Tag Archives: cowboy

Cowboy’s Monday Morning – Bull’s Saturday Night

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Last year at The Blackfeet’s annual North American Indian Days or NAID we had a chance to observe this interesting phenomenon during their rodeo. It was a short little presentation of how the cowboy’s and the bulls get along. If you had any thoughts that bull riding was like professional wrestling you might think again as both the cowboy and the bull would try and convince you otherwise.

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The title of today’s post is Cowboy’s Monday Morning – Bull’s Saturday night. The cowboy is having a Monday morning due to the fact that for whatever reason he neglected to hold on very tightly to the Bull rope, his lifeline and anchor point to remain seated firmly on the bull’s back, and to maintain the proper posture required to look good to impress any ladies watching. This lack of attention on his part meant he would soon be leaving the safety and comfort of his seat on the bulls back.

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The bull being very, very sensitive to the rider on his back has been waiting impatiently for this slight error to occur. When it does that is the beginning of the Bull’s Saturday night as things begin to become very entertaining for the bull. There will dancing and singing and prancing in the street as the bull capitalizes on the cowboys lack of attention.

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As the bull causes the separation of the cowboy from his back he just glances back slightly to make any corrections in his form and to check that the cowboy will land in the spot where he can bring his hindquarters squarely down on the cowboys chest. This is called “stomping the cowboy silly” in rodeo parlance. The bull enjoys this part very much.

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As the cowboy lands perfectly and shows the proper amount of discomfort the bull raises his hindquarters for a perfect two point landing on the cowboys chest. This is called scoring and usually gets the bull big points. The cowboy not so much. His score is rapidly going down the tubes right now.

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Here we see the bull performing his trademark happy dance, similar to when a football player scores a touchdown. He is very pleased at this point. The cowboy isn’t as thrilled with how things turned out and is actively thinking that the job down at the Post Office doesn’t sound too bad at the moment.

This is just one little story of the constant battle between man and beast and rodeos and photographers and Blackfeet bull riders and rides to the ER and extra hay for the bull and all things rodeo. This time things went in favor of the beast. Next time Man might prevail. It’s up to you to decide who you want to vote for. In this particular battle the odds are slightly in favor of the bull. But every once in a while the cowboy wins. That’s nice too. How’s your Monday morning going. If it is better than the cowboys, well hell, go get yourself another cup of coffee. You deserve it.

Voodoo Power

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This is a professional rodeo bull that makes its living by bucking off cowboys whenever they have the temerity to climb upon his back. His name is Voodoo Power and he works primarily in rodeo settings but will cheerfully buck off any rider any where, any time. His job is allow a cowboy, who is optimistically called a bull rider, to climb on his back and try to stay there for 8 seconds. If he does the cowboy wins. If he doesn’t Voodoo Power does. There’s little gray area here. There’s a great big clock on the wall with bright red numbers that quickly as the bull sees it, and agonizing slowly, as the cowboy sees it, ticks off the seconds until it reads 8.0. If the rider is still there he wins, if a fraction of a second before 8:0 he falls off, he loses. No appeal, no do over, he just gets up and limps to the fence before Voodoo Power notices him again. The cowboy wants to be well up on that fence before he does.

This may seem like a simple task, to ride a bull for 8 seconds, look at your watch and count them off, it doesn’t take very long for those seconds to go by, but you should know that many of these bulls have not been ridden to a qualifying time more than once or twice in several years. That’s a lot of rodeos and a lot of chances for the cowboy to have a successful ride. It’s also a lot of times that Voodoo gets to teach them some humility. And he does, regularly.

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Here’s Voodoo Power at work. This cowboy was oh so close to the 8:0 second mark but Voodoo Power decided it just wasn’t this cowboy’s night to win. Moments later the cowboy was airborne and when he hit the ground Voodoo was there waiting for him to step on him a little and roll him around the arena floor with his head. This is just Voodoo’s way of saying “Good try” to the cowboy. Fortunately for the bull rider the rodeo clown, who puts himself in harm’s way every single night, was there to convince Voodoo not to mangle the cowboy any more than necessary. Voodoo relented, the cowboy lived, and everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

That’s how this bull riding thing works, you come down to the rodeo, and we encourage you to do so, find your seat, and hang on tight as the bull riding begins. That’s it. Simple. If you’re finding your life a little boring at the moment, you can get a Cowboy outfit, pay your entry fee and have a close encounter with Voodoo Power, the professional bucking bull. He’ll be glad to meet you. See you at the Greeley Stampede.

Note: The following is a press release from the Greeley Stampede provided for anyone interested in the Rodeo. If you’re in the area there are still a few days of rodeo left. Come on down and take one in.

NEWS RELEASE 

For Immediate Release

Andy Segal

Media and Communications Manager

Greeley Stampede

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DAY SEVEN OF THE GREELEY STAMPEDE AND ALL IS COOL 

July 1, 2015 (GREELEY, CO) The afternoon rain cooled off the evening making for an all-around great night at the Greeley Stampede.

On this beautiful evening, as part of Ag Day, members of both the 4-H and FFA had the opportunity to come out and enjoy the Stampede Rodeo for free if they wore their organizations apparel. Over 5,000 visitors were in attendance at the 4th performance of the Rodeo.

Earlier in the day, when the heat was just taking hold, the Miss Rodeo Colorado Pageant got underway with the Horsemanship event. On Thursday, July 2 the MRC Pageant Speech contest will begin at 10:30 am at the Island Grove 4-H Building. The final event is the Fashion Show and Coronation at Union Colony Civic Center on Friday, July 3 in Greeley. RSVP’s are required call 970-454-0191.

The 5th and last regular performance of the rodeo is July 2 at 7:00 pm.  For Military Appreciation Day our current and retired Military men and women will be honored. Just show a military ID, military dependent ID or come in uniform to receive FREE park admission and admission to north grandstands during the July 2 rodeo.  The US Army is the rodeo sponsor for the evening.

Looking ahead to Friday morning the Kids Rodeo, sponsored by John Elway Dodge Ram, kicks off at 9:00 am. Western Underground will headline the Free Stage and you can catch Joe Nichols and Sawyer Brown on the Stampede Arena stage. If you want to meet Joe Nichols up close you can find him signing autographs at 4:15 in the Island Grove Events Center.

Enjoy the weather whatever day you come out to the Stampede but be sure to take in the last regular rodeo performance on July 2 or the rodeo finals on July 4. You can also buy your concert or demo derby tickets or get your carnival passes by calling 970-356-7787, by visiting any Northern Colorado King Soopers location, going to Ticketswest.com, calling Ticketswest at 866-464-2626 or online at Greeleystampede.org.  The Stampede Ticket Office is open 9:00 am – 10:00 pm daily during the event.

The 2015 Greeley Stampede June 25th – July 5th!

Cowboys At Work Team Roping

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Team Roping, this is a rodeo event based on real life cowboy work, as are all the events in the rodeo except maybe bull riding. That event is just something cowboys thought up for fun, something to do on a Friday night instead of going to the Punch Up, a shot and a beer and a fist fight establishment out on the county line.

Team roping was particularly important as it was the way cowboys completed the arduous task of handling calves during spring round-up so they could be collected, branded and other necessary activities performed on them. Calves being calves they had some idea of what that all entailed so they would do their best to avoid participating and run away. Especially the little bull calves. Cowboys having to get all this work accomplished had to come up with a way to capture the calf so it could be processed. That’s where team roping came in.

Cowboys on their horses would be hanging around the outside of the herd as it milled around inside the corral and when they saw a calf making a break for it, ride after it to catch it. Two cowboys usually worked together to do this. One cowboy, called a header, would rope the runaway calf or young steer around his horns, and the other cowboy called a heeler, would rope the calves hind feet. The calf unable to run would be secured by the two horses carefully backing up, until the calf was in the position it needed to be for the branding team to run up and tip the calf on its side, so the branding could take place. This was also the time that other necessary things would happen, inoculations, horn trimming if necessary, a short brief instruction session on how to be a proper productive member of the herd, normally delivered by one of the older cowboys, and the calf would be released back to the care of its mother or other proper guardian.

Today things are stilled handled pretty much the way they were 100 years ago. The cows and calves are rounded up, herded into a corral where the cowboys have built a small fire to heat up the branding irons and they go to work. It worked good back then and it still works good today. But we’ve heard that changes may be on the way.

It’s the middle of the second decade of the twenty-first century and some things have changed from the 1800’s. We have iPads now, and cell phones, freeze-dried potatoes that you can just mix with hot water and have for lunch right there at the corral, and that and other digital stuff, changed everything. The word on the range is that soon drones will be flying in with their calf-seeking radar, picking up these calves, hauling them to an area where they are marked with organic recycled ink in place of the old style brand, be subcutaneously inoculated with growth hormones that will double the calves weight every 96 hours, make them mellow and not mean, and lastly, be injected with a personalized  “chip” that will give its location, weight gain over the past 96 hours, its current mood and disposition, whether it is currently being rustled, and provide it with all the necessary information it needs to be a calf in the 21st century.

Now we don’t know if any of that is true or not, it’s just some of the stuff cowboys talk about around the campfire at supper. It makes the time go by and the beans taste better. We do know that the Amalgamated Brotherhood of International Cowboys, (ABIC) the union most cowboys belong to, are definitely against it. We’ll just have to wait and see how all this plays out. For now though it’s business as usual out on the range and the team ropers have their work cut out for them and they’re hard at it.

If you want to see how real cowboys do their work then come down to the rodeo, and the Greeley Stampede is a good one to come to, and watch Team Roping. It’s very cool.

Back To The Classics

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Saddle bronc riding. This is the event that started rodeos.  Back in the old days which is anything before 1950, before Volkswagen Jetta’s and Prius’, the only way a cowboy could get to work was to either, A: Walk, or B: Ride a horse. ‘A’ was simply not an option as cowboys don’t walk. They can’t. They wear special footwear called Cowboy boots with a tall heel that make it almost physically impossible to walk more than 50′ before they fall down on the ground grabbing their legs yelling “OMG, I can’t walk! My legs! My legs!. Somebody help me, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!” That’s where option ‘B’ comes in. Ride a horse.

Back then that was problematic because horses didn’t like to be ridden. They still don’t for the most part. Ask any horse that’s been out on grass for a month or two if it would really like to ridden and they will almost always answer “No, thanks, I’m good.” You can’t blame them really, it’s hot out usually, and where you got to go to work is way out there in the toolies where Haysoose lost his Ray-Bans, the saddle blanket is itchy, the saddle is heavy, not counting the cowboy that wants to sit on it, they stick a big old metal bit in your mouth so they can yank you all over the place, they want you to run around chasing after things, you got to work everyday, all day, with never a day off, so the horse usually just said “No” when asked to cooperate.

Cowboys hate to hear “No” so right away there was a problem. Faced with having to walk, and the resulting rolling around on the ground yelling and the embarrassment and all, they decided that they were going to convince the horse to help out, to do its part willingly. And there it was, the birth of the rodeo event, Saddle bronc riding.

You can see everything there is to know about Saddle bronc riding by looking at the image above. They put a saddle on the horse, no small feat in itself when the horse doesn’t want you to, they climb on and they ask the horse politely to cooperate. The horse usually declines and the resulting melee is what you see here. Sometimes the cowboy convinces the horse, other times the horse convinces the cowboy that he should ask another horse. Eventually though a compromise is reached.

This entire learning to cooperate with each other was so entertaining to bystanders, especially those who didn’t have to convince the horse it should be ridden, that soon cowboys and the spectators were getting together on a Sunday afternoon and doing this whole process for fun. The enjoyment spread and soon cowboy and horse were doing this all over the place. Out in the corrals, inside barns so they could get out of the sun, traveling around to different cities where some folks would pay money to see the process at work. They named these events rodeos and the rest is history. It became hugely successful and drew folks from every walk of life to watch Saddle bronc riding and other western activities, drink beer from paper cups, tell each other that they could do that if they had to, and watch cowgirls in tight jeans walk around the grandstands.

Now some of these cowboys and their horses don’t even do a job of work any more. They just drive from rodeo to rodeo in great big dually trucks pulling a 3 axle horse trailer behind them winning huge amounts of cash money for staying on their respective horses for 8 seconds. It ‘s become big business with all the resulting industries, like tight western jeans makers, silver belt buckle construction, cowboy boot makers, sno-cone machine builders, beer brewers, horse whisperers, cowboy whisperers, judges who never make mistakes like football referees do, great big humongous Jumbotron TV screen builders to see instant replays and scores, the list is endless.

Yeah the bull riding is exciting and all the other events show you the skills cowboys need to get their work done but at the heart of it all is the classic event, the one that made all this hoopla possible, Saddle Bronc riding. If you get a chance go see it at a rodeo near you. It’s worth the price of a ticket.