Fried Twinkies, Buckle Bunnies, & Bull Riders Read online

  “I believe it is time to legislate fairness, to the secondary heroes of our sport, our bulls.”

  Within an hour of getting the e-mail, Bernard called Herrington, who asked Bernard to take the matter to the PBR board of directors. Herrington wanted the Brazilian-style ropes banned.

  Most riders agreed that the main advantage of the Brazilian ropes was this: Unlike an American-style rope, the Brazilian rope is pulled from the opposite side of a rider’s hand—with the tail coming up the left side for a right-handed rider and up the right side for a left-handed rider. So when a rider using a Brazilian rope slipped to the outside of a bull, the rope naturally pulled him back toward the middle. But some stock contractors speculated there was another advantage: Brazilian ropes could be pulled tighter.

  The week before the Kansas City Classic, the PBR board met by teleconference.Of the allegedly guilty riders, one board member suggested, “Send the bastards back to Brazil.” Cooler heads prevailed.

  Cody Lambert, vice president of the PBR’s board of directors and livestock director, rejected the idea that a Brazilian-style rope could be pulled tighter than an American-style rope. He also pointed out that Brazilians weren’t the only riders taking too much time in the chute.

  Cody Custer, the PBR back judge who had been sitting on the chutes during Moraes’s ride on Hotel California, said he didn’t think the rope had been pulled too tight. Moreover, he pointed out, Brazilians weren’t the only ones using Brazilian-style ropes. Impressed by the Brazilians’ success, American riders—such as Wiley Petersen, Ross Johnson, Gilbert Carrillo, and Adam Carrillo—traded in their American-style ropes for the Brazilian style. Furthermore, the PBR had no rules against any style of rope and had only general rules about how long a rider could take in the chute before starting his ride. Yet the board’s response was unanimous: Something had to be done.

  It went beyond animal rights. The stock contractors supplied the PBR with the country’s best bulls, and they wanted their investment protected, because the value of the bulls and the cost of business were skyrocketing.

  It used to be so simple. Contractor goes to a sale barn. Rounds up 100 bulls. Pays by the pound just like the fast-food suppliers. Hopes for one or two buckers good enough for the rodeo. Takes the rejects back to the slaughterhouse. Those days are long gone. Bull breeding has gone high tech with such advances as artificial insemination, embryo flushing, and even cloning. A semen straw from Little Yellow Jacket sold for $500, a comparative bargain next to the $1,000 charged for a semen straw from Blueberry Wine.

  “This thing is getting kind of crazy,” said Gene Baker, a rancher and farmer in Anson, Texas.

  Like he should talk. In 2001 Baker and Lyndal Hurst paid $100,000 for a retired bull named Houdini. Until then no one had paid more than $50,000 for a bull. Done bucking, Houdini stayed busy breeding some of the best crop of young bulls in the country. He was one of a kind until 2002. That year, in what is believed to be a first for the bull industry, Baker paid $20,000 to have Houdini cloned.

  The scientific advances in bull breeding stemmed from a conversation between two friends—Bob Tallman, a famous rodeo announcer, and Sammy Andrews, a prominent stock contractor. It was 1992 in Las Vegas when they were bitching about breeders who advertised bulls by famous sires like Oscar or Red Rock, when in actuality the bulls came from some obscure sale barn. The uncertainty about a bull’s lineage limited what most buyers were willing to pay for bulls. The only way to establish a credible market, thought Andrews, was to find a way to certify bloodlines. Then Tallman spoke the magic word: DNA.

  Andrews knew nothing about it. Tallman knew plenty. Rodeo announcing was Tallman’s calling, but animal science was his passion. In college he had studied artificial insemination, embryo transfer, and DNA. A fifth-generation cattleman, Tallman incorporated the science into his own bull-breeding program, started in 1972. Twenty years later, during his exchange with Andrews, Tallman thought, then uttered, “DNA”—the acronym for deoxyribonucleic acid, the blueprint for a genetic code. “Probably the smartest thing I ever said,” he later remarked.

  In 1996 Tallman and a business partner formed Buckers, Inc., which used DNA testing to certify a bull’s bloodlines. They charged breeders to certify their bulls and list them with a registry, and the upstart company had the perfect way to drown out the skeptics: Bodacious.

  Owned by Andrews, the bull ranked among the sport’s most famous ever. In fact, riders grew to fear the bull so much, Andrews retired him in 1995. Now he wanted to breed him through this new program.

  Every stock contractor in the business wanted a bull as rank as Bodacious—especially if they were certain the calf was a legitimate son. Tallman convinced Andrews that legitimacy required the use of DNA testing and a registry company like Buckers to keep records on all the certified bulls.

  They hauled Bodacious to a semen collection agency in west Texas, called 13 prominent rodeo producers, and started collecting semen from those producers’ top bulls, too. From 15 to 40, then to 100, the number of breeders using Buckers took off. Five years later the client list exceeded 600 bull owners. By 2003, the number of cattle registered at Buckers exceeded 11,000. In addition to a fee for registering each bull, Buckers got a percentage of any subsequent sale involving a bull registered with its company. The money came pouring in—even faster when Tallman conceived of another idea.

  Looking for a way to attract more breeders and offer a way to showcase their bulls, Tallman set up futurities—bucking events for 2-, 3-, and 4-year-old bulls. Most times stock contractors couldn’t tell if they had a decent bucker until the bull was 5. The futurities gave them a chance to assess the bulls’ ability sooner, not to mention win some cash. Entry fees at the futurities generated first-place prize money upwards of $30,000.

  Brilliant, thought Randy Bernard; and in 2003 the PBR bought out Tallman, renamed the company American Bucking Bull and recouped its investment by selling 19 shares of the new company for $25,000 apiece. Then the PBR created a buzz by offering a $100,000 first prize for the winner of a futurity for 4-year-olds the week of the 2004 finals in Las Vegas.

  Sometimes stock contractors complained about politics within the PBR and took issue with the bulls selected by Lambert. But they had nowhere else to go to compete for the kind of money being offered: $280 every time a bull bucked in a preliminary round; $400 every time a bull bucked in the championship round; $750 for the top-rated bull at each event and $500 for the runner-up; $750 every time a bull combined with a rider for a score of 90 points or higher; and a handful of end-of-the-year bonuses, including $20,000 for the Bull of the Year. Not only that, but if an owner hauled more than 16 bulls to an event, he got $3.75 per mile. While the payoffs were high, so was the expense of doing business.

  Each day a bull consumes up to 15 pounds of grain and nearly a bale of hay, costing about $80 a month. Then there’s the transportation cost. Hauling 10 to 14 bulls to BFTS events requires a gooseneck rig that sells for up to $80,000. And if a bull owner plans to buck his bulls at BFTS events, they’d better be damn good. Of the thousands of bucking bulls across the country, only 15 are picked for the championship round at each BFTS event and another 55 to 85 bulls for the preliminary rounds. Over the 2004 regular season, there would be 27 championship rounds and 49 preliminary rounds.

  As the PBR’s popularity and prize money increased, so did the number of people shelling out money in search of bulls good enough to compete in the BFTS. Those higher costs spurred efforts to reduce the margin for error in bull breeding and prompted reliance on science and technology.

  A few years earlier, Herrington had called the University of Southern California to see if there was interest in conducting experiments that would identify traits of a top-notch bucking bull. Armed with such information, stock contractors could take the guesswork out of breeding. But the information wouldn’t come cheap. Southern Cal told Herrington it’d need $250,000 to conduct the study—with no money-back guarantee.

  Then H
errington got a call from someone who offered to try it for free. Her name was Tina Rush, an avid PBR fan who was studying bovine genomics at St. Louis Community College of Florissant Valley in Missouri.

  Dubbing her project “Rank Bulls Forever,” Rush enlisted the help of one of her professors before getting in contact with Herrington through Teresa Underdown, an agent for riders. Before long Underdown was plucking hair strands from bulls and shipping them to Rush, who stored them in a freezer in the biotech lab at St. Louis Community College. The plan: Rush would use DNA testing on the hair strands to identify the leading characteristics of a rank bucking bull.

  “The main hypothesis is there has to be some kind of genetic mutation or genetic alteration in bulls,” she said. “Otherwise, all bulls would be rank.”

  Rodeo promoters could’ve really used such a program in the 1920s.

  When rodeos first sprung up across the Southwest in the late 19th century, there was no such thing as bull riding. Bulls were bred strictly for beef production. Most of the rodeo events—calf roping, steer wrestling, and bareback riding—evolved from the skills cowboys needed to run a ranch. But at the turn of the century, with rodeo promoters looking for another marquee event, cowboys started riding steers, typically castrated before sexual maturity and as a result much tamer than the testosterone-charged bucking bulls. Then, around 1920, promoters upped the ante, holding their first bull riding events. Surely the sight of cowboys riding the 1-ton beasts would attract crowds. One problem: Many of the bulls didn’t buck. Then promoters Ed McCarty and Verne Elliott introduced to rodeo a new breed of bull: crossbred Brahmas that originally had come from India and were known for their nasty streak and uncontrollable urge to buck. The sport was forever changed.

  Every era had its superstar. Sharkey, who in 1913 during a 3-day competition in Salinas, California, threw 36 riders, none of them staying on the black bull for more than 3 seconds. Tarzan, the unridden bull from the 1930s that once tried to tear down the bars of the bucking chute before the gate could be opened. Jasbo, who earned his name when he plowed into the clown barrel belonging to Jasbo Fulkerson, knocked it over, and then tried to get inside the barrel with the terrified clown. Mighty Mike, who in the 1950s bucked every one of the star riders and killed a GI cowboy named Johnny Gravit when Gravit refused to let go of his bull rope and suffered fatal injuries while being dragged across the arena. Tornado, who in the 1960s bucked off 200 riders in a row before Freckles Brown finally conquered the bull. Oscar, the star of the 1970s that went unridden in his first 5 years of competition. Red Rock, a bull that in the 1980s went unridden in all of his 309 outs before Lane Frost rode him four times in a 1988 best-of-seven showdown with the bull. And who could forget Bodacious, a 1,850-pound Charbray who dominated the ’90s and sent Tuff Hedeman to the hospital for major reconstructive facial surgery. Yet for all the famous bulls of the past, veteran riders and stock contractors agreed that the sophisticated breeding programs of the 1990s had created more rank bulls than ever seen before. In fact, the joke in bull riding circles was that to keep up with the bulls, someone was going to have to start breeding riders.

  Like the riders, the bulls are judged on every trip, with their ratings determined by the average score of the two judges, each allotted 25 points to rate the bull’s performance. A bull that consistently scores between 23 and 25 will earn more than enough money to pay its feed and vet bills. But a bull regularly scoring 20 or below might be headed for the slaughterhouse, while scores in between that range will earn the label of a “user,” middle-of-the-road bulls that help fill the pen. Most of the PBR bulls buck 26 weeks out of the year and travel thousands of miles to get to the BFTS spots, held in 20 states as far apart as Worcester, Massachusetts, and Anaheim, California.

  Even with the scientific advances, some of the most successful stock contractors admitted they still depended on luck. How else to explain a crippled bucker in 1997 producing one of the PBR’s great bulls? The crippled sire was known only by his branding number, “01.” As a young bull, he’d shown extraordinary promise before breaking a leg. Eventually he was taken to the sale barn. But first, in spring 1996, Dillon Page and his son, H.D., the PBR’s three-time reigning Stock Contractor of the Year, decided to use the crippled bull as a breeder. They set him out to pasture with about 50 fertile cows on the banks of the Washita River, where the Pages operate D&H Cattle Company on a 1,500-acre ranch. For the young bull known only as 01, it was 60 days of fornication.

  The average gestation period for a cow is the same as a human’s—approximately 40 weeks. So 9 months later, 01’s offspring hit the ground—some 40 calves that weighed between 65 and 70 pounds. One of the newborn bulls was out of Miss Slinger and was born March 1, 1997. But like horses, for the purposes of tracking an animal’s age, all cows and bulls born in the same calendar year share the same birth date, January 1.

  Miss Slinger’s newborn and the other calves continued to nurse on their mothers for 9 months, putting on more than 12 pounds per week and plumping up to between 500 and 600 pounds. Then Dillon and H. D. Page moved the bull calves into a 3-acre weaning trap, where they learned to feed on grain, hay, and grass and endure a little pain. With a yellow-hot electric brander, the Pages burned in the marking number—790 for the son of Miss Slinger. Three weeks later, it was off to a wheat field, where the bull calves stayed from November to May before moving onto a pasture to eat Bermuda grass and keep bulking up.

  With the bulls almost 2 years old, the Pages brought them to the arena. There, they wrapped a soft flank strap in front of each bull’s hindquarters and strapped onto the bulls’ backs a 60-pound, remote-controlled dummy. Released from the chute, the bulls bucked for 3 or 4 seconds, long enough for the Pages to assess the bulls’ bucking abilities and quick enough to eject the dummies without hurting the bulls’ confidence. Seriously. If a rider dominates a young bull or a dummy is kept on the bull’s back too long, the Pages and other veteran stock contractors say, the bull might lose his confidence.

  That fall day in 1999, no young bull bucked as fiercely as the son of Miss Slinger. Problem was, the dummy got hung up on him. The remote control jammed. Dillon and H. D. Page scrambled after the bull. The chase went on for 10 minutes before they cornered number 790 in the back pen. Worried they had spooked a promising bull, the Pages dispatched the son of Miss Slinger to the pasture with about 50 fertile cows. While the young bull mingled with the cows, the other 2-year-old bulls went through the Pages’ standard training program.

  For 3 weeks, in groups of 11, the bulls made daily runs into the arena and up to twice a week entered through the metal chutes. Confused, most of them herded in the back of the arena until they saw the Pages setting out food and water outside the exit gate. Lunchtime! When the Pages opened the center gate, the bulls came running. The goal was to teach the bull that inside the arena lurked danger, and outside the arena waited food, water, and a place to relax. That way, when the bulls bucked in competition, they’d hopefully head for the center gate and leave the arena as soon as a rider was thrown or dismounted.

  But the son of Miss Slinger missed the training session, and the Pages hoped the young bull’s time away from the arena would help him forget the trauma of his first bucking experience. After the bull turned 3, however, it was time to test him again. The Pages strapped on the dummy, wrapped the flank strap, and then opened the chute gate.

  They watched in awe.

  Number 790 bucked just as fiercely as he had a year earlier. The mishap of the hung-up dummy apparently had had no effect on his confidence. Now it was time to put a real cowboy on the brindled bull. So in the fall of 2000, H. D. Page hauled him to a PBR-sanctioned Challenger Tour event. H.D. returned home grinning, and Dillon knew what that meant: The Pages had themselves one helluva bull. They entered him in a bucking bull futurity for 4-year-olds when he was only 3, and the bull finished fourth. The next year, competing against bulls his age, 790 won the event and a first-prize check of $25,000. That year he went to the 2001 final
s, and bull riding fans got their first look at a filled-out, 1,500-pound bull named Washita Mud Slinger.

  It was an impressive sight. So impressive that apparel maker Mossy Oak offered the Pages $2,500 to $5,000 a year for naming rights, depending on how well the bull performed. The Pages accepted, and the bull became known as Mossy Oak Mudslinger. In the chutes, he stood straight and still. When the rider was ready, so was he. He was a favorite of most riders because, although Mossy Oak Mudslinger bucked off a high percentage of riders, those who managed to hang for 8 seconds regularly scored 90 points or higher.

  Bucking bulls typically reach their peak at age 5; and in 2002, the 5-year-old Mossy Oak Mudslinger finished runner-up to Little Yellow Jacket as Bull of the Year. That year, Tom Teague, a multimillionaire businessman from North Carolina, paid the Pages $50,000 for a half interest in Mossy Oak Mudslinger. Yet for all of the bull’s growing fame in PBR circles, the Pages noticed something was wrong.

  The bull kept lifting a hind leg as if his back was hurting. They took him to the veterinarian. Two sets of x-rays showed no injury. They took him to a chiropractor, who claimed to have found the problem. But when the chiropractor was done with Mossy Oak Mudslinger, the Pages thought the bull looked even worse. They turned him out to pasture and gave him time to heal.

  Easing back into action, Mossy Oak Mudslinger finished fourth in the Bull of the Year balloting in 2003 and by midseason 2004, at age 7, was in contention for the $20,000 bonus as Bull of the Year. It would likely be his best, if not last, shot at the award.

  Few bulls buck as hard past age 7, and fewer still buck beyond the age of 10. Most bulls live until age 11 or 12, with the occasional bull living into his late teens. Once retired, many bulls head out to pasture as breeders, while the less fortunate head to the slaughterhouse.