Cutting Is Over! Long Live Cutting!

The last cut has been run at the NHSFR of 2008. We have run the results, awarded the saddles and buckles and scholarships and boots and and and. Much as we bemoan the waiting for them to finish each performance, and the technical difficulties we usually have retrieving the official results from the arena, it's still my favorite event. Since the NHSRA, and rodeo in general, is partly the SCA for US Western frontier heritage, and specifically the skills of horsemanship, it's just possible that cutting cattle on horseback is the most authentic of the skills on display. Roping is certainly part of open-range cattle-herding, but if you can't cut the animal you want from the herd, you can't rope and deal with that animal. It's also the sport that is most dependent on the horse's skill, since the rider's contribution, once helping the horse choose a cow to play with, is primarily to put on their best poker face and stay in the saddle while the horse does all the dodging, challenging and running necessary to keep the cow away from its herd.

You're given 2.5 minutes to cut. In that time, the best cutters can gently remove a single cow from the herd three times, and keep it out without having his buddies help keep it in play too much. Doing this while making it appear that the horse is doing it almost entirely on its own and picking active but not panicky cattle can earn you a score of 70+ per judge, so we have totals from three judges of 220+.  

The judges' card is a series of merits and demerits that would make a figure skater cringe, however. Guessing the final score is hard for the unwashed masses, aside from obvious problems like losing a cow back to the herd or out the back of the arena, having your horse bite or otherwise molest the cattle, etc. 

The fact that the horse is as much the competitor as the rider on his back means that consistently good scores in cutting show as much about the rider's ability to train and/or respect the training of the horse as their ability to perform in an arena. That's extra cool. And these horses are good.

Now, next time I'm bringin' the wifi gear to build a MESH backbone to get actual results digitally direct from the secretary's desk in the cutting barn, without having to use golf-cart-net or nasssty faxessss.

Announcers' Stand

The announcers' stand is, in many ways, the heart of a rodeo. Not only is the action described here and the (unofficial) scores announced, but the timers and arena secretaries sit here. Timers use stopwatches and electronic timers (often at the same time, so that there's a backup) to determine how long the barrel racer took to finish her run or whether the cowboy stayed on the bronc for eight seconds or not. Arena secretaries keep up with who is up next in the event (which can be quite a task in rough stock; timed event competitors run in a given order, but rough stock riders go in the order in which their horses or bulls get loaded into the chutes) and with any judges' rulings on penalties or re-rides. They also check over the judges' score sheets and then fill out and sign the official score sheet. This is why what the announcers say is unofficial; until the secretary has seen and signed off on the judges' sheets, nothing in the event is official.

Penalties can include such arcane things as a hat penalty, which happens when a pole bender or barrel racer's hat blows off her head before she enters the arena, and which adds five seconds to her time, or failure to "mark out" the bucking horse, which results in a "no score" for a cowboy. (To mark out a horse, the cowboy must be leaning back in the saddle when the chute gate opens, both spurs touching the horse's shoulders. He must remain in this position until the horse finishes his first jump.)

At the NHSRA finals, we spend a fair amount of time in the announcers' stand, because that is where we can get the score sheets and scan them. (We enter all data off scanned copies, so that the originals can stay with the secretary. There are a lot of other people up there as well; two announcers, two announcers' secretaries, who keep track of the bio sheets and run the Excel sheet we built that allows them to quickly show where a given score fits into the standings, two arena secretaries (rough stock and timed events) and four (at least) timers. The announcers' stand in the photo is quite large and easy to move around in, even with all those people; other arenas we've been to have been much smaller. At Gallup the first year, it was impossible to get in and out of the announcers' stand because the backup timers had to actually sit in front of the door. (Gallup expanded the stand by the next year; it's much better now.)

The last night of this years' finals, the announcers announced that they would be collecting money that evening for the bull rider who had been injured earlier in the week; Oklahoma and Alberta had started off by making donations and challenging other states and provinces to do the same. The snowball started going, and soon people were coming to the announcers' stand and dropping off money with one of the announcers' secretaries. At first it was national directors from various states and provinces; soon it became arena staff, like the doctors from the Kansas Orthopedic Center, the bullfighters and the EMTs. Then it went to individuals, many of them other competitiors, like the team roping team from Florida that put in $350. Soon, more than $12,000 had been collected to help meet expenses, along with a number of other things.

It was an amazing thing to see, as people came together to help someone they didn't even know. It was something that makes me truly like rodeo.

Danger and safety

The rough stock riding events are usually considered the most dangerous in rodeo. All of the events (like most sports) offer the opportunity to get hurt, but in the timed events, the injuries are usually milder. Calf ropers, steer wrestlers and goat tyers injure their knees and ankles jumping off horses; ropers sprain their wrists and fingers when the rope snaps taut, pole benders and barrel racers run the risk of falling off horses.

While any of these can be serious, the rough stock riders run the greatest risks. The point of their events is to NOT be thrown from the back of an animal - which means that a lot of them are. Once thrown, there's always the chance that the animal will step on you, especially if you get hung up in the various things that attach you to the animal you're riding. This happens a lot to bareback riders, who work their riding glove into the loop of their rigging as tightly as they can. (The rigging is a small leather pad that straps to the bronc. There's a loop on top that the cowboy jams a glove into so that he can hang on.)

Hung up in the rigging is a bad, bad place to be. The horse is often running wildly at this point, may still be bucking, and doesn't care if he steps on you or not. The first time I was at the NHSRA finals, this happened to a cowboy, and I can still close my eyes and hear the sound of the horse's hooves as he galloped around the arena, the right front hoof striking the cowboy every other step.

Yesterday morning, one of the bull riders got injured. He met the bull with his head coming down from a leap, and was then tossed about for a bit before being thrown clear, unconscious before he came off. The EMTs worked on him and then loaded him into an ambulance; he was taken to the hospital, still unconscious. He's been through surgery now, and has a guardedly hopeful prognosis, mainly due to the presence of Dr. Ted Maurin, a world class neurosurgeon, at Farmington.

Some people say that the rough stock riding events are too dangerous and should be banned. I'm not sure I agree; I hate seeing one of the kids get injured, but sports, all sports, include the element of danger. People die playing football, and baseball, and even golf; people are terribly injured playing sports all the time. I don't understand bull riders and what makes them get on a gigantic obstreperous beast, but they seem to like it. They talk about the rush they get from it, about the joy of making a successful ride, and they sound like skydivers. Should skydiving be banned as well?

No. I think it's important to work for safety as much as possible, especially at the high school level. (Like it or not, once people turn eighteen, they're legally adults, and should be allowed to make decisions and live with the consequences of those decisions.) Something that I like a lot is the increas in the number of riders wearing helmets to ride bulls and other rough stock; helmets often prevent injuries, both directly by cushioning the rider's head, and indirectly by keeping them from being knocked out. A conscious cowboy is often better able to control his fall ...

If I had a son who wanted to bull ride, I'd grit my teeth and let him. I'd buy him the best protective vest and helmet that he could have, and I'd never let him enter an event that disallowed such safety gear. I'd pray every time he got on a bull. But I'd let him ride.

Bulls

Bull riding is one of the rodeo events I don't understand so much. That is, most events are based on skills that a working cowboy uses (roping, steer wrestling, horse breaking) or are pure horsemanship events like pole bending or barrel racing. Bull riding, on the other hand, is something that (I'm fairly certain) originated as just a test of machismo. Also, alcohol may have been involved. I'm just saying.

Anyway, I don't understand bull riders and bull riding, although I like to watch it. It's exciting, and the bulls are the most powerful animals you'll see in rodeo - hugely muscled, strong and fast, and with a stubborn, nasty disposition - or at least, that's how it often seems. I have respect for the bravery of bull riders, but no idea what makes them do what they do.

After each bull rider rides or fails to ride, there's another event I like to watch; it's an unofficial event called "Getting the bull out of the arena." In theory it should be easy; bucking bulls are trained to run down the chutes back to the pens when the gate is opened. In practice, bulls have minds (after a fashion) of their own, and sometimes don't seem to feel like leaving. Getting a bull out of the arena can take 10 seconds or 10 minutes, and there's no way to know which until you actually try to do it. Sometimes they're violent about it, charging the pickup men and trying to hook them, threatening everyone who comes near them. Sometimes they're just obstinate: the bull will stand in the middle of the arena, with both pickup men trying to drag him out with their horses and one or more of the bullfighters poking him to get him to move.

Eventually he'll go. But before he does, an obstinate bull will bring the arena to a screeching halt for ten minutes or more.

I enjoy watching it.

Waiting for cutting again.

Cutting is my least favorite rodeo event, and not just because it makes me sit around and wait for it. I find it really dull, probably because I don't know enough about the skills involved to appreciate it. Cutting appears to consist of ambling a horse through a crowd of cattle. It's very calm and low-key, and everyone politely applauds with golf applause when someone ambles a horse with particular skill.

I started out liking the rough stock riding events (saddle broncs, bareback broncs and bull riding), mainly because they were exciting. There's real potential for injury to the contestants, the animals are powerful and cool to watch, and it's easy to appreciate.

As I've gotten to know rodeo more, I've come to appreciate some of the other events, like pole bending. Pole bending is horse slalom; a girl rides her horse into the arena, past six poles arranged in a line. She weaves back through them, back through again, and then out. Fastest time wins, and there's a five second penalty for every pole knocked over.

When it's done right, pole bending is as graceful as any ballet, as the girl and her horse glide and weave through the poles. Sometimes you'd swear that they're not touching the arena floor ...

Pole bending isn't as instantly cool as bull riding. But it's well worth learning to appreciate it, and I'm glad I did.

I still think cutting is dull, though.

Songs and rodeo tech

One of the things I like about rodeo, and especially about working for a rodeo is all of the stuff that's involved in running one. Some of that is because of the technology involved - I'm a sucker for interesting tech. (I sometimes waste whole hours thinking of ways to automate even more of the rodeo stuff, until eventually the humans aren't needed and we're taken over by robot overlords. Then I think about leading a small but brave band of resistance fighters in the terrible struggle against the robots. Then I think of what sort of music should be playing while we defeat the metal tyrants - probably a punk cover of Styx's "Mr. Roboto" - and then I look out the window and wonder where I am, because I was just supposed to be going to the store and now I don't recognize anything. This is why you should be careful about thinking.) A lot of what I like about rodeo, though, is the human side. The NHSRA includes not just the US, but also Canada and Australia, so I've gotten to meet people from all over the world of rodeo, and I really like a lot of them.

We begin every performance with riders carrying the three national flags as well as the NHSRA flag. They ride into the arena, circle it, and then line up in the middle. Each of the national flag carriers takes turns riding around the arena while someone sings the national anthem - if someone can be found to do so. There's generally no shortage of girls who want to sing "The Star-Spangled Banner" (I don't know why we have to have an anthem that's so difficult to sing), and there's usually a Canadian or two willing to take a stab at "O, Canada", but we often don't have someone to sing the Australian anthem. They used to play a recording on tape, but that always seemed so ... lifeless. So Bryan and I learned the Australian anthem and sing it when there's no one else. (We can also do "O, Canada" when required, and Bryan can sing "The Star-Spangled Banner". I can if I start on exactly the right note, something I'm not willing to risk in front of a couple of thousand people.)

The Australian anthem is a neat song; the range is possible for the non-professional singer, and the words really show Aussie character: "Australians all, let us rejoice, for we are young and free. We've golden soil and wealth for toil..." I like singing it. And it's something I doubt I'd have ever learned, if it weren't for rodeo.

Rodeo Geekery

I grew up overseas (that is, not in the US) for the most part, and I never thought I'd get interested in - and certainly not involved with - rodeo. My perception of rodeo was that it was a silly thing, for redneck boys who never wanted to grow up and who felt the need to annoy animals for fun.

Almost twenty years ago, my coblogger Bryan started working for the NHSRA, rewriting the computer program they used to run their national finals. It does things like randomly sort the contestants into events, track scores and so on; it's an important part of the finals. At the time, when he talked about it, I thought that it sounded deathly dull. Who cared about rodeo? I didn't see any reason, except possibly large sums of money, to get involved.

Over the next few years, it was just part of the summer schedule; Bryan would be gone for a couple of weeks in July. When he got back, I'd ask him how the rodeo went, and he would tell me that it went fine. And then he would talk about the events, and I would listen politely in that way that we do when the person speaking to us is blethering on about something dull, but we don't want to hurt their feelings by actually walking away.

Ten years ago, his regular cohort couldn't go, and he invited me. I needed money at the time, so I was happy to go along. We went to Gillete, Wyoming, for the 50th anniversary National High School Finals Rodeo, and it was a very cool trip. We spent a couple of days travelling there, including camping in Rocky Mountain National Park, which was a lot of fun.

And the rodeo went well. I enjoyed it and was quite excited about some of the geeky ideas we had, ideas for making the rodeo tech work even better. I even enjoyed some of the events. I learned about the difference between rough stock and timed events, learned that I enjoyed watching rodeo.

Flash forward a few years; Bryan called to tell me that the NHSRA was adding a junior high finals, and would I like to go? I would, as it turned out. The Wrangler Junior High Finals Rodeo (WJHFR) went very well, and I enjoyed the setting even more.

Now I'm fully a rodeo geek. I've learned a lot about rodeo and about rodeo people, those who compete and those who run the rodeo. I'm proud to be able to help out.

Cutting purgatory

Cutting is a rodeo event. Cutting involves:

1. Unloading cattle herds
   
2. Culling unloaded cattle herds
3. Changing culled unloaded cattle herds
4. Settling changed culled unloaded cattle herds
5. Raking an arena for the settled changed culled unloaded cattle herds to mill about in
   
6. Arraying 4 herdholders, 3 judges, 1 secretary, 1 event director, 1 timer and 1 announcer, and possibly an anthem singer
   
7. Ummmm....
8. Oh, yeah. Occasionally we let a contestant walk a highly trained, expensive quarterhorse into the settled changed culled unloaded cattle herd and try to separate one out to play with for 2.5 minutes per turn.

As you can see, the priorities are heavily on the cattle, and not so much on the proceeding with the competitive event. This is probably why cutting lasts so long.

< Announcer Voice >
"Cutting horse competition! Lasts 35% longer than any other event on the market!"
</ Announcer Voice >

It takes longer to have 2 groups of 20-25 cutters complete their event than to operate 5 of any other rodeo events. By at least an hour. This is why many of these blog posts are likely to appear during the long tail of the rodeo performance comet - that point after the bright chunk of rodeo rock in the timed and rough stock arenas is gone, and before we can run the cumulative award results, like all-around cowperson, state team ranks, and AQHA Horse Of The Year.

We are trapped in a cutting purgatory. Help!