What’s the dream for someone who gets started in the Angus business? Is it to raise a family on a ranch? Is it to sell a high-dollar bull, or to look back and be confident he’s accomplished a job well done? 

Dave and Yvonne Hinman of Malta, Mont., are in the camp of a lucky few who said “yes” to chasing their dreams and achieved them. Their tenacity, combined with an impressive track record of service to the breed, earned them a spot among other visionaries as 2024 inductees into the Angus Heritage Foundation.

“It was the goal when Yvonne and I started out, from when we got married, to own a ranch one day,” Dave says. So they found a place close to home, leasing a ranch near Willow Creek, Mont., and went to work.

In 1973, they purchased their first registered Angus cattle from Bob and Ethel Lund of Lund’s B Bar Angus Ranch in the eastern part of the state. Then they bought a set of heifers from Ray and Joan Van Dyke of Van Dyke Angus Ranch.

Dave says Bob, Ray and many others influenced him in the early days of Hinman Angus by imparting wisdom and sharing advice.

If you keep your ears open and your mouth shut, you know what? You learn a lot. I got excited about the purebred business. It was something that really worked, and was something I really wanted to do.” — Dave Hinman

From there, the Hinmans were all in, but they were still young and making a name for their cattle.

“It was obvious that we had to add value somewhere if we were going to make this thing work to where we could own our ranch one day,” Dave says.

Moving to Malta

While living and working in Willow Creek for 20 years, the Hinmans raised their two daughters, Jill and Heidi, and found a successful marketing strategy in the Performance Breeders. However, in 2000, the man they were leasing their ranch from was ready to sell. 

“At the time, things were bringing a lot more money than they were worth, and there was no way we could buy that ranch,” Dave says. “We were able to get the five-year lease option here from this ranch (near Malta, Mont.) from Bill and Kathleen France at the time, and then we were able to exercise that.” 

Second only to marrying his wife and the birth of their kids, Dave says “That was one of the best days ever when we signed on to that thing — owed a lot of money, but that’s OK.”

Jill had originally found the advertisement for the ranch they would purchase, and some had overlooked it because the land had been used pretty hard. Luckily, Dave, being a self-proclaimed “grass nut,” was up for the challenge of reviving the land, and they saw its potential.

“It was a ranch that looked like it would fit us, and it was also probably the only ranch in Montana we figured we could pay for with our cows,” he says. “We wanted a ranch that had some irrigated ground on it so that we didn’t have to sell cows in a drought year.”  

To improve their pastures, they added waterers, crossfenced the land and applied grazing pressure with great intention, aligning to growing patterns of the forages that perform well in their climate. 

Like other ranchers in their area, many of the Hinmans’ pastures rely on well water alone, so they stay diligent about managing those resources for their herd.

Dave says he considers the local land “good old cow country” and forever a work in progress, but he is proud of the advancements they have made and the feed they have been able to produce with what precipitation they get. Annually, that’s around 10 inches.

A family business

Presently, the ranch operates with help from several generations of family members, with mutual respect as a key ingredient for the way they work together. 

In the early 2000s, the couple welcomed their younger daughter Heidi Lulloff and her husband, Billy Lulloff, back to the ranch. They were just a few years out of college then, and they have grown to be part owners of Hinman Angus. 

“I started working for Dave and Yvonne when I was in high school,” Billy says. “It’s a great life experience. They’ve taught me a lot.”

Dave says Billy has been around through all the tough times, and he commends him for a job well done through the years.

“He’s stayed here, become a partner with us; and I couldn’t say enough about the young man that’s helped develop this ranch into what it is,” Dave says.

Now, Dave and Yvonne’s grandson, Tyler “Ty” Lulloff, lives and works full-time on the ranch with his wife, Sascha Lulloff, and their two children, Tavi and Tylo. 

Ty says it is obvious why his grandparents deserve the recognition they have received, being inducted into the Angus Heritage Foundation: they have worked tirelessly to improve their Angus herd and its genetics, loving what they have done along the way. They just kept going even if someone told them no.

“They’ve made it their whole life — their life’s mission — to have great cattle and to improve the genetics and the Angus breed as a whole,” Ty says. “I’ve seen [my grandfather] on his phone all the time since I was a small child. He’s always making sure everybody’s happy with their bulls.”

Dave still meets with customers on a regular basis and helps with marketing the cattle, while Billy runs point for the day-to-day operations on the ranch. Ty is Billy’s right-hand man, learning the ropes of all aspects of the operation. Yvonne says Ty has also been a good study of pedigrees and cattle breeding, taking after his grandfather in that way.

Dave and Yvonne’s older daughter, Jill Hamilton, and her husband Dave Hamilton, who is a CPA, manage the bookwork and ranch’s tax work and are a great asset that way, Yvonne says. Heidi leads data submission and tracks records for AHIR, handling all the information to maintain their status as a MaternalPlus^® herd.

Dave says he is proud to have four generations with the ranch today and see the parts they all play. He says it’s Billy and Ty’s turn to be at the wheel, while he and Yvonne enjoy their supporting roles.

“All of the things that you put together — putting the ranch together and having the family here — I don’t know how you could get a lot better,” Dave says. “So as long as we can continue to make this thing work, we’ll just be here and stay here a long, long time.”

Mother cows and Cowboy Up

One of Dave and Yvonne’s favorite memories and a milestone during their career came in 2016, the year they sold HA Cowboy Up. 

“The best part about Cowboy Up is he went on to do what he was supposed to do and did it extremely well,” Dave says.

At the time, he was the highest-selling Angus bull in Montana at $350,000.

“When the bull, Cowboy Up, was born, Dave knew when he saw him, he was going to be a winner,” Yvonne says. “The bull came through wonderful on numbers and everything; and for the bull sale, we had lots of calls and lots of people interested in him, and it was a surprise and a delight when he sold for what he did.” 

Dave remembers the day he sold as “unreal.” The auctioneer made it through the first heat, and when he stopped, he reminded Dave to breathe.

“So it was a big day for all of us involved,” Dave says. “I mean, how could it be a bigger day than something like that? It was pretty fun.”

He says the cow line behind Cowboy Up had a lot to do with the bull’s success, and he thinks that way about a lot of cows they have had through the years. 

He says good cows have been the basis of their program and their success all the way through.

“The mother cow is everything to me,” Dave explains. “This country is not easy because it can get cold and it gets dry, and the combination of everything. A cow really has to work to make a living, so she’s got to have some body condition on her that’s going to stay through the hard times.” 

“If you get those kinds of cows and then they’ll keep that ability to breed up every year, then we got something going,” he says. “It’s always a work in progress, again, of selecting and taking the bottom end off, and keeping the best, relentlessly.”

In service to others

While relentless in their pursuit of improving their land and cattle, Dave and Yvonne also spent countless hours paying forward the mentorship they received in their younger years and serving the Angus breed.

“They’ve mentored in a lot of different ways,” Billy says. “They were really big in 4-H, and [Dave] tried to hire high school kids when he was younger.”

Locally, they also hosted a number of ag days on the farm and have donated beef to the local schools’ nutrition programs.

Their record of service extends to several leadership roles in the Angus breed as well, both contributing at the state level before serving in national roles.

From 2017-2023, Dave served on the American Angus Association Board of Directors. 

“That was a great time in my life, to be really honest about it.” Humble about his contributions, Dave says, “From a selfish standpoint, I learned a lot more than I gave on a thing, but I tried to give as much as I could.”

Yvonne served as president of the American Angus Auxiliary in 1999-2000 and was honored with its Distinguished Woman Award in 2007. She was a judge for the national scholarship programs, including the Miss American Angus contest, and says both were fun to help organize and support.

Her cohorts in the Auxiliary affectionately dubbed Yvonne the chocolate lady, both because she cheerfully identifies with the title of “chocoholic” and because she would always bring a bag or two of dark chocolate to share at every meeting.

“We have met so many nice people,” Yvonne says. “When you are an active Auxiliary member, you get to be good friends with so many people from clear across the country.”

In front of many of those friends, Dave and Yvonne were formally honored as part of a distinguished group of Angus Heritage Foundation inductees at the 2024 Angus Convention Nov. 3 in Fort Worth, Texas.