Tag Archives: bull

Leaps and Bounds – Bull Riding at Crow Fair 2018

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Bull riding is the crown jewel of rodeo. There are other more cultivated, genteel rodeo events where skill and practice determine the outcome, but for sure-fire knock your jeans in the dirt excitement it is bull riding. What you have is a 1800 to 2000 lb. animal with skin two sizes to big for the body it covers. If you were brave you could grab the skin on the back of the bulls hide and shove it 6-8″ in either direction, and a cowboy who is determined to ride him holding on to a single rope tied around the bulls body and hang on for eight seconds. He has to stay on while the bull uses every trick it knows to unseat him while not touching the animal with his free hand and not speaking harshly or using rodeo slurs of any kind to the bull during the ride.

It all starts behind this innocent looking chute. Behind the soothing lavender colored gate is a bull. It is not happy. On his back is a cowboy tying himself to that bull by wrapping a single rope that encircles the bulls body around his hand and willing his butt to stick to the bulls back like superglue. He has to stay on this whirling dervish for eight seconds to get paid. This seldom happens as the bull has other plans.

The chute is slammed open and the enraged bull emerges with the hopeful rider on its back.

In seconds, in this case maybe 2 to 3 of them, the rider is flung from its back.

The bull not content with unseating the rider wants his pound of flesh and attempts  to do great bodily harm to the rider. He prefers to pin the rider to the ground with his horns or perhaps jump all over him with his hooves neither of which is good news for the rider. Not only does the rider go home broke but maybe to the emergency room for a cast and some traction.

That’s where the angels of the arena, the rodeo clown, earns his money. His job is to distract the bull from its murderous intentions and save the cowboy from any more distress. Here he is giving the bull the well-known rodeo command to sit. This gives the cowboy time to scramble out-of-the-way and climb the fence to safety.

Another cowboy tries his luck. The bull tries his. This is known as air time where the bull levitates before returning to earth. The longer his air time the harder he lands. Almost always this results in the cowboy not finishing his eight seconds.

As you can see due to the abnormal amount of air time this bull managed to hold it resulted in the immediate dislodging of his rider. No pay for him today either.

If the ride was a very short one it will occasionally cause the bull to feel unsatisfied, as if it didn’t get its money’s worth. He will then not return to the holding pen until he runs around the arena for a while. That’s where the mounted cowboys working the arena come into play. Their job is to make sure the bulls return to the holding pen in a timely manner usually by roping it and encouraging it with gentle phrases of admiration to get out of the arena so the next bull and rider can have their eight seconds of glory.

This is called the “Shot from Guns” style of bucking. The bull run out for a few feet then points it horns at the sky and leaps, no, bounds into the sky.

While airborne it twists and turns its body in an amazing form of acrobatics while flinging its robust butt in the air.

This almost always results in the cowboy leaving the bulls back to keep his appointment with the ground. As this happens in less than eight seconds the cowboy does not get paid.

Knowing he’s going home broke causes the cowboy some unhappiness and he will often take a few moments to pray, sad at going home unpaid but thankful to be alive.

He only takes a very few moments though for his communing with his maker as he realizes the bull has not forgotten he is still in the arena and fair game.

The bull intent on retribution for any indignities it feels it has endured tries very hard to make some one pay.

Running around the arena after dislodging it rider the bull kicks up its heels in celebration. This triggers the arena men to go to work and roping soon ensues.

Many ropes in fact as it is not simple to rope a two thousand pound bull and just lead it off like a dog on a leash. More and more ropes are used until the sheer weight of them causes the bull to decide to return to the holding pen.

In some cases when the bull is particularly stubborn and unruly the cowboys will go into what is called the helicopter effect where they constantly whirl their ropes causing a helicopter sound which can freeze the bull into submission where it can be properly roped.

This whirling of ropes and unusual noises confuses the bull stunning it momentarily into immobility.

So it can be led away after being helicoptered. 

Having successfully removing the bull the arena man returns to his station for the next  event.

Sometimes the bull and rider will interact in unusual ways. Here having come to an understanding where neither of them was injured or humiliated they do a little disco dancing where each gets to show off their moves. The crowd of fence sitting observers likes this and gives both very high marks.

Look closely at this bulls eye. He knows that he has got this riders number.

Sure enough moments later the rider begins his short but soon to be painful departure from his back.

Unfortunately some bulls just get unruly and have to be manhandled. The rodeo clown is about to perform a dangerous but necessary maneuver where he will grab the bull by its horns and using a type of ancient bull jujitsu will flip this bull over on its back where the other cowboys will each grab a leg then push it out of the arena. This maneuver is not often seen but is known to be very effective if embarrassing for the bull.

These unsung heroes of the arena, the working cowboys, or peace keepers of the incredible spectacle known as bull riding, watch carefully for the next pair of competitors to enter the stage. This is bull riding in all its excitement, drama and adventure. See it when  you can.

Dancing With The Bulls

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A lot of folks who live on either coast think that entertainment and the civilization to appreciate it only exists on either coast. Of course they live on either coast and tend to forget or not even realize that there is an entire country between those two coasts. A big country filled with people who occupy that entire space here in the middle of America and are just as sophisticated and worldly as any stuck-up but arrogant, think they’re cooler than us, coastie.

Take TV for instance. Sure most of the shows we see here in the hinterland are produced on one coast or another but did you ever stop to think where the ideas for those shows come from. Like “Dancing With The Stars” for example, that’s the show where famous couples perform various dances in front of America ,whether either of them knows how to dance or not, and are judged by a panel of people who decide just how good or bad those dancers are because we’re not smart enough to figure it out for ourselves, and we’re supposed to like it. They wear fancy clothes you’d  never go to Wal-Mart in, and prance around doing dances we never even heard of. If you danced like that down at Tony’s Ball room and Beer Bonanza you’d get asked to leave pretty damn quick.

Now smart as those tv show producers want us to think they are we have it on good authority that they don’t think up those shows their ownselves. Nope they get ideas from us out here in the flyover zone and want us to believe it is original thought on their part.

What you see in the photo above is a prime example of what we mean. It’s a show put on by us locals here in the western part of the US and it features a talented bunch of individuals that really know how to dance. The show is called “Dancing With The Bulls” and has been in production for a long time, way before TV was even invented in fact. We’re the real deal here, no kidding around. This dancing couple was just introduced during the show’s performance. Never having met before this show, they didn’t have weeks of rehearsals and practice. They simply walked out on the dance floor and got it on, so to speak. All of the choreography and costuming is done by the contestants themselves and their routines include a lot of free form interpretation of the music. The more spirited the performance the higher the marks.

The bull, named “GonnaKillYa” out of Hereford Texas, wearing a fashionable number 8 hand-twisted hemp belly rope, and the Rodeo Clown who wants to remain anonymous as he has some outstanding warrants, so we’ll just call him “Hey! Look Out!” are performing a never before seen performance to “Can’t Get No” by the Stones. The bull is pulling down some high numbers with his ability to twist and turn and shake it up baby with all 2000 lbs. of his tightly packed unground round in motion, and his ability to put his cloven hoof down exactly where he wants it usually pretty close to the Rodeo Clown’s head. The Rodeo Clown is no slouch either throwing in his version of The Twist made popular by Chubby Checker and The Fat Boys. This couple shows promise and is in the running to win this weeks contest so they can appear again next week and win big prizes. Buckles for the cowboy, new feed bag for the bull, a lifetime supply of frybread. We’re talking big money here.

But the important thing here is the fact that its us out here in middle America, the real folks that make up the bulk of our great country, we are the ones who are the creative bunch, who have the ideas and skill to bring entertainment to everyone. We’re the ones out here Dancing With The Bulls. The ones getting our ideas ripped off. And don’t even get me started on how they robbed us of our epic saga of older women in nursing homes called Game of Crones….

I Can See You, You Know

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Us wildlife photographers have to be a wily bunch to be able to sneak up and catch our quarry without being discovered so we can document their lives without them knowing about it. We do this so that you can see what they do behind closed bushes as it were. Some of it is pretty weird but usually they’re just doing normal stuff, eating grass, laying a round, having quiet discussions and so on.

Lots of times the subject we’re stalking doesn’t want to be photographed so we have to resort to subterfuge and disguises. Disguises work best unless they don’t. If they don’t work that means you didn’t choose your disguise very well. Some larger photographers will disguise themselves as a Winnebago because the elk in this case are used to seeing Winnebago’s and pay them little attention. However one cannot take a Winnebago into the bush so it has limited applications. Another is a Ranger suit. It also has its limitations due to the fact that although the elk are used to seeing Rangers, when they do, it’s usually because they want to do something to them so they’re suspicious and unphotogenic. There is also that little thing about it being unlawful to imitate a federal employee. Besides Rangers get really cranky when you do goofy stuff while wearing a Ranger suit. At least at Rocky Mountain National Park.

We use a foolproof disguise, a full-sized flowering Mountain Mahogany bush suit that almost always fools everybody and lets us get right in the middle of everything without being outed as human in a bush suit. But… having said that, once in a while one of the elk figures out what’s going on, we’re not sure how yet, but they do, and then there’s the inevitable embarrassing confrontation. There is yelling and name calling. If it’s a big cow who has had a bad day or has some other type of feminine problem, kids acting up, the bull not coming home for dinner, or worse coming home loaded, then things escalate pretty fast. That’s when it is prudent to haul tripods and retreat to the safety of a bunker or some other fortified building.

A bit of warning. Do not, repeat, do not  wear your bush suit from September on. That’s when the bulls are coming out  of their velvet and they will flat tear up a bush trying to rub the velvet off their antlers. A nine hundred pound bull doing his best to tear off every limb on the bush by repeatedly sticking his rack into the center of the bush then violently shaking his head back and force can cause equipment failure even to Nikon’s or Canons and lots of times put the eye out of the photographer hidden inside it. Just saying. Don’t do it.

That was the case when photographing this youngish cow elk and accidentally sneezing. They perk right up and get suspicious when a bush sneezes. In this particular case we lied and said we were from National Geographic doing an article on winsome young cows. Being naive she bought it and we even got her to prance around and do clever elk tricks before one of the older cows came over to investigate. Seeing right through us she immediately began calling for one of the herd bulls so we bailed and went and had lunch.

So remember, to be a good wildlife photographer you have to be sneaky, wear a good disguise ( but not a bush suit after August 31st) have a good line ready if you’re caught and watch out for bulls. That’s it then, happy shooting.

Hang Time

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This post has been moved to OpenChutes.com. All future postings of Powwows, Indian Relay Races, Rodeos and Rendezvous will be posted there from now on exclusively. So if you’re looking for new images and posts for all those events attended this year, plus all the old posts posted on BigShotsNow.com check out OpenChutes.com. See you there!

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Rodeo Facts

“Hang Time” or “When Bulls Fly” is a term used to describe that moment when the bull leaves the earth and ‘hangs’ or ‘flies’ in the air. All four of his hooves must be off the ground with the lowest hoof no closer than 12″ from the arena floor to qualify. This maneuver is usually done after the bull dislodges his rider, but not always, and is generally celebratory in nature. This movement or procedure is almost always reserved for the actual event of bull riding but there have been reported sightings of bulls performing this activity in the privacy of their own pastures.

It is also a tactic used to confuse and disorient his rider who expects at least one of the bulls feet to be attached to the ground at all times. When the bull fully detaches himself from the earth it causes momentary spatial confusion much like the weightlessness that astronauts experience, except while on the back of a two thousand pound bull, and leads to the rider getting all over wonky of a moment and falling off. This is what the bulls wants, as it gives the bull the opportunity to step all over him and maybe even poke him some with its horns. Plus it apparently just feels good to the bull to be free of his usually earthly constraints.

It is also a maneuver that the bull can be judged on thereby earning points for himself. Points are good as the more points the bull accumulates, the more ring time it gets, and the more prestige and financial gain it acquires. The length of the hang time is the largest single factor in the scoring although height and distance play a part also. The longest hang time ever recorded was on a bull named Little Chicken and was 8.37 seconds in duration. That’s right, as unbelievable as it sounds the bull hung up there about 3½ feet off the arena floor for the entire time of the ride which you know is 8 seconds. His rider, an Italian cowboy named Pauli “Little Patty” Concertina, from Newark N.J., was so confused and disoriented that he thought he heard his bell being rung around the 6 second mark and simply jumped off thinking he had made a perfect ride. Well he didn’t of course, he totally screwed up which was the bulls plan all along, and left the arena and the rodeo grounds to the jeers from the ‘regular’ cowboys, feeling like a total Easterner. The fans still laugh about it while he still thinks to this day that he made a perfect ride and was robbed of his score.

Aside from the tactics and the scoring and the general chaos that surrounds the bull riding event there is something spellbinding about seeing a 2000 lb. bull floating effortlessly in the air. It is a symphony of motion and drama that is amazing to watch. You are mesmerized by the slow motion aspect of the suspended bull and then suddenly it returns to earth with incredible force, smashing back onto the arena floor with a sound like a freight train crashing. Dust flies, riders fly, rodeo clowns yell, spectators suddenly scream in appreciation and then it is over. Until next time. If you need some excitement in your life come to the rodeo and watch when the “Bulls Fly”. You’ll never forget it.

Cowboy’s Monday Morning – Bull’s Saturday Night

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This post has been moved to OpenChutes.com. All future postings of Powwows, Indian Relay Races, Rodeos and Rendezvous will be posted there from now on exclusively. So if you’re looking for new images and posts for all those events attended this year, plus all the old posts posted on BigShotsNow.com check out OpenChutes.com. See you there!

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.

Itchy, OMG Yes

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Many of you know by now that the Rut is coming up fast. We’ve got about 6-8 weeks before all hell breaks loose. For those of you new to the sport, the rut is when the bull elk go forth and begin to collect cow elk for the purpose of passing on their genetic fluids with the idea being that they will be improving the herd and the species in general. Think of it as being like Fight Game with elk sex involved. This may not be for the squeamish. But it is Nature so you’ll just have to deal with it. That or stay out of elk country for the next 2½ – 3 months, because it’ll be happening where ever elk congregate.

What you may not know is that The Institute backs several of these young bulls in the upcoming events. We stable them at our Spring training camp at Rocky Mountain National Park so it’s easy for us to keep an eye on them. We sponsor them, provide them with equipment and training, meds (but not steroid’s, none of our bulls have ever tested positive for steroids) bandages and wraps, unguents that help with velvet removal, antler polishing supplies, promote them both locally and nationally and try and position them so they move up through the ranks. Several of our better known fighters have been featured in the preliminaries at various MMA events and we hope to get one of our up and comers featured in an early ESPN covered fight mid-September. We need to cross our antlers on that one but it looks possible.

We stopped by the bull pen the other day to see how everyone was faring and found them in the usual state they’re in this time of year. Everyone is grazing like crazy trying to put on weight. They’re doing the calisthenics necessary for rapid antler growth, and they’re checking out their competition daily. Some of these guys have known each other since grade school but this will be their first real fight and the stakes are high. Not only do you get bragging rights for being the bull of the hour but the chicks, man, the chicks. They are foxes, stone cold foxes. These are the choice cows of the herd and they know it, they only join harems where the bull is Numero Uno. So the incentive is very high.

Right now though everyone is in a heightened state of awareness, full of self-doubt and insecurities and worried about how they’re going to perform.  Besides that those velvet covered antlers are itchy, like really itchy, like drive you bat-crap crazy itchy. That’s where we can help by providing that special proprietary, patent applied for, unguent developed in our labs here at The Institute. It takes the itch right out of those antlers and lets these guys get some sleep and yet enhances their strength and vitality through the proper use of chemicals. it helps them put on weight and develop incredible muscle tone and gives them that little extra edge of madness they need to really go out there and kick elk butt. It’s our job to buck them up, give them the support they need, convince them that they’re the best, and we take that very seriously.

The young bull pictured above, Twitchy, was very glad to see us. Nearly in tears in fact. He needed the unguent bad and could barely stop himself from scratching his antlers down to a nub. Of course we provided it to him, for a slight increase over our normal cut of the gate but then unguent doesn’t grow on trees you know. We’ve got expenses too.

Otherwise the prospects look pretty good for this season. There’s some big bulls out there and a lot of them got their cans kicked last year so they didn’t get a chance to spend any quality time with the ladies so they’re pumped. It won’t be long before the preliminaries start with the bulls matching up, shoving and pushing, seeing who looks weak and who they have to watch out for. This looks like a promising Rut. Now if we can just get some of those heavy-duty agents in here so we can sign some of these guys we’ll be set.

3 Ways To Get A Bull To Do What You Want

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This post has been moved to OpenChutes.com. All future postings of Powwows, Indian Relay Races, Rodeos and Rendezvous will be posted there from now on exclusively. So if you’re looking for new images and posts for all those events attended this year, plus all the old posts posted on BigShotsNow.com check out OpenChutes.com. See you there!

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There are 3 ways to get a bull to do what you want.

1 Ask him nicely.

2: Try to coax him out of the ring with your horses by setting a good example.

3: Get everybody in town that has a horse and a rope to come down quick to the arena so you can rope him and drag him out. Here’s how that all works out.

Number 1 doesn’t work, complete waste of time.

Number 2 sometimes works if the bull really wants to go back to the corral and forgot the way out.

Number 3 is your best bet. Get everybody you know, dozens if you can, get them in there and throw a rope on him. This doesn’t work as far as dragging him off but it gives the guys roping practice and the bull something to do for a while. He’ll break the ropes, drag the cowboys around in the dirt, buck and act all chesty, then after he feels better he’ll docilely walk back to the chute and go lay down for a while. That’s all there is to it.

That’s what was going on here at the bull riding event at the North American Indian Days, Blackfeet reservation rodeo. The bull riding comes on last at the rodeo because they need you glued in your seats until the last minute so you don’t miss a thing. The sun was already starting to set and the last light of the day was lighting up this red bull, turning him all gold and sleek, and he was just feeling the moment. There wasn’t any bad feelings or animosity he just wasn’t ready to end the day. After 10 or 15 minutes he’d had his moment and was ready to head for the back lot and a night off.

Tomorrow we’ll have the rodeo pictures up and there are some good ones. Stay tuned or if you have to leave come back soon so you don’t miss anything.