-western’s spinoff Dutton Ranch, currently a 2026 TV schedule staple streaming via Paramount+ subscription, where he’s now the king of the castle (so to speak) alongside his queen Beth Dutton. It’s almost impossible not to be intimidated by the character, given his proficiency with seemingly everything involved with ranching and cowboy life. It’s an element that Hauser gives franchise co-creator Taylor Sheridan full credit for, in regards to the pre-production “Cowboy Camp” that the actors go through.
A lot of Yellowstone diehards are aware of the training process that Sheridan & Co. have made a staple of the Yellowstone prequels and follow-ups, and that it’s about more than just roping and riding, even if those two elements are certainly vital to the cause. But Hauser doesn’t think enough people are aware of how much he in particular went through to give Rip the foundational confidence and know-how required. As he put it when speaking to Shortlist in a clip shared to Instagram:
The thing that I think most people don't know about the job that we do is it's all about saddle time. So if you don't put in the work, you're not going to look right. One of the things that Taylor did immediately with me, just because of who Rip is on the show and how great of a cowboy he is, is he put me on every horse, every different saddle, every different discipline. From roping, cutting, reining, I mean, you name it. So he threw me in to deep water and said, 'Hey, you need to swim.' So, you know, that's the only way you can do that is by putting in the work.
If Taylor Sheridan ever brings his shortlived reality show The Last Cowboy back to primetime as a celebrity-infused version, I'm guessing Cole Hauser would be among the first people called in to star. That hypothesis is kind of useless, unlike the many skills that Hauser was trained to be proficient in while on the ranch. The kind of skills that left one actor with permanent scars on his butt cheeks.
It almost seems like it'd be two different courses involved. A. How to Cowboy, and B. How to Cowboy in Texas' Godawful Heat. Hauser has talked about how much different filming down south was in that respect, where he couldn't keep his additional Rip weight on as easily as he could in Montana.
When asked by the interviewer about cutting, which fans have definitely seen Rip and other Yellowstone-verse characters taking part in, Hauser shared:
Yeah, cutting is great. I love cutting. Cutting is when...if you look at a herd of cows, and say one's sick, or you want to doctor one. So you'll come up to the herd, you'll cut the cow that's curled, the calf, you'll cut it out of the herd, and then basically you put your reins down, you hold on, and you just move that cow out. Then eventually you get them out, and you rope them. So it's a lot to it, but I mean, it's fun to do.
Things are only getting more cutting and heated on Dutton Ranch, as evidenced by the latest episode, as well as the preview for the upcoming installment "Whiskey Limits." (The series recently namechecked the late, not-so-great Jamie Dutton, whose Wes Bentley also had to ace the Cowboy Camp.) Check the promo out below.
So I'm not sure if the quickest or easiest way to learn how to cowboy is "getting a job on a Taylor Sheridan western," but it does sound like the best possible shortcut to making it look good on TV. Might not help. you land a job at any ranches Sheridan doesn't have an ownership stake in, but maybe.
Dutton Ranch drops new episodes each Friday on Paramount+ and Paramount Network, with the Season 1 finale set for July 3.
