Dallas A. Rowley

Dallas Acel Rowley

August 5, 1945 – August 26, 2026

Dallas Acel Rowley, 81, passed away on August 26, 2026, closing a remarkable and unconventional life spent largely in the rugged wild country of the American West, where he was far more at home than anywhere else.

Dallas was born August 5, 1945, in Vernal, Utah, to Acel DeForest Rowley and Laura Venice Smuin Rowley. He grew up in a family where trapping, hunting, livestock protection, and working outdoors were more than occupations; they were a way of life.

His father began working as a government trapper in the 1930s and passed his knowledge on to his sons, DeLyle, Gary, Dallas, and Dennis. Together, the Rowley family became part of a generation of western trappers who developed and refined techniques for locating, calling, trapping, and controlling livestock predators, primarily coyotes.

Dallas began trapping professionally near Monticello, Utah, in 1964. In October 1965, he was drafted into the United States Navy during the Vietnam War and served honorably aboard the aircraft carrier USS Hornet until October 1967. His military decorations included the National Defense Service Medal, Vietnam Service Medal, and Vietnam Campaign Medal.

After returning home, Dallas went back to the life he knew best.

Over the decades that followed, his work took him throughout Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, Arizona, California, and Nevada. He also worked at times as an oilfield roughneck and on pipeline crews, but trapping remained at the center of his working life. He eventually retired from USDA/APHIS as a Wildlife Specialist after approximately 35 years of government service and more than 40 years of professional trapping.

Calling Dallas simply a “trapper,” however, does not fully describe him.

He was an extraordinary outdoorsman, marksman, hunter, tracker, and master coyote caller. Coyotes were his primary quarry, but his work also involved chasing mountain lions, bears, foxes, and other predators affecting sheep and cattle operations.

Dallas pursued coyotes just about every way a person could; on foot, from trucks, from snowmobiles, and from airplanes. He helped pioneer and refine aerial gunning techniques in Colorado and Nevada and was also an early practitioner of using decoy dogs in coyote hunting.

Over the years he had probably as many good dogs for companions as he did people, including Sam (you son-of-a-bitch), Crazy, and a three-legged mutt named Rusty. They rode beside him in the truck, checked the trapline, chased coyotes, guarded camp, and went about everywhere Dallas did.

Dallas’ work brought him into contact with ranchers and sheep herders scattered across enormous stretches of isolated country. He traveled to remote sheep camps, bringing supplies and talking with migrant herders about problem coyotes before heading back into the hills to do his job. Even when they shared little common language, Dallas and the herders shared a mutual respect.

He was comfortable almost anywhere. Dallas lived at various times in houses, apartments, camp trailers, tents, his truck, and sometimes simply in a sleeping bag beneath the stars. A Chevrolet Suburban was among his favorite vehicles and, like most of his trucks, served as transportation, hunting rig, office, dining room, and bedroom. He loved searching for arrowheads and other traces of history and traveling the back roads and open country that became his real home.

There was always something of the Old West about Dallas.

Family and friends joked that he had been born a hundred years too late and might have been more at home riding with the outlaws than living in the modern world. He was fiercely independent, stubborn, colorful, and unconventional. A pouch of “Red Man” chewing tobacco was seldom far from the pocket of his camouflage shirt, or his cheek.

His favorite poet, Waylon Jennings, said it well. Dallas spent much of his life “straightenin’ the curves and flattenin’ the hills.” He lived by his own rules more often than was probably advisable, and his life had its share of difficult chapters. But those chapters were not the whole of the man.

At his best, Dallas was funny, generous, entertaining, caring, and unforgettable. He taught younger family members how to read the country, and how to be comfortable miles from anywhere. He also demonstrated that the front seat of a truck was a perfectly respectable place for a good afternoon nap among the sagebrush or pine trees.

For a generation of nieces, nephews, family members, ranchers, hunters, and fellow trappers, Dallas represented a kind of western life that is rapidly disappearing. He helped pass that knowledge and tradition on to his nephew Wayne Rowley, who carried on the family profession and the Rowley trapping legacy.

Dallas was a good man, and he will be missed.

Dallas is survived by his son, Michael Dallas Rowley; his stepdaughter, Chrystal Jacobs Gould, who loved and regarded him as a father; many nieces and nephews, his sisters-in-law Jessie (Gary) Rowley, Diane (Dennis) Rowley and his brother, DeLyle (Mary) Rowley, the last surviving brother of the Rowley family’s remarkable generation of outdoorsmen.

He was preceded in death by his parents, Acel DeForest Rowley and Laura Venice Smuin Rowley; brothers Gary Rowley and Dennis Rowley; his sister, Carol Allen; his sister-in-law Rosalie (DeLyle) Rowley, brother-in-law Larry Allen.

A viewing will be held Saturday, September 5, 2026, from 9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. at Blackburn Vernal Mortuary.

Following the viewing, Dallas will be laid to rest beside the rest of his family, with a graveside service among the sagebrush and red hills of Dry Fork Cemetery, where he belongs.

Dallas lived a life measured in dirt roads, sheep camps, coyotes answering a call across the desert, good dogs riding beside him, and countless miles traveled through the mountains, deserts, and sagebrush country of the West.

Whatever else may be said of Dallas Rowley, there will only ever be one of him.