A couple of weeks ago was the Northwest Montana Fair in Kalispell. I went to see how much like other county fairs I had been to, and there happened to be a rodeo three nights of the fair. I went to the first and the last nights of the rodeo, which was definitely worth the price of admission. It was my first professional rodeo, and I'm excited for next summer for more cowboys. Yep, the PRCA (Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association) rodeo made me even more of a country girl. I even bought some cowgirl boots. They're turquoise and awesome. And I forgot my camera the first night, so all of my pictures are from the final night of the rodeo.
Since I took a lot of pictures of cowboys, horses, and cattle, I spread them out into two days of pictures. Expect the others tomorrow sometime, provided I don't fall off a mountain before I get around to posting again.
The first event of the night was steer wrestling or bull doggin'. (We drop our Gs off -ing words around here. It's cool.) What the cowboy has to do is throw himself off a moving horse onto a steer, pick the steer up and lay him down on his right side. The other cowboy is called a hazer, and he keeps the steer going in a straight line.
Notice the cowboy on the right is moving from horse to steer. They're all moving really fast, too.
He's on the steer now. Watch out for the horns, cowboy.
And now he's wrestling the steer onto the ground. All of this happens in under 12 seconds, usually.
After the steer wrestling, the saddle bronc riding started. Basically, the cowboy has to stay on the bronc for 8 seconds. He gets points for how he handles the horse, how hard the horse makes it to stay on it, and several other criteria that I didn't catch. There were chaps and Wranglers involved. I'm not responsible for my attention span at that point, sorry.
This cowboy stayed on the full 8 seconds, but the horse didn't make it easy for him.
He was off the ground right out of the gate.
Still not totally on the horse.
He made it, and he's smiling. That's usually good. I don't remember the rankings after the scores were figured, but I think he did pretty well, if I remember correctly.
This cowboy, however, didn't do so well.
He looks good at first, but...
He's sliding off the saddle here.
He was really close to the full 8, but close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. I think he was one of the top-earning cowboys last year in the National Finals Rodeo in Vegas. It was not his night.
The horse was very happy to not have a rider anymore, and she was even happier to see her colt.
Horses are crazy athletic. And beautiful. And super smart. I think probably smarter than the cowboys who get thrown off of them for a living. I don't mind watching the cowboys, though. I have a thing for chaps, Stetsons and boots.
More rodeo tomorrow,
-Erika
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