Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2019 i The Team Roping Journal

Dear Roper, In December 2018, the rodeo world watched as Trevor Brazile bowed out of the sport on a full-time basis. Undoubtedly, we’ll all miss someone who has shared with us so many of his greatest moments in the arena, though his career in semi-retirement is far from over. Beginning this month, the team roping world has gained a huge asset. Brazile begins his new monthly column with The Team Roping Journal on page 68, where he will offer us insights into how he’s built some of the horses who’ve helped him win 24 gold buckles. And this new column is also where he will help readers with their roping and horsemanship each and every month. We’re so excited to expand this partnership with Brazile into the digital realm, too.…

When Perry Di Loretto founded the world’s first $1-million #11 roping in Reno, Nevada, in 1996, it kicked off a legacy of giving back to the host community. Corky Ullman and Daren Peterson, who bought the roping in 2015, are keeping to tradition. Over the past few years, organizers have auctioned valuable items to raise more than $30,000 for Warriors and Rodeo and $15,000 for the Justin Cowboy Crisis Fund. A local charity will benefit in 2019—Pinocchio’s Moms on the Run. The Reno non-profit provides financial assistance to breast cancer patients undergoing treatment in this part of Nevada. “It’s important to give back, and ever since Perry created it, the #11 roping has given back to Reno,” said Peterson. “Just like the BFI, which raises money for the Reno Rodeo…

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What does it take to make it in today’s world? Whether you’re talking about team roping—or any business, for that matter—I think the answer is basically the same. When asked that all the time by aspiring team ropers, my answer is always the same: To get the job done, you have to be willing to work harder than everyone else. When you find something that you love to do—in my case, I’ve loved to rope since I was a little kid, but other people have other passions—you have to pull out all the stops and do everything possible to get where you’re wanting to go. I made the choice when I was 9 or 10 years old that I was going to be like my heroes, and live this cowboy…

The trend began when Jesse Gonzales, now 62, heard Cactus Ropes was hiring back in 1998. He didn’t have any experience in rope making, so he hired on to do what he could, powdering ropes and keeping the place clean and tidy. “He was there maybe a few months,” explained his wife, Margie. “Then, they put him in the wax room, waxing the ropes. From the wax room, they moved him into the rope room and Barry [Berg—Cactus Ropes’ GM] taught him how to make ropes.” In the years that followed, literally every member of the Gonzales family joined the Cactus team for at least a while. Margie joined her husband in 2000 and became a burner and sewer after her oldest son signed on in 1999, setting the tone…

When my money was on the line in a high-pressure situation, I’ve always been able to have confidence in the fact that I have prepared myself to the best of my abilities. I’d breathe deep to be sure my heart wasn’t racing, and I’d be able to keep from getting nerved-up when I was backing into the box. But now motherhood has changed how prepared I am for the roping before I get there. I don’t have all the runs in the practice pen I once did from which to source my confidence because I lose at least two to three hours a day of practice to my son, Creed, who is 1 ½. I have had to practice smarter, not harder. Without the rope being in my hand as…

You’ve been bitten by the team roping bug, and are following the universal prescription for success. You bought the best horse suitable to your skill set, have invested in a truck and trailer to haul him around, and are eating up every ounce of information you can get your hands on—roping schools, DVDs, even regular trips to YouTube and social media outlets to observe how the best in the business get it done. Even the more minor expenses, such as fuel, entry fees and insurance add up, if you total it all up at tax time. Don’t forget to add your horse’s vaccinations to the never-ending checklist. Vaccinations are one of the best bargains you’re going to find on that horse-healthcare checklist, and they’re one of your best bets in…

Though Gary Johnson recently won the #11.5 Businessman’s Roping at the Wildfire XXI in Hamilton, Texas, Johnson has not yet swapped out his 2014 Hayes Heller Benefit NRS Champion Header buckle. “Me and a real good friend of mine, Jay, won those buckles together,” explained Johnson, who works for 3S Services. “Heath Heller had a boy that went to get shots before going to school. I think he was about 4 at the time. He got those shots and they made him real sick. He still to this day hasn’t gotten over it. They had a benefit roping for him over there at NRS, and it was a pretty good deal. They had like 900 teams show up. They’re really good people.” Johnson and his partner agreed after the roping…

Clay Acuna and Tracy Wiest won the #9.5 Heartland Finale in Hamilton, Texas, with a time of 38.62 seconds on four head, worth $26,000. But for Acuna, winning the roping was about more than money. This was an opportunity for Acuna to repay the man who helped him out when he was just starting his career. When he first moved to Midland, Texas, for work five years ago, he didn’t know anyone and didn’t have anywhere to live. Their mutual friend and fellow team roper Sterling Kelly told Clay, “You need to meet Tracy Wiest, he will help you out.’” Wiest welcomed Acuna with open arms and invited him to move into his place. Acuna brought his camper and moved in, and he stayed for over two years. They practiced…

Q : Tell us a little about what it was like to be the kid of a notorious cowboy character like Lefty Wilken. A: My dad competed in the team roping and calf roping way back in the Cowboys’ Turtle Association days, back before there was a Rodeo Cowboys Association or Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association. He had CTA card #74. Q : Your dad was a legendary horseman and pickup man, too, I’m told. A: Yes, my dad was a pickup man at the first NFR (National Finals Rodeo) ever held, in Dallas in 1959. He worked for Beutler Brothers Rodeo and picked up at the Finals 10 times. There were years he qualified to team rope at the NFR, but had to make a choice. You either competed or…

Justin and Jessie Jarvis are ranchers first. They grew up in the same county in Idaho, both descendants of long lines of ranchers and ropers. So, when their own son, Jhett, turned 1 year old this February, Jessie knew just what to get him. “The only birthday gift I bought him was a kid’s rope,” she said. With an arena and steers right out their door and with Justin and Jessie ready for activities the whole family can take part in, it seems only a matter of time before Jhett will be coming out of the box swinging his rope, riding out and checking on the family’s cow-calf pairs, and maybe even helping the family respond to fires in the area—a less-welcome, but nonetheless whole-family endeavor. “I hate having to…

A jackpot situation—especially at a six-header, enter-once roping like the Wildfire—can throw a little bit of everything at a guy. Against so many of the best teams in the world, you need to stay aggressive if you want to win first. At the same time, you’ve got strong steers that can be really unpredictable. The key for me is to determine what position I need to ride and focus on that, as well as keeping my rope speed consistent, so I’m ready for whatever the steers throw at me. ROUND 1 That was probably the toughest steer we ran the whole day. Clay is so good at keeping steers moving around the corner, but for whatever reason when Clay went to get a hold of him, he fought it, threw…

“I think growing up the way I did helped me out a lot. Out here, if you have any kind of give-up attitude, or if you give up pretty easy, you’re not going to make it very far. It can be roses one day, and it will be dust the next. That’s just how this sport is.” —Nine-time National Finals Rodeo heeler Cesar de la Cruz on “The Score,” a podcast by The Team Roping Journal available to stream or download wherever you listen to podcasts.…

Johnson and Johnson Pair up for $35K Businessman’s Payday Oklahoma’s Gary Johnson and Louisiana’s Dustin Johnson came from. third callback to win the #11.5 Businessman’s Roping World Series of Team Roping Qualifier in Hamilton, Texas, worth $35,000 and trophy saddles. “It was pretty tight,” Gary said. “Turtle Powell was high call by a couple seconds, but otherwise it was tight on down to like 11th place. I didn’t really watch much of the roping coming up to our run. I heard them say we had to be 8-something to take the lead, and I just wanted to go make a run and make sure I got it on him and let Dustin take the time out of the run.” The unrelated Johnson team roped their short-round steer in…

JoJo LeMond, cracking back out into ProRodeo competition after a two-year hiatus, headed for Trey Yates to win the La Fiesta de los Vaqueros in Tucson, Arizona, worth $6,767 a man. LeMond and Yates placed fifth in the first round with a 6.0-second run, worth $1,370 a man and won the final round with a 5.9-second run worth $1,102 each. The average paid $4,295 each. “I won second once, but that was the first time I’ve won it,” LeMond, who has $1 million in ProRodeo earnings, said. “Our first two steers were a little bit on the stronger end of the steers there, and our last one just trotted.” LeMond and Yates decided to head to the Tucson short round over some big Texas jackpots with the long-term goal of…

As the former owner-operator of Salado, Texas’ Wildfire Ranch and producer of the venerated Wildfire Open to the World from 1999–2017, Billy Pipes, 65, doesn’t need much of an introduction. Pipes, a Phoenix, Arizona, native, moved to Las Vegas after college and began working in the paving and grading industry. On the weekends, he rode bulls and bareback horses as an amateur, and made a good go of it until his 28th year. At 30, he began his own business, Pipes Paving, which handled the earthwork, grading and paving for four out of the five major homebuilders in America, before Pipes expanded his business to include real estate development, which he still does today. He started a family, landed the contract for the paving work when the NFR moved to…

A lot of ropers practice one way and compete another, or else they don’t really maximize their time in the practice pen. Just making adjustments to how you practice—not how much—can really make a big change in your roping. ROPING JUST TO ROPE Before the NFR, I got to running steers—hundreds a day—just to run steers. I wasn’t getting as much out of my practice as I’d have liked, and my horses weren’t either. Recently, I’ve been setting up a schedule with each horse, and I’ve been sticking to it. On one horse, I’ll run five steers, score 10 or 12, long-trot him a mile then call it a day. That’s what he needs, and he’s been better than ever for it. KNOW YOUR HORSE’S WEAKNESS I set up my…

Kerry Kelley Bits and Spurs “My horse bridles up too much. I only rode it on him for two weeks, and he’s good now, so I took it off of him. He would bridle up, and then when I would score and pull a little bit and he would get his head and lift his front end up. I just put this gag on him to keep his front end up, that way when I would drop my hand he would go down running versus getting his feet off the ground and then take off. It just gives me a flatter go.”…

Like any city kid who’d never been around horses, Bryan Davis couldn’t ride. He wanted to learn, so Johnny Haggard—the ranch manager of John Volken Academy Ranch in Gilbert, Arizona—put him on an old rope horse. As the horse moved, Davis dropped a rein, and then panicked and squeezed. The horse took off, and the runaway ended at the far end of the arena, when Davis fell off and separated his shoulder. “I distinctly remember getting up off the ground and catching my horse, seeing the rein was broken, and then walking over to get a new set of reins,” recalls Davis, now 30. “I knew if I didn’t get back on the horse despite the pain, I never would again.” Rope horses like this one didn’t just teach Davis…

Horse sales can be a one-stop-shop for buyers and sellers, and a darn good option if you’re into cutting out the hassle of trying horses across the country. At sales like the Billings Livestock Horse Sale, owned and managed by Jann Parker, and the Premier Horse Sales, run by Steve Friskup, the days of horse traders unloading problem horses on unsuspecting buyers are a thing of the past. AS A SELLER Sellers get sick of advertising horses, answering dozens of phone calls and Facebook messages, having potential buyers no-show them and missing ropings or family functions to show horses, Parker said. “They’re over it,” she said. “It doesn’t matter if you have name recognition, have been to the NFR or are a 4-H kid down the road, they’re going to…