Innholdsfortegnelse for September 2020 i The Team Roping Journal

The Big Daddy, an Ariat World Series of Team Roping qualifier produced in Wyoming by JX2 Productions, topped $900,000 in payout July 15–20, held for the first time at Cheyenne’s Frontier Park. “We were so blessed,” said John Johnson, owner of JX2. “I couldn’t have asked for better. The cattle were great. My staff was unbelievable. We had 2,921 teams, and we didn’t know for sure it was happening until about three weeks before. This industry is awesome, and I’m so blessed to have the corporate partners who truly want us to succeed. Everyone got us all of our prizes, our products, arena stuff, ropes. It all came together. Everyone is backed up and had people laid off, and they all stepped up to the plate anyway. I can’t thank…

Resistol [20X Conley]  resistol.com, $135 The 20X Conley by Resistol is a handwoven straw body that features an all-around diamond vent in a cattleman crown with 4 ¼” or 4 ½” brim. Available in Natural or Natural/Tan colors, each hat comes with a comfortable roan leather sweatband. The 20X Conley is available at fine Western retailers and resistol.com. NRS [Tommy Blessing Floral Design Medium Port Bit]  nrsworld.com, $120 NRS and Tommy’s newest bit is here! It has the same classic 8” cheek with a brand new floral design. This bit also has the newest mouthpiece with smooth bars and a medium port. The smooth bars will lay nicely in a horse’s mouth while the medium port with aid in tongue relief as well as vertical flexion. CHAP [Computerized Horse Aging…

A couple times a year, I catch myself trying to go too fast. When that happens—like it did at the beginning of the 2020 summer run for me—I need to go back to my basics and fix my swing and my riding. I can get carried away trying to be fast instead of roping sharp. FROM THE START When I’m trying to go too fast, I leave the box and I don’t ride my horse. I lean out over my horse and, the more I lean, the less I use my legs. But, if I concentrate on kicking my horse and using my legs as much as I am using my upper body, everything works together to make the run sharper and smoother. SHOULDER POSITION I work on pulling my…

“This horse doesn’t really need a whole lot of help. Once you score him, you just stay out of his way. The bit is a lot, but it’s not. If you need it, it’s there, but if not, then it’s kind of a guide piece. It has a lot of feel. It has a pretty long shank. For a long-shank bit, it still has a pretty fast feel so you don’t have to do a whole lot and you still get a lot of response. You can have your horse’s attention and have him doing something and you don’t have to do very much.” —Clayton Van Aken, Mountain States Circuit Champion Header…

In a tiny barn on his parents’ property, Gary Gist began a one-man silversmithing show. It was a hobby. Something to supplement his professional roping career. Now, 52 years later, the Gist Silversmith legacy is synonymous with championship buckles awarded to the best in class. They are worn by American presidents, superstar musicians, professional sports team and rodeo athletes, youth champions and, since the inception of the associations, USTRC and Ariat World Series of Team Roping champion ropers. It’s an awesome feat, but it hardly encompasses Gist’s life. What encompasses Gist’s life is the loop he began building at age 6, aboard Blackie—his half-Welsh, half-Shetland pony—catching two feet behind his father. GOING PRO “I joined the PRCA when I was 12 years old,” Gary Gist said. “The first roping I…

“I honestly wasn’t ready to rodeo when I tried. I was 26 when I made it, but I was 23 the first year I tried to rodeo full-time. I think I probably always had the talent for it, but I just had too many holes in my game, so I think it would have hurt me in the long run if I tried sooner. I actually think it was a benefit for me to go to college, gain some confidence and kind of refine things there. By the time I started, I had enough maturity to me in life that I think it allowed me to learn and be a little more receptive to things. I think when you’re younger, you tend to be a little more bull-headed and a…

Q: You grew up competing in all the timed events and bull riding. You also exercised race horses as a teenager, right? A: Yes, and I actually ran a few races. But I was a little thick to be a jockey, and struggled in sweat boxes trying to keep my weight down. I’m 5’ 6” and rode bulls at 140-145 pounds. To be a jockey, I would have needed to weigh 115-120. I decided to be healthy and ride bulls instead of starve myself to be a jockey. Q: Who was your go-to person in such decisions? A: My big brother Pat made me who I am today inside the arena and out. There are five of us. Pat was the oldest and I was the youngest. Pat was a…

Earl Hall founded Kerman, California’s Hall Management some 55 years ago and has developed it into the state’s largest agricultural employer. He employs 4,000 workers on any given day, doles out a $3 million payroll each week and, over the course of a year, will manage crops, labor and 40,000 employees across some 600,000 acres. He’s also part of an investment group that purchased and is developing a 61,000-acre, crop-and-cattle endeavor on the island of Maui. To say the least, Hall, who will celebrate his 80th birthday come January, is busy. And confident. And positively insistent on taking care of his people. “I won’t tolerate workers not having their pay on time,” Hall asserted. “That is one of the most important things we need. I don’t want some head of…

Question: Trevor, I read your article about teaching the face last winter. I worked on everything you suggested, and I’m happy with how he faces. What do you recommend I do at the end of a run in the practice pen now to keep that in him? — Cesar Rodriguez; Tucson, Arizona Answer: I’m working on this column mid-summer, and I’m just leaving the slack at Deadwood, South Dakota. So, I’m going to tell you how what you’re asking is on my mind as it applies to rodeo and competition, and then I’ll talk about what I do in the practice pen to keep my horses’ finish sharp. I watched some of the team roping at Deadwood, and the best runs were the ones straight down the middle with everything…

THE MENTAL GAME Guys who rodeo are used to being in a groove—going head-to-head with the best in the world, day in and day out. That’s really true in a normal year, when we are going to two rodeos a day having to be 4.0. But with the COVID-19 cancelations, we’re facing some of the same dilemmas that ropers with day jobs battle—mostly, struggling to feel sharp when we’re not constantly competing and pushing our speed. PRACTICE ADJUSTMENTS In a normal year, my practice at home is mostly for my young horses, and for reinforcing things at a slow pace on my rodeo horses. But now, we’re having to make more rodeo-type runs at the house, pushing ourselves and our speed. I’m focusing a larger part of my practice on…

Secretaries aren’t just the unsung heroes of our sport, they’re usually unseen, too. Behind a wall in a stuffy, small structure, sometimes just a single person is feverishly making the team roping event seem seamless. We talked to some who do it week in and week out about the gig itself and the latest software that’s making their job easier. Sixteen-time NFR steer wrestler Rod Lyman and his wife, Stefani, produce ropings all winter in Arizona and, last summer, hosted a little Friday night series in Dillon, Montana. Stefani learned on the fly to announce and, in the past few years, became a secretary, too. “It’s not a hard job until something goes wrong,” Stefani said. “Until you’re announcing and your computer freezes for 30 seconds, you haven’t really become…

The Ariat World Series of Team Roping will produce the 2020 Title Fights of the Heartland at the Circle T Arena in Hamilton, Texas, Oct. 23 through 25—bringing Texans a taste of the Title Fight-format proven wildly successful in Arizona each February. “This is going to be a killer roping,” WSTR President Ty Yost said. “We’ve had a call for this format in Texas, but we’ve never had one until now. The $300-per-roper fees, with the two Heartland Finales thrown in, will really make this a huge payday for ropers.” Hamilton’s Circle T Arena hosts some of the association’s leading qualifiers throughout the year, and has two arenas, a restaurant, stalls and hotel amenities on-site to maximize convenience over the three-day weekend. “With a Gold Buckle Beer Open qualifier at…

HEADING, FROM A HEELER’S POINT OF VIEW SEEING THE RUN FROM A HEELER’S PERSPECTIVE MAKES UNDERSTANDING THE HANDLE A WHOLE LOT EASIER. I heeled most of my life. Now, as a header, I truly think my heeling helped me better understand the way a run needs to take shape. When I handle a steer poorly now, I immediately imagine what my heeler is seeing back there. So, as I’m running to a steer on the head side, I am visualizing how to rope it and set it up so my heeler just has to place his loop in front of the feet. 1 In these pictures, I’m roping the steer and my horse, Ransom, is free enough and easy enough that I can do anything I want to do. I…

The makers of Soft-Ride Boots are releasing their latest creation: SoftRiders, a polymer shoe that could be the ticket to added years of soundness on aging, navicular and laminitic horses, also opening the door to added longevity and traction in young performance horses. Early in 2019, Colorado horse shoer and 8-heeler Taylor Thompson had a few unsound horses in his rotation that he just couldn’t get right, no matter what he tried. “One had signs of ringbone, and another had torn her deep flexor tendon and had early signs of navicular,” Thompson said. “And I had two head horses that had ringbone really bad.” Thompson often works with Greeley, Colorado’s Joe Stricklin, DVM, also a roper, who had a new solution for Thompson test. “Dr. Stricklin showed me the Soft-Riders,”…

Mushy Stohlmann, Ithaca, Nebraska DISCIPLINES: Cowboying RIDES FOR: Two-time World Champion Header Chad Masters AGES: 3-year-olds and up PROGRAM: When Masters, known for the time he puts into his green head horses, bought a young horse he discovered was terrified of cattle, he called Stohlmann to change the horse’s thinking. Stohlmann works for the University of Nebraska Research Feedlot, and the operation also runs a few thousand head of cows on grass. When Masters picked the horse up almost a year later, he barely recognized him. “He checked all the pens, with no bridle, and that was really impressive to a team roper,” Masters said. “He made me get on him and check the rest of the pens without my reins, and he heeled a cow tied on,…