We’ve reached rarified air, unveiling the top 5 in our top 25 reasons to be a cowboy in honor of the 25th Annual World Championship Ranch Rodeo this Nov. 12–15 in Amarillo, Texas. As this list unfolds, I will say that any of these top 5 could be arranged in any order and I wouldn’t argue with you. But for number 5, ...
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On September 17, the Working Ranch Cowboys Association announced that the World Championship Ranch Rodeo would still happen—with some tweaks to meet the state’s social distancing and capacity restrictions.
First, it’s necessary to give credit to the WRCA staff and board who worked tirelessly through myriad ...
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A big brimmed hat, tall-topped boots, long sleeve shirt, denim britches, and spurs jingling: the cowboy get-up is pretty simple. But within those few parameters lies multitudes.
To the uninitiated, those basic duds only mean one thing: a
cowboy. Line up a buckaroo from Nevada, a puncher from Texas, an Arizona hand,
a ...
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Perhaps the purpose of ranching should be the No. 1 reason
to be a cowboy. I think the reason it’s not ranked higher is as cowboys and
ranchers we’re so separated from the ultimate consumer of our products that we
lose sight of our job’s significance. Now, that doesn’t diminish its
importance, but perhaps it does ...
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Watching any WRCA rodeo, a spectator has the chance to see exceptional roping. In the stray gathering, for instance, when a top hand on his best horse falls in behind a fresh yearling steer, takes two swings, throws his loop around the steer’s neck—the tip curling enough to slap the critter’s hip—and pulls the ...
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A Top 25 list is, by design, set up to ignore the negative aspects of the subject being ranked. However, we’re shaking things up and presenting the challenges of cowboy life as the 10th best reason to live this life.
I’ll certainly not address every challenge cowboys and
ranchers face. But here’s a quick look at ...
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In Lonesome Dove, as Gus and Call are riding down the
street after a dustup in a local saloon in San Antonio, Gus says, “Call, I
guess they forgot us. The reason is, we didn’t die. If a thousand Comanches had
cornered us in some gully and wiped us out, like the Sioux just done Custer,
they’d write songs about us for ...
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With apologies to Randy Lewis, I don’t care what any ranch
rodeo announcer has ever said over the loudspeaker. Wild cow milking is not a
common, everyday occurrence on the ranch. While every other sanctioned event in
the WRCA has strong roots in ranch work, the idea that cowboys rope and milk
wild range cows regularly ...
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One of the biggest challenges of ranching and cowboying for
a living is the variety of tasks one must be proficient at in order to keep a
ranch going.
The list of necessary skills on a ranch is not short: range management, advanced accounting, market analyzation, doctoring, horse training, nutrition, roping, stock ...
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Have you ever considered just how unique the cowboy tools of the trade are? Take the saddle alone. Only stockmen use this tool and only the American cowboy uses one with a cantle, swells, and a horn. Drill down a bit more and there are myriad styles even within that narrow subset: Wade, Will James, Association, Buster ...
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