While the theme song is retained at the beginning of the show for this last season, the theme song - as well as Gil Favor on a horse, uttering the iconic "Head 'em up! Move 'em out!" - is no longer used at the end.
Eric Fleming (Gil Favor), Sheb Wooley (trail scout Pete Nolan), James Murdock (Wishbone's clumsy meal assistant Mushy), Robert Cabal (wrangler Hey Soos), and Rocky Shahan (drover Joe Scarlet) were all dismissed by Ben Brady during Rawhide's summer 1965 hiatus prior to shooting the eighth season. The recently installed sixth executive producer of Rawhide had been tasked with revitalizing the series and reversing declining ratings. Fleming boasted to TV Guide that "CBS fired me because they were paying me a million dollars a year" (only $220,000 to be exact; equal to $1.98 million in 2022). Ironically, Rawhide (1959) was canceled 13 episodes into the next season (partly due to poor scheduling).
There was a poster behind Rowdy in the church which read: I.O.O.F. Annual Picnic Basket Social Next Sunday. The Independent Order of Odd Fellows (IOOF) is a non-political and non-sectarian international fraternal order founded in 1819 by Thomas Wildey in Baltimore, Maryland, United States.
Five years later, Jeff Corey and David Watson would both appear in Beneath the Planet of the Apes.