Not very accurate

In the part concerning settling that the cowboy fought to avoid. The cowboy's true way was open range, free of employer. He would move cattle around to feed if not to deliver and he had no restrictions. It was the cordoning off of lands that slowed and eventually halted the true cowboy way. This started to develop very accurately around the Monte Walsh time.

What you say is true-----BUT

They cowboys had to quit HEARDING cows for the most part and were fixing fences for the most part.

Off Quote from the movie "We used to drive cattle from Texas to Canada, and get paid for it"

Cattle drives covered 12 -15 miles a day, Top hands got about 1.00$ aday, plus food, a place to sleep and keep his horse. Working a ranch, probably paid less.

Ranchers found after the great freeze it was cheaper to grow thier own feed than to range thier beef, they're really the ones that started to close the range; not the homesteader who couldnot afford to fence his land. The rancher erected the fences to keep the cows from the feed.

I'd rather go hunting with Dick Cheney, than driving with Ted Kennedy

The film doesn't just address the end of the open range. It mainly concerns a re-adjustment of the whole concept of ranching, and a transitional move from unrestricted grazing on mostly public land to smaller, more tightly managed ranches on fenced, privately owned land, with big corporate entities owning the land for the most part, rather than individually owned land. The horrible blizzards of 1886-87, followed again by less severe but still very bad winter of 1891-92, had a radical effect on ranching, basically weeding out marginal operations and leaving only those outfits that were big enough, smart enough and flexible enough to adapt and change. Before the blizzards, cows were looked upon by some of the ranch operations as being basically like fish. You let them breed and feed through the year, and just harvest them when you want to sell some. Some ranches lost 90+% of their livestock in the '86-'87 blizzard, which affected the central plains from Texas to Montana. You can imagine it was hard times for everyone in the ranching industry, from owners to cowboys. This period of transition and change is the setting for the film, where the Crossbar ranch goes under and the Slash Y is sold to "Consolidated", a group of investors.

"It ain't dying I'm talking about, it's living!!!"
Augustus McCrae