Ep. 500: The Rodeo Life with Zeke Thurston

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Well, it's so okay, I'll tell you this story.

You ready for the zeke?

I'm ready?

Okay, Then I'm gonna introduce you as soon as I tell you the story.

Okay.

We had a historian on the show, Elliott West, and then he was on an an. Elliott West was on Rogan Show and I listened and that guy is so good that he talked about totally different stuff.

One of the things they were talking about is the term big wig. He's a big wig. You ever hear that term?

Yeah?

Okay. It used to be so.

Such a disgrace to be bald that you would wear a wig made of human hair, horse hair because it was so disgraceful to be bald. The King of France goes bald, he gets a wig, then everybody's like, now I want a wig. Turned the tide. So then all of a sudden, people that weren't even bald were wearing wigs.

It'd be like you look up to Jeff Bezos full head of hair, but you shave your head. You follow me?

Yeah, Zeke Thurston, he's tracking the whole damn deal. Uh Rodeo rider BRONC Riding specialists one how many times?

Just won my fourth Canadian title and uh won three world titles.

So you're I mean, how good are you?

You know that's not too shabby.

That's great. We're gonna talk a bunch about that.

But I gotta talk about one thing is I saw you as much as you excel in your in your discipline and rodeo, I saw you get demoded this morning on decoy.

Yeah, putting out I was setting the decoys out wrong and was putting the duck stands on the goosey.

Yeah.

And I saw you. Well, you and I both made a mistake. We both took the carabineers off early and got tangled up. Rats Nest had a rats nest. We had to get bailed out of that. And then you made a second mistake. You unbagged.

Yeah, I unbagged you unbagged.

And then I saw you get demoted.

I didn't. I didn't realize decoy etiquette.

You got you got taken off the job I did. I felt embarrassed. He said, Uh, you know.

Is this one of your compliment sandwiches.

But without you, you would you could take one hundred people. Okay, if if we were hunting with Brady Davis and Matt McCormick, uh, who've been on a number of times, the Flying ve guys, and you no disrespect, Brady's here, no disrespect, you could take not one hundred, You could take a dozen people and say, like, how should you put the decoys out? And I don't know that, Like, twelve of them aren't gonna right, twelve of them aren't gonna have the same system. But you got very rigid in the system.

Mm hmm.

So there's a dozen on a caribbeaner. You take the carabiner off the hook and you go out and you place just play the bags in the right place. Then when that's done, you place a stand by each bag. When that's done, you go and take them out of the bag and put them on the stand and put all the bags into the yellow bag. And the yellow bags get hung up, but don't put them on the wrong stand. And when you take them in, you put a bag right. It's the whole way of doing it.

But I did notice that I untangled my own rat's nest. You let Matt take years over?

Oh you got yours all undone?

He follows through is what he's saying.

It's a little emasculated. When emasculated and then he took it over and untangled my rats nest and I just stand there like a child.

Watch.

He reached into his pocket and gave you a lulli.

He said, Hey, this might be fun.

Can I tell you the behind the scenes after that happened? Right, So Matt and I are setting up decoys. So the way we got to this system is by just hundreds of days on the road together. Right, So you just you kind of figure out you got the core group of guys that know the system and then when you have guests hunting, you just kind of get in where

You move this one that six inches and that ends.

Well, reconvene. When everybody's doing the things, just he and I, it's like, all right, how you feeling? Like what are you thinking? Everything looking good here? And he goes, you know, what would be a really awesome thing to have in the next Goose trailer because we're building a new one for next year, way bigger, right, And I said what's that? And he goes, we need a whiteboard. I said okay, And he's like, imagine if in the morning before everybody

I would put yardages on it. Yardages for sure.

When you draw a basic picture, you're like, from here to here, that's gonna be about fifty yards. This is gonna be about ten yards.

Great idea.

And then you got like your your reserve players right where. You're like, you guys are going to be sitting here in the vehicle.

Yeah and yeah, see, just be ready to go, Steven Zeke, you guys go ahead and have a couple of coffee. We were gamers.

We just started grabbing stuff, but we was doing it wrong, NOI.

Which we appreciate because a lot of times when you have people come hunting with you, it can be a little overwhelming when you look at this trailer right, and so people will come and just go, I don't know what to do. It's everybody's just moving, and so you just kind of sit. So to your point, I do like you were a gamer, like you guys will get in and get dirty, and I got I.

Got yelled at right away because I unhooked the blinds wrong. And Brady came into the trailer talking to Dane with me standing right behind him and didn't realize you were there. And he goes, no, he knew I was there. He goes, uh, somebody did this that clearly doesn't understand our system.

And his name is Garry.

It's like, you don't screw around Matt and Brady.

But you don't want to be the guest that doesn't participate in.

The other option. Just sit and watch and then later they talk about how you didn't help. No, So you're exactly right.

I would rather have somebody that like helps too much and makes a rat rats nest out of the you know, decoy bags, like that's better than standing with your hands because and Zeke and I talked about it. The way we set up on these hunts, there is a pile of decoys and a pile of work like a lot of gear.

Right.

It takes takes time.

To get it all out and stuff in that trailer, get it.

All picked up, and so we are very much appreciative of those who get their hands dirty and get to work.

Brady, I'll surprise learned that you studied bronc riding under Zeke's father I did. Yeah. Do you guys use the term study?

Yeah, I don't know if it'll be study, maybe like learned. I guess yeah.

I think an appropriate term for me would I got my head drove in the dirt a thousand times while Zeke's dad watched me and tried to give me pointers.

What's your dad's name, Skeeter, Skeeter. Yeah, and he's American.

Yes, what state was he? Nebraska? Nebraska sand Hills.

So you got a foot in each you gotta foot on each side of the line.

You got a Canadian mother and an American father. But you know how, you know, Americans have somewhat I don't know if you caught onto this somewhat.

Myopic view of the world.

It always surprises me to hear that there's like a rodeo guy in Canada, because we think that we sort of own everything, do you know what I mean?

Oh?

Yeah, we're like even up there. But it's a thriving culture up there.

Yeah, it's uh, especially like you know Alberta, Saskatchewan, British Columbia western side. It's it's huge, it's uh, it's a big industry up there. Some of the some of the best rodeo contestants come from there, bucking horses. The whole Born to Buck program was started up there, So it's uh, yeah, it's deeply rooted.

Is uh Is it is there a regionality to the different events? I mean, like you mentioned that, right, is there like a barrel racing Mecca, a bronx Macha.

And uh, I mean not not necessarily, but like I would say, like like me and Brady we're talking on the way over here, like for example, like if you want to be a calf roper, like Texas, Louisiana, your southern states are kind of where you'd want to be like that, right, yeah, just because it requires so much time,

Heard recently, is surprise?

I mean it's similar to that as someone's saying that it's like that rich kids always do better in skiing, and immediately you think, well, it's because they go to the big ski hills that are expensive to go to, but it's the rich kids are always gonna kick everybody's ass because they go.

To New Zealand for the summer.

That makes sense.

Yeah, So if your family's loaded, you're just you're gonna ski three hundred and sixt five days a year. If you're broke, you're gonna ski when you got winter. You can't chase the snow.

Yeah.

I don't know if that's it's just like sort of generally true.

Right yeah. Yeah, and then like I don't know, like Alberta, like Canada is definitely known for their bronk radders, known for their you know, quality of bucking horses.

And those two things go hand in hand.

M hmm, yeah for sure. But I don't I mean, you can be from anywhere and do any event or discipline you.

Want in your meal.

Deer hunter, deer hunter, whitetail hunter, you like hunting deer, Yeah.

Not a big not huge on waterfowl. I actually I saw that this morning, the way you handled the decoy strength.

Yeah, I've you got the only bird, dude.

Yeah, we had a slow morning. Yeah we did, got the only bird. What did we find?

I don't know.

He had a hold through his heart.

Yeah, yeah, he did heart shot him a lot better than Brady's turkey.

Oh man, Brady's the invincible turkey. We heard a story this morning about an invincible turkey. All right, we're gonna get back. We're gonna talk about what it takes to be an eight time wrangler National Finals, Rodeo qualifier and a three time world champion.

Let me before we are gonna leave you and then come back to you, but let me ask you this. What's the old bron crider?

Oh like Billy Epauer, probably the most legendary bron rider. I think his last in Afari was maybe like forty and you have to fact check this, but forty five to forty somewhere in there.

But that's that's that's extraordinary.

Sold He's an outlier.

Are you you're long? Too long in the tooth?

If you're so at twenty nine? Where are you? Are you in the middle, are you toward the autumn? Were you know?

It just I mean it's kind of a personal preference. You know, as long as you're competitive and uh, you know, keep yourself, you know where you want to be. You can you bry a red Bronks as long as you want.

To what all bones. Have you broken?

Oh, I've broken. I've been pretty lucky in that that department of I broke my femur in high school. Rat and bulls have broke some ribs. I broke my ankle at the college finals. Knocked on my teeth at once. But doing what I was ratt and steers and you got kicked by a hoof. No, I took a horn in the face.

Oh horn did it? How many teeth and knockout thirteen?

Is that just like a fake teeth in your head?

No?

There was.

I was. I was eight and so it was all my It was all my baby teeth. Still, but that's uh yeah, so.

You're losing them anyway.

They're going anyway.

Saved them time a night for the tooth.

Yeah yeah, pulled thirteen bucks that night instead of spread it all out over all those years. You know, you just got all that money you can invest that way for to get it all one lump sum. We'll come back to that. But I want to hit every time. We have a professional athlete, and I like to try to hammer around this like the life expectancy thing, because the interesting thing about athletes is you get like a

Yeah, now, in your case you might go into teaching. But it's just interesting to be in a situa.

Wis where here you are you spent your whole life trying to become like the best in the world at something, and you sacrifice everything to do it, and then you get to this age which is relatively young, meaning I'm I'm forty nine, I'm out right, and then all of a sudden you start some whole.

New, whole new never.

Yeah, it's like you're like, you're like, what am I gonna.

Do do next?

Yeah? Yeah, yeah, it can make it make some people go mad for sure.

Some people are a lot of people struggle with that too, you know, and not in just rodeo, but all sports. Like, because when you make your living with your body, you have a shelf life for only so long, you know, and then, like you said, you've poured everything you've ever had into this one thing, and then you're you know, when it's all over, you kind of you know, some seems like some guys almost kind of lose their identity or sure without you know, that drive or that that

Yeah, you see it with people in the mill, people that retire from the military, because you got guys that are getting twenty years into the military and they're under forty some cases and just like wake up one day.

You got to like make a new yeah good go for yourick. Yeah, you got to find like a whole new drag into slave. You know, I just picture it being challenging.

We'll come back and talk about some of that stuff. New Audio Project is out January ninth. Now, get this, we've talked about this thousand times. We haven't talked about it. I haven't talked about to the level of detailed like to so we are if you are from with our previous audio originals, we've done a number here at me Eater. We've done a number of audio originals where we did our Close Calls series, Close Calls Volume one, Close Calls Volume two.

We're working on a volume three of that.

But we started this new series, this new project called me Eater's American History, and for the first one we are doing me Eaters American History, the long Hunters. So the way I can always connect people to what a long hunter was is Daniel Boone is the most famous long hunter. Everybody knows Daniel Boone was some kind of frontiersman or explorer, pioneer or whatever. What Daniel Boone really was,

The long hunter era. Basically, as we'll explain this thing, you'll learn the long hunter area goes from seventeen sixty to seventeen seventy six. Why does it have such a tight bracket. You'll learn all about why the height of American deer hunting was bracketed by those dates. Seventeen sixty seventeen seventy six. Seventeen seventy six might ring a bell in your little noodle there, because it was American independence, right. So you'll hear the whole story about the deer hide trade.

In it.

We cover why deer hides, what was going on with them.

We cover the beginning of the bracket We cover the end of the bracket. We covered the gear used by the long hunters. We cover how they process in the handled hides, we cover how they died, We cover the interactions they had with native hunters on the landscape, a lot of bloodshed, lot of mayhem.

It's a phenomenal story.

And it's like, this is because I've always liked to read about Boone, I've always liked to read about the long hunters. This is all of the information that I wish I had had, Like if I had found this somewhere, we wouldn't have made this. We made it because it's all the shit when you're reading these normal Joe Blow biographies about these people who are coming from people who don't hunt, and they don't know what's interesting. So as you read their books, you guys like, well you should

With the deer?

How did you prepare the deer for transport? Right, it's everything packed in to it's about five or six hours me Eater's American History, the long Hunters. From the long Hunters, we're going to move on to the Rocky Mountain beaver trappers, the Mountain man era, which is also tightly bracketed, let's say eighteen ten to eighteen thirty four. From there, I don't know, we might go back to Clovis, or we might go forward to the Buffalo hide hunters, and then perhaps on to the whalers.

Not sure yet.

A lot of this depends on you and your willingness to go out and buy this damn book.

You can buy it right now. It's available pre order.

The more you pre order, the quicker we'll get the green light to go and continue making it and cover everything off. You'll know that we've been successful when we get to the plume hunters, the guys who hunted shore birds like egrets and flamingos and other things in order to supply feathers for the women's hat trade.

Uh, this is real. This is I can't stop thinking about this.

The Okay, I'm interested to get your take on this.

It's so stupid. I don't think, Oh my god, is it's stupid. It's so stupid. The American Ornithological Society, who goes first? You want to tell us why it's smart first? Or do I tell why it's.

It?

The American Ornithological Society is now in the process of renaming all bird species currently named after people, along with any other bird names deemed defensive or exclusionary to the tune. Or they're going to rename some seventy some birds. Now I'll start by saying why it's dumb, or Yanni starts by saying why it's smart.

Wait, let's mean just since Brody's not here, I'm just gonna say what Brody said. Brody says. Pretty soon, they're going to have to think of a non denominational name for the Cardinal. Maybe a little redbird with a pointy hat. I thought that was pretty fun.

It's good, right, because the cardinal is named after.

The Catholic authority. Figure, right, that's not going to last.

I would imagine it might not but do you think it's great?

I don't.

I didn't say I thought it was great, But I think I think there's some after did you read the article, I mean there are.

Some a lot of other coverages.

Okay, I mean there's some.

Are you starting.

There's some people that also were against it, like heavy birders, heavy people involved in.

Oh, and they're like, well at first I didn't like it, but now it's like they got with the program.

They got with the program. Yeah, they understood.

I don't care what they say.

I think for us being white males, that skews our view of things like this big time, because I don't think that you or I have ever felt excluded from a lot of these things that we do in the outdoors that we've excluded. Yeah.

You know, my buddy was telling this whole story to my buddy Alex yesterday, and he said, he.

Goes, that's right.

Man.

When I look up a bird and realize it's named after a white guy, I always think.

Go team. Well didn't they don't they say in here that one of these birds is like named after Hitler, Like if we can all agree on something.

Well, I haven't given my spiel yet. My spiel isn't just eye roll. It's like I have a real spiel now.

Something I didn't think about, but I was mentioned in this article that I think would make it much easier just to be a general birder as opposed to being like, have to remember that the gambles quail has such and such characteristics. If they changed the name to reflect those characteristics, it would be easier for me to remember and then in the future identify that bird.

I agree they should have done that in the past. They should have done that in the past. The mulder is a great example. It's got big ears like a mule got it, but the coups dear. It just sucks that it got that guy's name. But that's its name.

I'm done tell us why.

Here's here's my issue.

I used to play ball with the American Ornithological Society when the American Ornithological Society came in and said, you know what, we've been calling these birds blue grouse, but in fact we're capturing these two divergent species. When we say blue grouse, there's the dusky in the sooty and uh, they have a different call. One of them tends to strut and display on the ground. One of them tends to strut and display in a tree. They make a

There's another bird.

There's a bird called an old squaw, a duck called an old squaw. Someone at a point. There's been a lot of there's been a lot of movement over the years. I don't know how many squaw peaks became something different. People used to call salmon candy squaw candy. It's like there's just this general movement away from a term, even though the term was used by Native peoples. There's a movement away from a term that has been deemed to

Minno and I'm like, oh, yeah, okay, I get it to go in and do this.

Under the pretext of what they're saying, they're saying that it's exclusionary, meaning that well, first off, you have to ask yourself, just take a step back from it. What is a birder. It's like, it's very hard to define a birder because we don't have the same term for a person. We don't have the same term for fish, we don't have the same term for mammals. So a birder, I would gather, means you are an individual who's interested

Fuck that bird I'm getting out of birding. I just like, there's no way that's happening.

That's a partial.

Is your connection to birding so tenuous?

I don't think that's the main because the white guy the main threast. I think it's like a waste is immortalizing someone in like in in some way that maybe I'm not gonna say, I'm not gonna throw my ball in whichever direction is going, but it's imortalizing someone who maybe shouldn't be immortalized in that way. I think it's more they're like, no, I'm gonna look out who this guy is. I'm like, oh, maybe, yes.

Thank you over simplifying this, Stephen, because it's a fun argument for you, which is a theme we've experienced in the past. A seventy bird species A yeah, sure, mayga, seven hundred whatever.

Birds.

Part of this right is like when we look at the squaw fish to northern pike Minno, there's a rebranding on behalf of the species right to where you had an association with this species that could be causing that species harm. And then when with that rebrand the idea is there's a a larger respect that comes along with the rebrand, it gets a facelift, and then.

They put they put a bounty on it in its native waters.

Well in some places. Right, But that's a huge different We can pick a different deal if you want, right, but you do understand what I'm saying. When we then have an association with something that has like a very well, uh, everybody has a negative opinion of a certain that could then have a negative effect on that species, which would be a pro for a rebrand. In my opinion, there's a big difference between well being like, oh, it's anti white people.

No, there's a big difference between the word squaw in the word stellar.

Which is not my argument at all. Yeah, Okay, absolutely

That's not the criteria here.

I think again, the criteria here is focusing on very very shotgun approach.

It's a very shotgun approach they could have. I don't know, there.

Could be an Abe Lincoln bird and they're gonna throw out the Abe lincolnbird's brain to draw, right, it's.

A ridiculous line to draw. It's distracting.

It's like, you know, uh, people for the ethical treatment of animals, they will often do things to generate headlines, right, because the way that they get coverage, They get coverage oftentimes from an opposing perspective, who covers Pete under the oh my god, what will they do now next? Right, So Peter will pick a thing that that just seems sort of outlandish because it puts them in the news cycle. It's like inconsequential outlandish, and you know it'll get tons

Can't beat a dead horse, you feed a fed horse or something. They did they yep, yeah, all all.

They They came out of the thing that we have a lot of sayings more than one way to skin a cat, and they're like, we need to stop using all these sayings because these sayings are and they get tons of you'd get people talking about it, because even if they're talking about it negatively, they're still talking about it and it creates a conversation. I feel that this move is coming from a pr person. It's coming from a person who is generating, who's creating noise for the

What do they have to gain from making noise? It's not like Peter. What does the ornithological society have to gain.

For They probably like to be in the news. They are probably very excited. I'm not saying it's like they would be excited about conversations like this.

What I what I don't like about it, man is uh and I didn't read this article at all, and from Yanni's perspective, and it's right, I am coming at it from a you know, Montana born and raised white kid. But you're you're kind of like leaving it up to this society to dictate what they think is right or wrong in history too.

Yeah, right, so like they didn't the birds in the first one.

They're they're deciding what names, uh we should be able to like attribute to animals species or not, which in my opinion, like it's very well not in my opinion, it gets very political right on behalf of whatever there kind of their personal direction is like what about rivers?

What if we started doing the same thing with rivers? Jefferson river goes away?

People get mad when you do this because you go like, well, what will happen when Washington d C isn't Washington d C? And then go like, well, now you're just doing like trickle down, what's next?

And slippery slope?

Slippery slope. I don't like to do all that, but you do wonder. Here's what here. I don't want to I want to talk about I want to talk about riding crazy horses, but I mean, I want to talk about this too. But finally, there's this, there's this idea that this is the thing I like, I'm honestly curious about.

If you get to if you the we have the constitution, we have a constitution that protects free it codifies free speech. Okay, so you have this this.

Document that paves the way for free speech and paves the way for a separation of powers, and paves the way for a separation of church and state. And then you go and say, but we're gonna get rid of any kind of marking of the individuals that did it, because they're bad people from the beginning. At what point do you also ditch the thing they made and what do you replace it with. So if you say, there can't be a bird named after this guy, that's horrible.

Being uh, you know, double jeopardy, having your house seized by the military to store soldiers, Like, at what point is all that kind of stupid? Because the people that made it were bad people. I just think it's like.

It's just it's it's a I think it's a largely kind of a it's just like this, like it's an exercise and divisiveness.

Well, in theory, you can amend that document. You know, it's very difficult to do. But I'm like, you know, it's not like.

Well, you can amend it only by the rules of the document.

Yeah, true, that's true.

Okay, so that is laid out in the document.

Yeah, there's there's a there's only so far you can go with this before you run up against the real wall.

Well, if there was a bird called the Rommels bird.

We can agree that the distance of how far you can go is a big, big difference. Distance between changing the name of a bird and tearing up the US Constitution. That is a long way. That is so far of a long way that I would say we will never ever ever get there.

I think that you'll. I think that in your lifetime it will be toyed with.

I think it's been toyed with since it was written.

Be toid with from a different angle. I don't want to conflate that with this bird thing. I think the birth thing is like, you can't just all of a sudden, you can't just all of a sudden do it. It's going to create an earther thing like this.

You know, when years ago.

I was when I was working on a writing project and I was with some guys from the Buffalo Field Campaign. Okay, this is a whole other angle. This is a whole of their annoyance I have with this name a thing. It was with some guys in the Buffalo Field Campaign. So the Buffalo Field Campaign is they're there. They were a preservation organization. The world got a little bit too complicated for them, but at a time it wasn't too complicated for them, and they were a fairly active preservation

I don't know if you caught word, but just think it's ridiculous. It's a distraction.

Yeah, but man, we may never ever ever be faced with that distraction. Of these seventy species, how many do you interact with frequently?

Quite a few.

The stellar's j I count among my favorite birds, and the English sparrow.

What happens to his ass? Yeah, I can among the sellers. You among my favorite birds. Uh, moving on, here's an interesting letter. There's a guy so guy wrote in he was.

Him and his buddies are all Special Operations veterans, and they lately have gotten into going into landlocked hunting, landlocked private land, and they've done it with aircraft public land.

Sorry, what did I say?

Landlocked public land?

Sorry, they have they have become they have become enthusiasts of hunting landlocked public land, meaning public land you can't access by walking or driving because it's surrounded by private land.

And they were using.

They would pitch together money and just get a helicopter to land them in these certain areas they wanted to hunt. But they found that like landing, the helicopter's very intrusive, noisy, can draw a lot of attention. And they all hold uh. And they're all former.

Military guys, so they they've been.

Bailing out of helicopters at seven to ten thousand feet in parachuting into land where they want to hunt, and then they just get picked up later by the helicopters. So they land parachuting and in classic special operator fashion, their eyes are all blacked out in the pictures. But he's got here. He parachuted in and he's got a grip and grin with his antelope that he killed with his parachute in the background.

Oh, actually, there's a wils A way.

I'm reading his email. It does his landlocked private land. But I think he meant to say because that wouldn't make any sense.

Yeah, yeah, that's cool.

But like we've talked about this, like on the technical gear side, like how we always what we do all year round is talk about how we go and kill critters, like we game it all year Can you imagine being an antelope in this picture and you look up and you see some sky like some guys jumping out of a helicopter coming into and be like when does it end? Like God, it's cool, though.

I don't want to get into the birds control thing on deercs that's been talked about a lot. Also from a high level, I think that it's interesting. So urban suburban environments where you have a lot of uh like too many deer, over abundance of deer from the standpoint of property damage, vehicular collisions, all these different issues. These guys have been having some luck with contraceptives in Canada and they bring up an interesting point in the article

Like other ones just move in.

But they're saying through this, through this experimentation, work to doing with contraceptives is you keep the landscape occupied, but they just can't reproduce and it's less inviting to new animals coming in because you have these like dominant breeding age animals around.

What's their plan for administering the contraceptives?

The dark one?

Right?

Yeah, And that's what I've heard about, is like who darted what? And it's complicated. You know. I always look at my eyes, like.

Yeah, there's probably people whould pay money to go hunt those deer, and they is in this article, like in Oak Bay. You cannot have people running around hunting just isn't gonna.

It's not workable. So that's that's the thing.

A guy wrote in a very spirited bottle of our conversation around Catalina Island mules. He's a biologist who's been working out on the Let me first, let me first give a quick thing. So on Catalina Island they have, uh, there's a herd of buffalo out there, which are brought out there.

For some movie that like in the early days of cinema.

I can't remember when they brought there's a herd of buffalo out there, and there's a bunch of mule deer out there, and I talked about, well, why not just have people go hunt them?

Who wouldn't want to go hunt these mule deer?

And why why sharpshoot him with helicopters when you can just you know, lower their populations with hunters. He writes in a couple of thoughts on why that's not why that doesn't work quite the way you think it did. So he's been out he's been working on the California Channel Islands for twenty five years.

He's a biologist.

He thought he'd add a few things around the deer cold issue. Santa Cataline I'm quoting him. Santa Catalina Island is completely private property, either owned by the Santa Catalina Island Company eleven percent is owned by the Wrigley family chewing gum so owned by the Santa Catalina Island Company, the Catalina Island Conservancy, or people who own houses an avalon. There's no public land whatsoever. So I know that was pretty confusing. But the conservancy has eighty eight percent of

Check this out.

There are four thousand residents on the island. Twenty of them get a deer, so they're killing four hundred tags. They're killing two hundred and forty meal deer a year. And as in terms of why not just let the locals shoot them? Of the four thousand locals, two hundred and forty, I'm sorry, of the four thousand locals, twenty get a deer. He says that DIY hunting out there doesn't really work. One, you can't rent a car. It's hard to even get out of town if you're not

There's no easy way to quickly get it back.

Onto the mainland because he's using the ferry system to transport them. He says, Thus, for these reasons, guided hunts are the rule. There's no there's no path forward in his in this guy's opinion, there's no like realistic path forward for diy meal deer hunts out there. Meal deer were brought to the island less than one hundred years ago. Private landowners brought them there and put them on private

These guys own eighty eight percent of the ground and they want the deer off their land. But they're holding California Department of Fishing Game responsible for their deer, and the Conservancy is paying to eradicate the deer. There is no state or federal money involved. The deer also do not belong to the people of Avalon, meaning the people who live on the island.

Just like a deer eating someone's garden does not belong to someone driving by on the road, and he goes on to say that deer have docu manted negative impacts a native plants and animals which are only found so endemics, only found on the California Channel Islands. The islands are the quote Galopagos of North America, specifically because they have those unique plants and animals. He says they also use this term to market tourism. He says there are a

The island's distinctiveness will be lost. Then he has a couple sum ups, basically him, Sam got that all wrong.

Good point, Yeah, I mean private deer, right, is what it amounts.

To trail cam CHATTICKI this is a phenomenal one, even though Chester's not here. The reason I say this is phenom because I recently heard someone say this. This guy hunts public land in Texas often comes across trail cameras. Okay, so again he's on public land, he comes across trail camera. I often come across.

He this is a quote.

I often come across trail cameras, which on most public land spots are not supposed to be left for more than twenty four hours or beyond your hunt. He carries his own SD car read as SD card reader.

In his pack. He likes to pull the camera since it's sitting there anyway. He likes to pull the camera and have a Looxie the card.

Sorry, he likes to pull the card and have a Lookxie puts everything back the way he founds it is this poor etiquette if it's on public land, I say, everybody's got a right to look. I would say the same, it seems weird, but like after kicking it around, I would say, like, like, for instance, if you put a pop up blind somewhere and that's not your yeah, it doesn't claim your area. You put a tree stand in

And you go there and there's all kinds of.

Hooks and nails and shit, till over the years, everybody their brothers hunting this one tree over a water hole, support a tree stand there.

It doesn't claim it.

Uh So it's like you forfeit your ownership of the material you paid for once you put it on public land.

I see both sides.

Yeah, it would be hard to go by with with an SD reader and not check it.

Oh so you agree, I think it feels Here's here's the thing is like half the cameras I set out, I don't turn them on.

Right. You had one out for a whole year. Oh I put one out for a whole ye and all year all I talked about.

My wife's like, oh my god, if you stop talking about stupid camera stuff, you're gonna have on that camera.

You know, after a whole year out there, and I go like, dah, forgot to turn it out. Try again this year. Uh So there's that.

It's like, I mean, you know, if they put it all back the way they found it and tidy everything up and turn it back on.

I would feel it's one of those things that.

It's one of those things that I get it, But I don't think I would personally do it because I would feel so weird, have my hand caught in the cookie jar because you're on the camera. Well, yeah, the camera, you can sneak around, stumble across one, like the odds are there.

Because I'm like what, there's like how many degree radius of your passing right?

I've waved it a lot of trail cams in my day. Yeah.

Yeah.

The best like video would be you seeing it going and checking the card and then setting up a blind right in front of.

It because the card was so good right here.

Or you could pretend to be a deer and like go down there and put your little lips up to the water, do a little splashing. Yeah, that'd be fun.

Yeah, I don't have Oh, he has one of those sign off things you know when you're.

On a forum. All the old men have a sign off. They're like forty four mag because shooting yeah more than once, stupid or yeah.

I kept that in there for you because I knew you'd pay attention to it. It like colors his character, right.

His his sign off is for God gave us a spirit not of fear, but of power and love and self control, self control, self.

But he's powerful and not afraid.

So uh this one, uh even though chedick is not here.

We usually like to give like when we do these, well, sometimes remember to do a little quick a quick survey, a quick panel.

Yeah, I don't.

I don't think it's bad, but I wouldn't do it, zeke.

I mean I probably wouldn't check it, just because I probably wouldn't have a card reader with me. But if I had the card reader, I mean I might.

But if you start a hunting public land a bunch.

If public, I don't know that that's a tricky one. I'd probably have my own camera out there check.

Yet.

Yeah, I'm I'm the same way. I don't think I would have a card reader, you know. Okay, okay, let me back up. You do, Okay, I do, but let's not have that.

Well, I don't what of my fingers are so cold that I don't have the deck stare.

There's so many this Like had I been in the mountains for say, nine days, looking and hadn't seen anything, and I had like found this area and I'm like, the bucks are here, they gotta be here, and I stumbled across the trail camera. Oh golly, would be hard not to look. But I have off and fantasized about finding a trail camera and then shooting a big animal like right in front of it on camera, like I got it. I beat you here, you're at work. I'm not guess what I win.

You can make a little note and say like, please send me the photos.

Right, can I have the photos of.

You're welcome to come to my house for a beer and like look at it on the wall.

Like that.

I don't know.

I've never done the mental gymnastics on this question, but.

If I were in an area with a high trail cam density, I'd pack a card reader with me. And it's public land, I mean that's yeah. I'll be like, if you want to leave it out here, to your point, it's on public right, Yeah, but.

You feel obligated to put it back the way you found it.

Yeah for sure, Oh yeah, for sure I wouldn't. Yeah, I you know, you got to like let people know because a trail cam is a I've told many people like, hey, do not put a trail cam there if you think that is an awesome spot, because then it's an indicator to other people that somebody's paying attention to that spot for a reason.

Or let's say they think it through even more like he's got a trail camera here, but he's not here. It must not be any good mm mmm, because he would know. M.

Yeah, you don't put trail cameras in bad spots.

Yeah I have.

We put Buddy mine killed the ball archere season and bob tons of grizzlies around, put a trail cam on the on the carcass just to get grizzly photos, and swung by the carcass, saw a sow and two cubs on the carcass from a respectable distance, and we were with your own two eyes, yeah, salivating over how cool these photos were going to be. Because of the grizzly activity, we couldn't pick it up the same week we were hunting,

It was such a bummer.

I was like, we're gonna, there's gonna We're gonna have these pictures on outdoor Life, you know, a long time ago.

It's funny.

I wouldn't I wouldn't mess with it. I like mystery.

Hmm. Yeah, take a totally different angle, Garrett.

I'm in it for the meat man. I'd check that camera all day. I'm out there to kill stuff. Well, I wouldn't check it all day, but I would definitely. It's a public land, like, don't met I'd rather somebody check it than screw with my camera, like I've had cameras taken before.

Yeah, or steal your camera.

Yeah.

I'm right along with Garrett, a buddy of mine who's hunts not far from our place in Wisconsin on public land a lot as well. He was just telling me that he did this exact thing, and he thinks that the advent of these cellular cameras now that have GPS systems within them so you can actually track your camera and it's meant to be used as like oh I said it and I forgot it where I put it?

My this is not I have to pulled that conversation. But I have two trail can pictures I've gotten that I'm proud of.

I have.

I show you the odter carrying the trout, which I like a lot. And then I have a bear on New Year's Eve wading through the snow.

Oh that's nice.

Yep Year's e These are not.

It was that same It was the same camera that you left on you didn't have on all year.

No by that one.

I gotta tell you a story about a dead deer picture that I saw, grip and grim. I didn't believe it at first, but then I got the pictures and I left my phone upstairs. I didn't have the issues of you know, messing with our MIC's in here. I'll show you later, but just listen up here. This dude shoots a buck from a distance. He can see there's something around its neck like the bucks obviously been entangled

That's phenomenal. And you're like, well, how do you know that was from that buck?

You'd have to shoulder mount that deer exactly as you shot.

It's that's great.

One last little thing, this is this is a this is a I'm bringing this one up because it's it's a it's a great, it's a it's a lost words. Brings up a lot of complexities. So the wolverine in the lower forty eight is uh Endangered Species Act protections are imminent. This is an interesting one because you're operating on the animals so poorly understood that you're you're you're sort of admitting that you're operating on a bit of assumption that here you have this animal that lives at

Moving to yes a protection.

The one thing about this this is uh, I'm always telling people to read Osborne and Russell's Journal of a Trapper. It was really in the end of Osborne Russell's Journal of a Trapper he has these little synopsies of animals, just kind of observations about animals. And it's so funny because that dude calls wolverine's abundant or common common animal, and you're like, what in the helmet, like you know what I mean?

Was it? Was it a typo? Did you know? Who? What did he mean? But he says common a common animal, a wolverine or was he just from the eighteen hundreds or was he like, I'm such a badass common to.

Me years and years ago as guiding out a glacier and had a wolverine climbed down a cliff in front of us, swim the river. Got it on on video at the time. I'm back and backing a camera with me a lot climb up the other side of the cliff, middle fork of the flathead, real narrow gorge section, and he sits up on top of that cliff and just like cusses us out, hmm, but like unbelievable, make it what noise? Unbelievable just kind of like spitting and kind

Probably almost like literally maybe once in lifetime experience.

Yeah, I mean the swimming, the whole thing A lot of things. It is right, probably that The next June, I'm in Alaska working a brown bear hunt on the peninsula and it's a late late winter up there. Everything snowed in pretty bad bear season. But every single day I saw multiple wolverines that for the first week of that trip, multiple multiple wolverines. They were following us around,

Yeah, which is like when Osborne Russell was running around here all those years ago. Was it that because if that's the case, then they are hurting, or was it.

Because like you can go out on the last Peninsula not see a wolverine all week. Was it just that late onset winter we were hiking where the squirrels and stuff were popping up, or maybe there was meat cashed underneath those snow banks from slides or who knows, But was there just a relatively unnatural concentration of wolverines at that time?

Yeah?

Well, you could have been seeing the same couple of wolverines over and over too, right, Yeah, but unless they had distinct markings, right right, Oh yeah, yeah, for sure.

I was deflated when I learned that I grew up in the wolverine state. And I was deflated when I learned that. It's kind of like maybe.

Oh no, way, maybe now and then I was thinking of you, but not thick. They weren't thick.

The other day, I was hiking to get water out of this spring and full white ermine weasel was following me around at the spring and I was making little mouse noisles and he came into like twenty yards and got to look at him through the ten by fifties, just super awesome.

Already white, completely white on the ground.

Yep, pink little pads. Had his hands up like this.

Do they I get sense you want to move on.

But oh no, I'm good. This is interesting.

Do they like mention?

What you know, a wolverine being added to the endangered species list?

What that means?

Well, you can kind of look by. You can look at some other examples, because, for instance, there's no hunting or trapping for wolverines in lower forty eight. So it's not going to mean the cessation of those kind of activities. But one thing that they'll do is so, for instance, with links, they create like these links protection zones which come with added restrictions on fur trapping to diminish the

I don't know.

I could picture that it might have implications for logging projects, maybe have implications for road building, might have implications for mining, but I don't picture it bleeding over into hunting activities.

Yeah, I mean, well, just to make this about me, like where I get nervous about this kind of stuff is one of the best snowmobile places like around this area.

I would look for this to change.

Was uh was up highlight right, Like you used to go up there and it was just like endless powder amazing riding. And I remember I was I was pretty young when it happened, but I remember one year my dad was like, well, we can't go there anymore because it got listed as a wilderness study area for wolverine. But it wasn't wilderness. It was just like they're like, well, we want to study if there.

Is a lot of wilderness study areas. Yeah. Yeah, But it was just like, but they sit in limbo.

It was just like overnight, all of a sudden, they were like, oh, there could be wolverine's here and we want to study it, which means and then you know, I don't want to get too political, but then it just like all of a sudden, they like they paved like this massive trail from one of the trailheads all the way up to the lake for cross country skiers, which was like ironic to us in terms of so just whenever I read this, just selfishly, I'm like, what does that mean for playing it there?

I could picture that there are certain high country snowmobile areas that could I mean, I'm totally guessing I have no idea. I could picture that that would be potentially a thing we're trying to think about what might be a thing, and you know your observation, don't want to get political. I think that everything is political. Yeah, well people said, I don't want to get political. It's like

That's politics.

It's political political, all right, Zeke Thurston. We covered when when when when a bron rider becomes the old man, but we didn't cover how why as a young man did you get into bronc riding.

Can you hit some basic definitions too, just to help people understand, like what like like what that like you got the different event different rodeo events, what your event is and what sort of you know, what distinguishes the event you like to do.

Yeah, so rodeo is made up of well you got like six major events and team roping is uh, I guess it's probably a major event now too. But at the rough stock side of the arena, that's that's where you know we we perform or whatever.

And you define that. To define the rough stock.

Would be your riding events of like you got your bare back riding, saddle bront griding, and bull riding and then.

Rough stock meaning like not broken.

Yeah. And then for the timed vent side, they've you've got roping boxes or boxes and a shoot and that's where they team rope, caf rope bulldog and uh. And then the barrel racing has just run in the middle of the arena obviously. So for for my event, you get on a horse. You have a what you call bronchrain or a hack rein and that's what you hold you hold on to. It's connected to a halter that

Uh.

They judge the horse and the rider. The like stipulations I guess is like you would you have to spur your horse out so that that means you have to have spur contact above the horse's shoulder the first jump out of the shoot when his front feet hit the ground, and then after that you try to pick up the horses timing, and you want to spur as high as you can set your feet in the neck in time with the horse white bucks. So the spur id just judged off of speed, spur contact, how high you spur?

Is this spurring actually causing the bucking?

No, No, the the animals are the animals are bred to buck like they're that's that's the way they are.

But the animals judged because you don't get more points if the horse is having a bad day.

No, no, you get you get less points.

Right, Oh, so that I always wondered about that. I didn't understand that. I didn't understand that. Well not yea, because there the horse is just like a like just comes out and stands there.

Yeah, I mean obviously you don't get a reride.

Yeah, but obvious. So so yeah, I don't need to rearticulate. But I've always wondered about how they calibrate that.

Yeah, so the judging criteria is from one to fifty. The horses judged off of how high he jumps in the air, how like how high is back end? You know, when he kicks, how high he's kicking.

And measured these are measured things. Yeah.

Yeah, and and then obviously, like other factors come into like play, like speed, direction, change.

I mean they like to see direction changes.

Yeah, like because that that makes the difficulty level go up. Right, So like your horses, you know, lands with his front feet over here, and then the next jump he you know, lands over here four feet. That's obviously a lot a lot harder to ride than one that's going straight chalk line straight, you know. So one to fifty for the for the bucking horse, and then one to fifty for the bronc grider, So total of one hundred points possible.

Got it?

How do you get like assigned a horse?

So it's a random draw. The judges at the rodeo will actually they do it in the prs A office three days prior to the rodeo. The stock contractor whoever is supplying stock or putting putting on the rodeo will

Is that a spectator event too?

Like?

Like do real insiders like to go watch the draw, like the way people pay attention to the way people pay attention to draft picks.

No, nobody's in on the draw.

Just just it just happened. Yeah, and they say, here's what happened.

Yeah, you find out three days before what horse you have, and you decide if you're gonna go get on it or not? And do you deal?

I got a question for you, honest, guess what an old you know how? I asked him how old a guy can be and still depete? Guess what old horses? An old bronc old bucking horse. How long his career can be bucking horse?

Yeah?

Fifteen fifteen? No, that's they're just getting started at fifteen they had.

He was telling me about a horse that was still kicking off pro riders at twenty four years of age.

He said, they get better, oh, because they mean that's an old bucking horse for sure, but like their their career, their best years are.

Is he aware that he has a career? I wonder, well the horses, like, what are you gonna do when this is all over?

Man? He has reached like doctor the uh that horse I was telling you about those twenty four they what was his name, Sundance. They retired him that year he was retired, they didn't load him on the truck to go to the National Finals rodeo. The next day they found him out behind the shed and he had passed away. Oh, I bet had like a euphemism, he had passed passed away. But I bet if they loaded him on the truck, he probably would have still been ticking died of a

Se man me be a dumbass about this. I would have thought, for some reason that you find yourself like a three four year old horse and no one's ever been near, and he's gonna give the best ride he'll ever give the first time someone jumps on.

Because that theory, that's that's because that's when we usually get bucked off of.

That's when they start them. But that's no different than Brady, you know, training a puppy. It's gonna run out there and and mess up, you know, like there's lots of So that's what we call colts. And there's they're they're you know, they they've got it bred into them. They're really trying to buck. But there's they're trying to do too much. You know, they don't have a pattern, they don't know what they're doing. So there's there's you know, they're they can do anything.

So do you think they legit I mean you're saying this essentially, but they legit learned here's how I like to get people off me. And I find that this works. I find that that works absolutely. They're smart.

Like they they can feel like which which way you're you know, what side you have more weight in, and they might turn and go away from that leg no kid, Oh yeah, they they they get really tricky. Some of them get like, uh, they kind of like play little mind games, like when you're crawling down on them in the bucking shoot, they'll kind of like squat and like kind of stand shitty in the bucking shoot and then like and some of them you can't get to stand.

You can't get a good no, get your position.

But yeah, and so when you nod, then then they dart out of there and.

He's already got you thrown off.

They might So can you watch watch some film on these horses, you tell if you scouts and be like, oh, this is kind of this guy sty.

So like when you get to the point where I'm at and you're going and you're doing it for a living, Like a lot of the horses that we compete on end up at the same rodeos as us. You know, at the biggest rodeos. They try to have the best stock for the contestants. So so we see them.

You see each other in the cafeteria line.

We see him. We see them over and over and over, like Calgary Stampede stuck on tracting firm from Alberta, Like we'll see those horses from January till the end of September at the end of the season.

What right now is what's the horse you guys talk about, like you and your peers.

Well probably like the most recently crowned bucking horse of the world is Explosive Skies, owned by Caygary.

See almost like they knew he was gonna be good.

Yeah, she's good.

She is it usually she I know.

They can be geldings, marrors or studs.

So that's not an issue. They'll always wind up being one of the.

Other No, no, And so like the theory of like the flank strap goes around the testicles is thrown out the window because half of them are are mares.

Man, it really surprises me. Is there not a lot of Is there not a lot of sexual dimorphism in horses? Meaning the males aren't always a little heavier or something like that.

Like so if you leave a horse a stud, like, they'll get like pretty distinct features like where they're like their jar or their jaw like right here will really get like it gets gets swollen almost and quite a bit more prominent than say, like if you geld a horse at two years old, they get real hard necks. They usually grow quite a bit of maine. They're kind of a little more like they're just they're just a harder, leaner animal.

You can tell when you look at Yeah, yeah.

But that doesn't testosterone running through.

Yeah, but they but they might turn around in an americor can out welcome.

Oh yeah, for sure. Studs are actually kind of finicky, Like there's been some really good studs, but for the most part, a lot of a lot of contractors just use their studs at home for breeding because they can they can be kind of inconsistent just just because they can get running so hot and and uh yeah, like like studs, studs don't seem to last as long as as a gelding or a mare.

Would, like a hot mare kind of throw their game off to you or something.

Yeah, yeah, for sure, Like definitely, the hormones do play a part. Like if if a mayor is like in heat or something like, she might have an off day and not be as good as as she normally would be, So that all plays a role. That's like gelding's you know, they they just have one job, eat in the backpen and go out there and back pretty They're usually pretty consistent.

When you're matched up at three days prior, you said, people then get to decide if they're actually gonna go out and ride that animal. What is the decision making process? Obviously it's like could you like, if you have enough points right, uh, do you go? Oh, this horse is having a really hot streak right now, so I'm not gonna ride.

Yeah, Like like for the most part, we I mean, you don't enter the rodeo to not go, right, so you plan on going and competing. But I mean there's you don't turn out a lot. But like the times that you would turn out is like maybe if you draw a horse that's kind of inferior to like where you know you have no chance of winning. The other time is maybe like if you have a horse that's that's maybe known for for doing something you know that where it could hurt you.

Oh, so you're saying that you draw a horse that's not as good. So no matter how well you ride, that horse isn't going to get judged high enough to then give you enough points to do anything beneficial for correct Yeah.

So like say, like your average bucking horse would be a twenty point horse. So if I get on that horse and I do my job correctly, I put a twenty three point spur ride on that horse. You know you double that up on eighty six points. If you draw a horse that's you know, commonly a seventeen point horse, it doesn't matter how how good you ride. You know, Max Max, you can be eighty points and probably not gonna win anything.

Gotcha, Zeke knows I'm good enough that like before a rodeo, he'll tell me if he's probably gonna make the short go or not.

Seriously, before you even get on.

Yeah, like you have a pretty good idea of how it's gonna go before beforehand. But I mean they're animals too, so I mean they're unpredictable. You can draw a horse that's you know, normally you know, maybe not that desirable, and you wouldn't want to draw it, and you go get on it and has the best day of its life and you can win the rodeo.

Got it?

So one hundred points is max? Yeah, when you when you win the world, what kind of points you get?

Well, that's so like when you win the world, it's it's based off of your whole season. So one hundred rodeos on your rodeo count and then you have ten ten rounds at the NFR, and so the basically the world champion is the guy with the most dollars one at the end of it.

So what winds up being an ad Like if you could put it like, what what is a winning streak of scores?

I guess is what I'm asking you know, like you got to be in the if it's one hundred top, you got to be in the mid eighties, you got.

Okay, Yeah, at the nf FR to win go rounds, I mean shoot, nowadays you probably got to be like eighty eight points to win most go rounds, but like an eighty and eighty fives is going to place you somewhere most most.

And how much do you feel the judging is arbitrary and in debatable and how much it's just like it's just the facts.

The facts are facts.

Man, It's however you want to look at it. I mean, it is. It is a judged event, you know, And and they they're not always going to get the calls right. You know, a lot of it happens fast and with the naked eye. So I mean, but for the most part,

Yeah, he's they realize that there's a bias for the local guy.

I don't I don't want to make you uncomfortable, but I've thought that. I wondered that about the rights until I was in Pendleton watching you and I was sitting behind somebody else they didn't know me, and uh, you rode and I thought you got underscored.

But the person in front of me.

Yeah, the person in front of me goes of course because he's Thurston, and I was like.

Oh, you got underscored, or of course he got.

They were thinking he got a good score because he's like.

He didn't throw that out there.

I'm not going to say it hasn't happened to me, but it didn't happen there. I promise you that there didn't happen.

Well, how old were you when you first got on a horse?

My first bronk uh No, I mean like just riding, Like oh, like I grew riding.

Yeah, like he's actually never ridden a horse.

Yeah, yeah, I don't even have a memory of getting on a horse. Just yeah, I just grew up riding.

And would your dad put you on ones just to see you get thrown off? Or how do you get started and all that?

You get started? No, No, like it's you kind of there's like stepping stones you go through, you know and stuff. But like I grew up riding a saddle horse, grew up on a ranch in Alberta, so uh like a lot of our days were spent in the saddle just cowboying and doing doing ranch work and.

You guys work cattle off horseback.

Yeah. So then like from there, you know, obviously road cheap when I was little and and did that stuff. And then kind of when in Canada they have at their at their pro rodeos, they have what they call boys steer adding and you can start that, I think

I mean depends who you ask what for sure, And Grandma was like he only lost thirteen te It.

Was like age appropriate.

And then you get your teeth kicked out, did it? Did you get a little gun shy after your teeth got knocked out?

Yeah?

Well I was pretty young. And then some time off well I was eight and it was at a at a birthday party. You know, it was more for fun, but uh, that was all I ever wanted to do. And then after that, I was I was kind of maybe second guess and what I wanted to do a little bit.

Man, I can't remember I told the story not you might. I should find this article and send it to you. There's a writer, Bricard Builder. He's a Southern writer. He's the one that he's the one that kind of popularized, not for the people that do it, but popularized for the media, noodling for flatheads.

He had a book, Noodling for Flatheads, and.

Then it became that everybody on the planet went noodling for flatheads. It was like he kind of brought this to the public eye. You know, there's always some people got to do it, but he like people were like, what right, I want to go do that?

That was him.

He wrote a profile on these bull riders.

He was doing all his work in Nevada and it was just about this bull riding community in Nevada and

They have put a rubber at the same time, So he's like covering this community issue and he's covering these bull riders like it kind of brings the two stories together. His So it's like when you talk about like you know, within limits.

Yeah, yeah.

I think what Zeke is kind of underplaying though, is like his dad was an absolute legend as he like touched on and he like grew up touring with dad a bit too.

Yeah, So like I grew up in it, Like that's that's all I've ever known. Like both sides of my family are just are deeply rooted in rodeo. My dad he had a he had a successful career as a BRONC rider. My mom she did a little announcing and then they ran the grand entries that at the Canadian Finals, worked for the Calgary Stampede, did the NFR. So always always been in it and around it and yeah, just

And what are some of the stepping stones, like just really.

Just being a cowboy kid and riding, riding any animals that you have around the place.

I mean, what are the like the professional ones?

They meaning I can't show up at right, No, Like I can't show up at you know, a major event, like hey, I'd like to go to right, there's gotta be there's a there's a system of.

Yeah, so when you get to like I did the checks right. Yeah, Like we they have high school like junior high rodeos where they have like a build a cowboy program, which is you know, so like you're you have junior high kids and they put them on you know, like a bucking machine and judge them on there. Or they'll get some like Holstein cows and and uh, they'll

And uh, did you ride bulls in high school?

Yeah? Yeah, I did a roped, a team, roped calf, roped, rope bulls, road bronx, and then uh yeah once kind of once I went through college and stuff just kind of narrowed it down to what I really wanted to do, and that was ride bronx.

Yeah.

I was asking about that this morning when we were goose hunting. Is uh, you know, if you're uh, you know, there's certain disciplines in the Olympics, for instance, there's there's like a you know, a skier might really excel in I don't know what helped me out, swallow right or whatever help, but then you know here they also competed in some other some other like seven. Yeah, so lay it out for me, like, if you're scared, you might do blank, blank and blank, but you have your specialty.

Sure, like all the the slalom, the giant slalom and then the super g and then the downhill so so.

I was asking him about that, but he's, like he was saying, nowadays, as though this used to not be the case.

Nowadays, you need.

To, like competition's so sharp, right, he said, Nowadays you need to you have your thing, you have your discipline.

You don't do you can't do. I'm gonna go jump on a bowl and try that. You know what I mean?

You can. There are guys that you know, competing more than one event like stet Stetson, right is he's arguably one of the very best brunt riders and bull riders going. It's just a lot more rare now.

And you were saying, because it's because it's you're.

It's just gotten really competitive, really specialized. The bucking horses have gotten and bulls have gotten so so good, they're so rank to you know, if you got to go through a season and get on like I'll get one hundred and fifty broncs a year. So if you I mean, if you're doing that double time, when you're asking a lot of your body.

Yeah, you might be done when you're twenty four.

Yeah.

I also think and you can crag me if I'm wrong, zeke in this, but you know, back in the days, the old days of rodeo, right, these old cowboys that were trying to make a living rodeo and it didn't pay what it pays now m hm, Like the pool wasn't near as good, and so they were going to the rodeo like they would want to enter more than one event just to increase our odds of making some money in order to make more money to make it

Can't bring a little money home, seriously, Yeah.

And that's what you did at like the high school rodeos because they had an all around and you wanted to get all around points. College. You're on a college team, right, so you're trying to get your team to the college finals, so you enter multiple events to get points total for the team. When you get to the professional level, it seems like you kind of narrow in on one one one specific.

Speaking of narrowing in, I don't want to make you uncomfortable, but I want to talk about the economics. So when I asked you about the economics of it, you don't need to talk about you, but you just talk about generally how it goes.

But first, this one's not terribly personal.

Uh, what was the first time you you walked away with money from a rodeo?

How old were you?

Oh, like I don't know, like probably one, you know, an envelope with forty bucks at junior rodeos when I was a little but competing. Like when I started actually to like make a little money, was when I started riding steers in Canada as a boys steer rider. And at what age that would have been, like eleven.

Twelve making money eleven or twelve?

Yeah, that was awesome because you didn't drive and your parents paid for all the fuel, so it was all profit.

And then what would be making money? What do you mean a few hundred bucks? A few thousand bucks?

I think that one year after I won the Canadian title in the steer ride, and I think I had like ten thousand dollars.

Did your parents take it away?

Fourteen year old kid? Thirteen year old kid?

Did your parents take it from you? No you haven't.

Yeah, yeah, you've just inspired parties.

Serious of that age.

And that's serious, way better than was that regarded as accession. I think I bought my first cows when I was yeah, fourteen, thirteen fourteen with my steerd this cowboy through and through that it would have been a great opportunity for the boss.

Is what trailer tires cost. This is what O a.

Lot of parents to be like, oh, hand that over, you still hold me? A hundred thousands.

They actually had a big steer like like, so it seems like every like my my age group, I guess especially in Canada, but but everywhere, like through high school rodeo, through my steer ide and all that stuff, like there was always like a big, a big group of kids that were you know, that were really good at it and and gamers, so like when we were riding steers.

Really? Yeah, what did you do with the cow? Celebrate?

Only just preg checked her three days ago and she's she's still alive. So that was That was in two thousand and eight.

So that thing you want to pay in a lot of money.

So she's two thousand and eight and yeah, this she's been read every year. I raised two buccoballs out of them, they out of hers, they didn't buck very hard. So I just started bringing her to a black angus bull.

You kidding me?

Do you mark that once so you can track the so you can track the payoff on that win on the I mean, do you mark how much you've made off that cow?

Off that cow?

No?

I don't. I mean, I'm not sure you're interested in market fluctuates a lot, but you can tell her. She really sticks out from the herd. She looks like a she doesn't belong. Yeah, she's pretty mean.

When you were okay, so at fourteen, you start buying. You bought house. Yeah, so you just knew you wanted to be in the family business.

Yeah.

Now, how many guys are there US Canada? I mean, I'm sure there's I don't know how far. Just do your best job answering this, because I'm sure you can start getting into what about Mexico or whatever, But like, give me a ballpark, how many How many guys are there that are making the bulk of their annual income bronc riding bron riding?

Is it hundreds?

No? Like, I mean it depends. I guess how much what you consider income.

Yeah, I get it, because you could be like living your parents basement.

Yeah, but I mean to truly make a living radenbucking horses, I would say the So like for us to rodeo throughout the year, I'm gonna say you probably have around seventy seventy thousand is invested to go a full season. That's between like your your fuel, your entry fees, flights food. So so you're to make the NFR, you've got to win. Like this year, I think it took about one hundred and five thousand.

So they they market by just the purse it's a dollar.

For dollars dollars one. So I mean, if you're making the NFR, you're coming out on you know, you go to the NFR and don't win a dime, you're coming out on top of thirty thousand extra. You worked pretty damn hard for that thirty thousand.

It took some years off your life.

Yeah, so you can.

Look at someone there, like someone at that point has has pocketed.

Like at a minimum, they maybe pocketed thirty grand.

Like yeah, I mean that's to make it. But like your top, you're top guys. I mean last year I went out to the Vegas I won more money than any other contestant there, but I left just Vegas alone with two hundred and fifty six thousand.

How many days of work was that ten days? Oh that was exceptional. That's good though.

That's doing as good as you can do.

Yeah. Tax has gotta be a bitch on that stuff.

On Taxas Texas suck.

They pretty much acted like you won the lottery.

Yeah. Well, there's not a lot of things you can write off against you know.

Your ROTA, but you can't write off your bones and ship. Yeah, well that costs me. Yeah, that cost me my fever. It's gotta be worse something. I'm gonna do that as a deduction.

But I mean, if you're doing good and you're in the top five or whatever, I mean, you're making you're making a decent living.

What's funny about that line of work too, is I always think about this with professional athletes and stuff and others. Is uh, like I want to talk about economics and the personalness of economics is it's so public. I mean, like we had a guy on that won the British Open right.

And everybody knows how much to ask them.

I could, like I could three seconds tell I mean I could three seconds every much I make. Yeah, it's so funny. So you come back from something people like, hey, good luck on you know, a good job on the blank dollars? Yeah, you know, there's no for sure.

Yeah, yeah, it's not it's not too private, but I mean, like, uh, lost my train of thought.

No, just not not private public.

It's treated as the point system to your point though, right, it's so like it's it is literally the points and the currency that is used to quantify what you've achieved in rodeo is like the dollars, dollars one and so earlier today when we were goose hunting, you know how Zeke was talking about you can only go to one hundred rodeos in a year, so you have to pick. So there might be seven or eight hundred rodeos pro

That is what I was gonna say, was, Yeah, so like rodeos, it's the only blue collar sport left where you pay your own way and you don't get paid unless you win. You know where everybody else is on a contract. And so that's what makes rodeo pretty neat because you see, like these guys.

Are out there.

They are giving it there all every time and they're doing it because they want to. You know, you can. You can get drafted and sign your three million dollars or your three year, ten million dollar contract and then you know, go coast around the ice or football field or whatever pretty easily. But you know, in rodeo there you have to win.

Because it's blue collar and draws some blue collar do you guys have a real reputation for blowing your money.

I don't know if they ever are smart. I wouldn't. I wouldn't say rodeo cowboys are smart with their mind. I feel like I've done a pretty good job. But you see a lot of money the majority of them.

Yeah, you see a lot of people burn the check off.

Yeah, somebody will win, you know, a Houston for fifty thousand, and then they buy a new boat. They're like, what are you? When are you ever going to use that?

You're rodeo on all summer.

You can't even You're gone, could you?

So? Could you?

Uh?

It's one hundred grand right? The entry the points system is one hundred thousand dollars.

To make the NFL. I mean it fluctuates every year.

So let's say you're gaming out and you can you can do a maximum of one hundred events.

Is that right?

You can't go more than top fifteen in the world.

Is there a minimum?

A minimum?

Like?

So for us we have what they call standalone events, which are and the bull riders do too, and a few in the bare back riding, but it's they call them extreme Broncs where it's just bronk riding. So like if Bozeman was to have an Extreme Bronx, you would come and watch thirty of the best brunk graders in the world get on. That's all you'd watch is thirty

Oh okay, because they're trying to keep the whole, the whole program rolling.

Yeah, because we could go I mean, we have a lot of extreme brounks now, like you could go to forty extreme bronks win one hundred grand in that, you know, but not not get your forty rodeos, so that one hundred thousands, not counting towards the second.

That's what I was curious is if to what degree did people game it? Meaning if you knew that, if you know that going to NFR that you're a real contestant and you might walk away over there with a sizeable chunk of money. And you're going through the season and you hit the minimum threshold, is there some part of you that says, I'm not going to risk my body unnecessarily. I'm just gonna chill and and wait and just go to the big time and not do the circuit.

Yeah, not not necessarily. Like as far as as far as the roughstock events go, the BRONC riding is the easiest on your body, like kind of once you once you learn it, not that you ever have it totally learned, but they call it the classic event. It's it's all timing and balance, you know. It's it's kind of like riding a rock and chair when it's going right. So I mean for us it's I mean, if you have a good horse drawn that you're gonna win on, you're

Yep.

Yeah, and if you don't go, you don't get paid.

No, it's just a net loss of dollars.

Yeah.

I want to go off of that analogy of the rock and chair because I'd like you to go through if you can, well, first tell me I think you can tell me really quickly. Is the is what you're mimicking when you do this bronc riding event? Is it what used to be or still is probably but breaking a horse to be able to ride it with a saddle, or is there there's something else that goes on in ranching that this is mimicking.

Yeah, So like where where rodeo and bronk like bron g riding is the event that started rodeo and where it came from was when the European settlers came over. They took the Spanish Volco's influence on how to handle cattle with horses and they you know, they've seen that as a benefit, so they started to you know, handle

And it would be like a daily event. You just knew back then for them to start your day, you'd have to get on that horse in some weird way that you just described. I didn't understand half the terminology, but you had to get on him and go through eight or maybe a minute of craziness and then you go about your day of work.

Yes, and they would ride him once and considered them broke, like that was a broke horse. But he might back for the next sixty days that you had them.

Is the fact that he had been ridden.

That somebody had been on his back at one point he was considered broke. But so that's what they did.

So then you know, we got a body who uh uh, well, our body's body who's that guy? I remember was squirrel unting down. We're talking about mules. Squirrel on Maclay and he had.

His friend with us. I can't remember the guy's name. He was funnier in hell were there.

They got to talk about the mule trade on Craigslist and they're talking about like how bad Craigslist is for the mule trade.

And this guy says, man, I broke us sold.

He says, I sold a crazy horse or I sold a crazy mule to a guy on Craigslist. And two weeks later I saw that same mule being sold as a broke mules.

That's how they did it. Yeah, so then they I mean, obviously it turned into you know, the the art of bronk riding just came from those everyday working cowboys, you know, making bets and trying to ride the rank his horse, and then it just kind of progressively got sportier over

Are there any other continents where this goes on? Do you know about?

There are?

But like in different styles, Like I don't know if I seen videos like on social media, I don't know where even what country would be from, but like these guys get on like they'll have these horses snubbed up and they'll get on like maybe to a post and another horse be between two, you know, two riders on horse.

What's the significance of the one hand in the air.

And just difficulty level.

I guess just showing using one hand and then uh, you know the famous wyoming symbol. Who's that dude?

Actually, yeah, I don't know who that is.

Okay, take can you take us through?

Uh, pick up wherever you decide it's like interesting enough to tell the story, but take us through, like step by step, moment by a moment, the whole riding experience of when you get into that shoot. But it might it might start I don't know, two minutes ahead of time, like when you're the other dude's riding ahead of you,

Yeah, so like we try to get to the rodeo an hour before you get your equipment kind of ready.

Just an hour.

Yeah, yeah, usually, I mean that's about what it takes to warm up your body, get everything firing. You know, you go get a halter. It's they supply the halter, so you go get a halter, put your hackrain on your halter. Bron Griding is usually, you know, pretty commonly

What's that That vest is protective?

Right, Yeah, it's a protective vest.

It's got like kevlar plates.

Or yeah, I don't think it's it's like a it's just kind of like a thick foam covered in leather.

Okay, so so it would it doesn't help you get.

It helps, Yeah, it's just like disperse the you know, yeah, like in anything like we don't I mean, hopefully you don't have to use it for getting stepped on, and it's not super common, but it's nice to have it on when you do. But some horses, you know, like if they some smart horses will you know, try to set back in the shoot and you kind of mash you in the back of the shoot, you know, so it's nice to have it on for that. And that's

Go get the you're talking about getting the other equipment the halter that's not you can't bring your own.

That is brought by the stock contractor just usually because they well I mean you just wouldn't want to pack a halter around. But they also have like their rodeo company's name on the noseband, and there's some famous special horses have their own name on the noseband and stuff.

What about the saddle, when does that go on? And who provides them?

So they'll like once they start loading the bucking horses for the bronc riding, you'll go find your horse, you know, figure out what shoot or what side you're you're here on. You take your equipment over there. You'll start by putting your halter on the horse.

At this point, you know what that horse looks like.

Oh yeah, yeah, I mean you've probably known it like days before.

Yeah.

You always go and talk to the stockgun tractor beforehand and always be friendly, shake their hand, ask them what siety's out of, you know, do that kind of deal.

But then, what do you mean what siety's out of?

Like, so there's at the rodeo, well most rodeos, not all, but there'll be a left hand delivery and a right hand.

Delivery, and that depends on the horse's tendencies.

Yes, so some horses are right leaded and some horses are left lead, just like people.

Oh so they tailored to what that horse is going to want to do some horses.

Yeah, so if a horse likes to kind of circle to the left, they'll put them out of the left side so that he can you know, he starts in the left lead and goes out there and makes his circle to the left.

Okay, they're not just mixing it up randomly.

No, No, there's actually there's a lot of strategy that goes into it. But yeah, you get your horse altered I'll put my saddle.

On, so you put your saddle on.

Yep. Yeah, personal, I'm responsible for all of my own equipment, my stuff, okay.

Yeah.

Like so basically when you enter the rodeo and you get there and you're gonna go compete on that horse like that, that horse is basically my horse for the time being. Like I'm I'm doing everything with it. And obviously the stock contractor owns it and you work with them too, you know, but.

Those saddles like criteria, right, you can't invent some genius saddle.

Oh no, there's specs for a saddle. You know where they sit and how they pull and and all that stuff. But anyways, I'll put my saddle on, and then usually about the time the Bronc rideing's starting to kick off wherever, you know, wherever you happen to fall in the lineup, like you might be first out, you might be twelfth or thirteenth out, depending on how many guys, and so you'll kind of time it, like to do my shaps

Down now, what are the chaps do for you? Because you're not riding through briars.

No, So the shaps are there there their leg protection. And then we also put rosin on our swells, which is where your legs come in contact with your saddle. So it's it's kind of a sticky you know, it's a sticky tree sap. It looks sweet, yeah, in style too, but.

Yeah, it helps you grip the horse.

Yeah, it helps you grip your saddle.

And you're allowed to rise, yes, because in baseball, you're not.

They grip their they rosing their bats, don't they.

Well they can't put sticky shit on the ball though, No, not on the ball. Yeah, but you guys are allowed to.

I mean there's criterias on that too, like you can't can't be painting on gorilla glue. But yeah, So then depending on where I am in the lineup, I'll start, you know, sensing my horse pulling my saddle. I get everything squared away, and then it's, uh, it's basically just go time everything. Uh you know, they get a couple of guys away from you, I'll suck my hat down,

I feel like from watch and I feel like I know what you're talking about now.

Yeah, yeah, So then snug my back sinch. This it happens fast.

Because they want like for the spectator's perspective, they want like a certain cad oh in.

Vegas, like they want like you have to have your back cinch, you know, rain measured foot in your saddle as the other guy before you is going. So like they just snapped in one after another. It's fast. They can Yeah, regular rodeo, it's not quite who is are you doing the backsinch? I do the back sinch ye do. And then the stock contractor is in charge of the flank and they're not like usually like I I like

You feel that horse is fired up.

Oh yeah, yeah, like they like yes, there's some horses that they'll run in the buck and shoot and they'll just swell right up and get tight. You can tell that, you know they're ready. There's other horses that will stand in there and they act half asleep and you're like, come on, wake up, man, like we gotta to go do this. You know, they all have a personality, they're all different and uh yeah, but anyways, I'll step over the back, crawl down on and once like once I'm

Far away look.

Okay, but so you not your head. One guy swings the chute open.

When the gate starts to open, the like, so like, all I can see is I'm focused on the horse's neck. I can see my rain up in front of me. So like, as soon as that horse's head starts to move like she's you know, he or she is committing to leaving the shoot, is when I'll reach up and spur them out, get a hold of them with my feet. Then I'll have to hold my feet in the front of her, you know, above her shoulders or his shoulders,

But what is that for?

Uh? You can, it's you. You can honestly ride. You could. They couldn't blow you out of there with a cannon if you're if you're ahead of the horse. So that's why they call the classic ventnors. It's like riding a rocking chair. If you get behind and you know you're you're spurring, you're hitting the front as the horse's front feet are hitting the ground, or even after it you

And if you're out of time.

Yes, yeah, what's the significance of the we're not there yet, But what is the significance of eight seconds?

Like where did that ever come from?

I don't know. It used to be used to be ten Okay, I think they just shorten it. I'm not really sure.

It's not like a Spanish tradition.

Or no, I'm not sure where the eight seconds come from.

Yeah, but you know, how well do you know when you're there, like.

Well, they have a horn that goes off anyway, Yeah, you have a you have an internal clock, and you have a pretty good idea.

How far into the ride do you know if it's going to be a spectacular ride or it's a dud?

Yeah, just I mean you can It kind of depends on the ride. Like you know, you get on a horse, maybe the first three or four jumps are you know, outstanding, and it's looking like you're going to be eighty eight, and then he kind of peters out or trails off at the end, and you know his last three jumps was a seventy seven, so then you end up being eighty two.

So basically, riders get off.

I used to ice be confused about, but this this conversation's homes playing it. Did you see riders get off? You know you think they tore it.

Up and they get off on their piss. Yeah, it's kicking the dirt, throwing it. And I was like, what they're pissed as the horse.

Yeah, I mean it could be or something, you know, maybe something that they they maybe weren't happy with themselves that they did. No, the intricacies of horse bucks hard from start to finish, and you ride it really well, you're gonna get a big score no matter what you said.

You snug down your hat. Aren't a lot of folks wearing like full face protection and helmets these days?

And the bull riding, just the bull riding. Yeah, No, bron graders were helmets. I mean there's maybe one, wow, so.

One smart BRONC rider and out of the whole crew.

Yeah, and he wore a helmet because he had a soft spot on his skull from a previous injury.

That makes sense.

He was laid to the game.

Yea.

His nickname was Helmet.

You'll know when you see yeah old skid Land. How often do you how often do you get like what percentage of the time do you get thrown off?

Well?

I don't.

I mean this year I've been bucked off twice, I guess.

And what's the most common, So that'd be like wait, that that'd be like.

It's just less likely to happen, right, And when you get bucked off. Are you like I screwed up? Or is it that that horse had an amazing move.

Yeah, it's usually it's it's on me obviously, because it's I mean the horses, you're dancing partner, they're out there making they're in the lead right and you're making the counter move. So obviously if I get bucked off, there's you know, I didn't do something correct, But there's there's just times, I mean, you can't. It's inevible. It's gonna happen,

But you knew that it was coming and what it might be.

But I was doing every Like I.

Watched the tape back and I was doing it. I was doing everything pretty cool.

What was what was she doing? What was the thing?

Like she just turns out of there and like the first two jumps are really big and I had her spurred out and I was gonna hold my feet for two jumps. So like the second jump, or like the first jump was is pretty good, Like it's a big jump, but like she's pretty honest about it. The second jump she like really elevates and and moves away what they call so like she starts to really jump forward, which makes you want to run out the back of your saddle.

But looking back, like I was doing that, that could happen. Yeah, how are you?

How are you going to count?

Did you learn something?

Do you feel like?

I don't know. I watched the thing and I was like, I don't know what I would do different. I'll probably draw her again and I'll probably try it the same way. I was doing things pretty pretty right.

Huh yeah, So, uh, what are the you laid out a number of injuries and talk about the woman you were a kid, but like, like at your level, now.

What's the thing that you worry about happening? Like, like, what would be the thing that winds up banging up?

You don't really worry about any of it happening. I mean, obviously it can't happen. I mean, if you're worried about getting hurt, you probably shouldn't do it. But I mean it's it's a high contact sport for sure, and injuries are going to happen, big ones for broncraders, groins, knees, ankles. I seem to do a knee or an ankle every year.

Got it? Is there a lot of groupies in the rodeo world.

I mean there's some you yeah, all right, yeah, I see you're married though I'm married.

Ye oh, you've been married.

I've been married. This will be well. I just have my anniversary the other day seven years.

Oh, what's going on with that? Going good?

Oh, it's really good. I have We've got three kids, who just welcomed our third one two weeks ago. My oldest daughter, Lucy is five. I got a boy, Hardy, he's two. And then Maggie is two weeks old. Yawn, got it going on? No, you like being married though I love being married.

Yeah, it's the right hand.

That's the right answer.

The podcast have You Really Dumb? Sound different?

Like, what's the gap between you and the other guys going in? Because the NFR or what when.

This drops is like two weeks away?

What's the gap.

Between you and the other guys?

Between me and first Yeah? Probably like right around thirty thousand, which ain't much because last year I think First Place had one hundred and fifteen thousand on me.

I got them kidding me? Same number? Oh no, probably not the same number? Did you guys? Did you guys both hit the one hundred mark or no?

Yeah?

Like, what do you like the like their way over that? Yeah?

Yeah, like for the year one? Right now, I think I have two hundred and twenty three thousand one or something.

No, No, I meant when you said like the guy being over, I said, I meant when you look at like who's top? Does it matter how many events they took place in? Oh?

Like how many I got you? Yeah? No, you can go to you can use all hundred or you can use I mean I usually use around you know, eighty seventy five to.

Eighty five, and is that a common number.

Yeah, most guys, I mean, some guys like to make sure they use all one hundred and give themselves the very best chance. Other guys, you know, like for me, I have a lot of other things going on at home and stuff, So I mean I I mean going to eighty rodeos for me, that's that's that's really doing it.

So if you're on a plane, so this is what do you do for a living? What do you say?

It's the hardest thing to explain to people. You see you look at you, they think you're crazy. You're telling me your professional broncrider and they're like, what's that?

Like?

My ass, I'm a gypsy that travels around and gets on horses that try to throw me off.

So you will tell people that's what you do.

Oh yeah, and some people some people are are you know, You'll run into people on airplanes that are huge radio fans that you wouldn't even think and other people, you know, might be upstate New York and I don't even know what and the feed goes in the horse.

I only ever, so if I'm ever in that conversation.

I only ever say that. I say I'm a writer, and they go what, And I say books and magazine stuff.

Yeah, it's all ever say. I never.

I'm familiar with books and magazine.

Yeah.

I could picture at some point in your life you just be like ranching, ranching because if you say cowboy that yeah.

One thing, one thing to know, you know, and he said that, you know, they could be thirty thousand dollars from the next guy. Those guys take their yearly earnings and then once they get to the NFR, there's ten rounds. Each round of the NFR pays really good. So like last year was it like twenty eight thousand dollars thirty this year thirty thousand dollars to win one round to

Oh yeah, I got Strett to get hot.

Man. The more we're talking, man, I'm really seeing an approach where you just sand bag all year. Just go down there and tear it a new one. Man.

That's strategy.

Prom is you got to draw good to do that.

You gotta make it though, which means if you make it, you gotta be I mean, if you make the NFR, you're doing pretty good.

It's hard to make.

Yeah, I got you. So, Like, there's probably four hundred Bronc riders that hold a PRC A card. I don't I'm just guessing somewhere in there, only fifteen of them get to go to the NFR.

Yeah, I mean, I think like there's like quite a few people that would say they're professional BRONC riders that don't go to the NFR.

Yeah you have.

But Brian Harmon, were you here when the professional golfer Brian Harmer was on, no, there's some golden ticket, Like what was he saying? There's like a golden ticket if you win something or another you get to skip all the bs and you know you're going.

Yea not yeah a not.

A Master's is one of the I believe four majors. And if you win a major, then you are you get to keep your card for like whatever you said.

Don't have that rodeo like like you win and like buddy, take it off, take it easy.

Next year, you got to do it all over again from scratch.

Yeah, so what right now? How long do you think your ride for? Are you just gonna wait it out? Or do you got like an exit plan?

No?

I mean, and it's I'll probably just know. I'll know what I know. Mm hmm. You know, I'm healthy, I feel really good, So I got I got some good years left in me.

And what does your wife support you doing that kind of work? She likes it?

Oh yeah she. I wouldn't be able to do it without her. She's she's been there with me every every step of the way. Yeah she's She's not telling you that. She's just as much a part of it as I am. She travel with you a little bit.

Yeah, yeah, you are you able to bring your kids now?

And then yeah, yeah, like they don't go a ton like they obviously will get to quite a few of the Canadian rodeos and stuff, and then like kind of the end of the season when we're winding down, that's like September like, so they come to Pendleton, hung out there for a week, you know, go to go to a few.

Do you think you're going to have any riders in your family?

My little boy, he really he means too, so it's hard to tell, but he sure acts like he wants to.

Do Yeah, And I think it's like this is why I think, well, for a lot of reasons why I think pro rodeo is the best professional sport. So I went to Great Falls to watch Zeke. Jane and I get in the stands and I'm texting Zeke as they're loading up the bucking horses, and Zeke's not there yet right like he's still like walking up the rodeo started. He was traveling with his daughter, walks up to the announcers stand and drops his daughter off with the announcer right goes over to.

Keep an eye on her.

Yeah, you have a good seat.

Yeah, good seat.

Gives her his phone so she can videotape him. Right, goes over, saddles his own horse, bucks out what that was like an eighty nine or something like that.

That night won the go round, won the rodeo.

How much was that.

Has added? Maybe got eight thousand?

And then he gets off. It was just this amazing ride too. We're watching it.

He gets off.

You see him walk up to his daughter.

Ten minutes later, get a text and he's like, hey, meeting the Buffalo Wings parking lot and it's like that's pro rodeo.

Like where else? What other professional sport do you see that?

Yeah? I can see it. I can see the appeal from that angle. Yeah, he says, like the only blue collar sport left.

Right.

I got one follow up. You mentioned earlier that the I'm gonna forget that not the sinch, but the flank strap. That there's a myth that like cinches up the testicles and that's.

What makes them. I've been told that. Yeah.

Yeah, so just like the set it straight for that strap.

Okay, so the flank strap is just it's just a piece of it's just a leather strap and then it's covered in sheepskin like wool, and it's the equivalent to you, you know, tightening up your belt like the horses and the animals are bred to do it that it's just basically an encourager for them to kick. So you put a flank on, Like, they'll still buck without the flank, but the flank just encourages them to kick harder and higher.

It, so rice because after the ride you see them.

Yeah, it's usually quit. Got an eight foot lad to go on it, two rings on each end with quick release buckle. They've got the sheep skin that goes, you know, around the horses around its mid section or whatever. They pull the flank, you know, the horse goes out there, bucks, the whistle goes, the rides over, the pick them in, ride in, they trip, the quick release, the flank falls on the ground out the horse goes.

Do you have one other quick thing to note when you look at flank straps on horses and bulls, anatomically it would be impossible to go around their testicles or anything like that. Anatomically, it doesn't work, so it yeah it.

Has it doesn't work like and and horses like they they don't perform under like if you have a saddle that doesn't fit right, it can you know, and it is pinching the horse, you know somewhere that and it's you know, inflicting pain. It could take you know, maybe the best bucking horse in the world and make it have a terrible day because like, you can inflict pain like they don't. They don't perform under under those circumstances. The blue, red and flank is a six foot cotton

But is that like, so it must be somewhat of a trained thing then right, like as they're they only get that strap when this one thing happens, right, so they know, oh the strap's on, it's time, it's go time.

Yeah, remember how in the beginning we were talking about like the second act. You know that you might retire from this and go on to something. You'll just go so seamlessly into ranching though, right, Yeah, I.

Mean for sure, I got a lot of hobbies that I'm pretty excited to get time to do.

You're gonna go home and hunt right now.

I'm gonna do a lot of hunting ranching.

You got three weeks to hunt right now.

Yeah, you go hunt, hunt before the n f R. Mule deer, white tail. My wife has a cow out draw.

She likes to hunt.

She likes to hunt.

That's great.

Yeah.

A friend of mine, Alberta Gal, just whacked day really nice mule deer. So there's one last for you.

He showed me some pictures that are pretty amazing. Well, yeah, he showed me a.

Calgary right.

Yeah, she's right from your randy place.

Everybody knows. Everybody knows your schedule.

She parachuted. And then, uh so are you in the cattle business now too, Are you're invested in cattle?

Yeah?

So like we Yeah, we run, we have some Me and my wife have some caw calf pairs mama cows. And then you know, for what I do. It works better for for us because we're gone so much in the winter rodeo and is we run what they call grassers. It's kind of the middle phase of you know, the beef industry. So we get yearlings in in the spring, run among grass all summer before they go to the feed lots and they're off the door, and then we

To Texas and uh based down there for the winter stuff.

Yeah, for about three months. We usually leave red after after Christmas or New Year's and and be down there till you know, the first first or second week of April.

Do you guys got to homeschool with your kids?

Well, I mean Lucy's just this is her first year kindergarten, so yeah, they're still pretty and she'll just yeah, well she'll just take her school work with her and and stuff for this the first few years. When she gets a little older. I I'm not sure what we'll do, but uh, yeah, we don't. We don't keep try not to keep too many animals around in the wintertime, just just because we're not home.

Yeah, So on this mule, your hunt you got like that, you're gonna embark on tomorrow presumably, do you got like a goal in mind?

You got a buck you've been watching.

Actually, that's that's the other downside of rodeo is I don't get to be around enough in September October to know what's around. I do know, I haven't seen laid eyes on them, but they the neighbors say, there's there's a cranker not far away really, so yeah, we'll probably be poking around looking for him.

Rifle or archery rifle.

And it's spot and stock meal. Do you hunt right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, got ya. When you guys are hunt white tails, you hunt them down the bottoms like river bottoms.

So like we live four miles off of east of the Red Deer River. You'll get white tails mule deers down there. But we we got enough like there's enough mixture between passenger and grain farming where we're at that the the whitetail get in like the poplar brush and stuff, you know, bed and there in the day and then they come out and feed and in the evening and stuff. So there's actually there's there's a lot of both around and you don't farm at all. I I own some

Oh got it. Yeah, but you'll hunt that farmer.

I'll hunt that oh yeah, all right.

And you're saying, you guys got some moose.

Running around, Yeah, we got moose elk, but it's hard to get the moose tag. Yeah, you're probably you're an eight on the moose probably, Yeah, you're probably eight years.

And how often will you draw a bull elk tag?

I mean, you can just buy an over the counter archery tag, but I think you're probably you're probably seven on your on your elk.

Got it?

Just keep in mind like I've been applying for moose here in Montana since I was twelve or yeah.

And he's no closer to getting that tag than he was when he's yeah.

Yeah, exactly exactly. For me to be like, oh I will is just like a fun game to play with myself.

Yes, yeah, all right, man, Well, thanks for coming on the show.

Thank you for having me.

Dude, I gotta tell you, on the scale of one to ten and rodeo knowledge, dude, I was like one on rodeo knowledge prior.

Now I'm like a ten.

You're ten now.

For me decoys, any future questions, you bring them to me.

Yeah, on rodeo goose decoys. I was like a negative too before this morning. Brady got me lined out. I'm I'm freaking ten mm hmm. I can say we're gonna we're gonna do it again. Yeah, Brady's coming to Alberta.

Yeah, me and Matt we're gonna head.

Oh, they're gonna come up there and raise hell on your birds.

Yeah.

Yeah, that'll be fun.

Well, you shoot him there and then track and then he can come back down Montana and we'll beat him up again.

Here chase the same birds at you.

We need uh everyone to to cheer them on. At the NFR, look for that mediator logo.

It's the only rodo athlete that has a meteor logo on his chest.

Bucking up.

Yep, cool, so cheerm on top right chest. When is the NFR December seventh? It starts seven sixteen days.

I'll know when you get off that horse, I'll know if you're waving that hat around or if you're kicking the dirty I'll know what happened. That's definitely my first indication of.

How the ride yeah, next to you and be like, so, let me walk.

You through what s That'll be my first indication.

You'll get a Sally or nothing at all.

Yeah.

We'll be on the live tour, so we'll be like check.

Yeah, all right man, it's going on, and good luck. Hope you win.

I appreciate it.

Hope you don't get hurt.

Yeah, thank you, all right, man, Take care, be that.

Seal shop like silver in the sun. Ride ride, ride on alone, sweetheart.

We're done beat this damp horse to death, taking a new one and ride away. We're done beat this damn horse today, so take a new one and ride on.