The Garden City Telegram
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Ranchers show skills
Published 5/30/2008 in News : Area coverage
By EMILY BEHLMANN
ebehlmann@gctelegram.com
The task was to round up the three steers with the right tag and bring them around to the east side of the ring and into the chute.
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Load them up into the trailer -- one, two, three -- then shut the first gate.
Next come the horses -- one, two -- into the trailer behind the steers, and shut the second gate behind them.
Then the cowboys need to get over the rails of the fence and -- one, two, three, four -- pile on the back of the truck.
The Quarter Circle 3 team of DM&M Feedyard, Cimarron, did it all in the course of one minute and 50 seconds, making them the first team to successfully complete the trailer loading event Thursday night at the Beef Empire Days 2008 Ranch Rodeo.
The team was later beaten in the event by the Midwest Misfits of Midwest Feeders Inc., Ingalls, and the Meade County Feeders LLC team, but Quarter Circle 3 still came away with the overall championship for the ranch rodeo. Team members included Dustin Northern, Travis May, Zane Edmondson, Jake Payne and Dan Drake.
The ranch rodeo included 15 teams from area ranches and feed yards competing in four events: calf branding, trailer loading, team doctoring and double mugging.
According to Darinda Gerber, vice president for Beef Empire Days, the Ranch Rodeo was held in late June last year, but the Beef Empire Days committee decided to move it up this year so it would occur during the two-week celebration of the beef industry.
The challenges were intended to be much like the work cowboys would do on a ranch every day, so Eddie Labrier, of the Over Hill Gang from Cattle Empire Feedyard, Satanta, said his team didn't really practice for the rodeo.
"It's stuff you've done all your life," he said. "You just go out there and do what you do and have fun."
However, the heavy winds and blowing dust made it more difficult, he said. The National Weather Service measured wind gusts of up to 46 mph during the evening.
Still Labrier's team was one of only three to successfully complete the team doctoring event.
It involved bringing a specific steer out of a herd and across the ring. One cowboy had to rope the steer around the neck, then another roped it around the feet. Other team members then would dismount, wrestle the animal to the ground and mark its head -- all in the course of three minutes.
In calf branding, a roper had to catch a calf by the feet and drag it out of a pen, where two flankers held it down and a brander marked it on the rib.
"You've got to be smooth," announcer Storm Denison said as he watched the Bartlett Cattle team of Sublette attempt the event.
Double mugging began with sorting a specific animal out of a herd and getting it down to the ground.
"Get 'em down! Get 'em down!" one child shouted from a group of fans supporting Meade County Feeders.
Once the steer was down, the legs had to be wrapped tied together, as shouts continued from the bleachers: "C'mon, Daddy!"
The Meade County team was third overall for the rodeo, behind the Quarter Circle group and a combined team for Kuhn Ranch and Rolling Hills Ranch, both of Satanta.
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