Rodeos: The Bulldogger

One exasperating day back in 1903, so the story goes, an Oklahoma cowpoke named Bill Pickett was having an infernally tough time persuading an ornery steer to head into a corral He whooped at it and pleaded with it, prodded and battered it, until in furious frustration he leaped from his horse, bit the steer’s lip like a bulldog, twisted its neck and brought it to the ground. Pickett’s romantic technique was never very handy around the ranch, but it was sort of satisfying, and Pickett kept doing it at Wild West shows around the country. Word got around, others tried it, and a native American sport—bulldogging, or steer wrestling*—was born. When the rodeo finally caught on as a spectator sport in the 1930s, steer wrestling became one of its most spectacular and bone-crushing events.

Long Neck. No one bites steer lips any more, but last week, at the annual rodeo at the Colorado State Fair in Pueblo, one cowboy was far and away the foremost master of the rest of Pickett’s technique. James (“Big Jim”) Bynum, 38, three times (1954, 1958, 1961) world’s champion bulldogger, has dominated the sport with his 250-lb., 6-ft. 4-in. frame for more than a decade. Up until the Pueblo go, Bynum had piled up $12,409 in steer-wrestling competition in 1963. With almost three months left before the National Finals Rodeo in Los Angeles, Bynum is in a tight race with Rival C. R. Boucher; yet no one who knows Big Jim would bet against a fourth championship.

But chance, as much as strength and skill, is always a part of bulldogging. It begins with the draw, by lot, for the stock, and like a torero with a bad bull, a cowboy with a bum steer is faced with a pointless afternoon. “There’s some steers that won’t cooperate,” drawls Bynum. “The thing you like is a small, long neck, with good horns, not real long, not real short.”

Even with a good draw, there can be trouble. The steer starts from a tight chute between two horse pens, one for the bulldogger and the other for the “hazer,” the rider who keeps the running steer close to the wrestler. The chute gate rises and the steer churns into the arena; seconds later, a rope attached to its horns trips a string barrier in front of the bulldogger, and the two horsemen race out in pursuit.

Horror of Houlihcms. The bulldogger closes with the steer on his right, leans far over, and leaps. “I try to get the right horn in the bend of my elbow, and I grab the other horn with my left hand,” explains Bynum. “That’s to turn him left, and when he turns he’s on one foot. Then you grab that muzzle and that off-horn and just try to wring his neck ’cause it won’t break nohow.” If the bulldogger’s leverage is firm and his power is steadily exerted, the unstable steer will come flopping over on its side like a rag doll.

If the smooth pattern of action is broken, man, horse, steer—or all three —can be crippled or killed. To rodeo men, the poorest form of all is called the “houlihan,” when a bulldogger illegally knocks the steer down as he jumps from his horse and the dazed animal somersaults on top of him. In a “dog fall,” the steer collapses with its legs tucked under its body, then has to be raised and thrown again. The “rubberneck steer” can let its head be twisted 180° or more, so that it is almost impossible to throw. Some steers veer under the steer wrestler’s horse; others, tough-necked, will not stop at all until they bang the horn-hanging cowboy against the ring wall.

Jim Bynum knows all these dangers (he has suffered a broken leg, a broken wrist, and “a few horns in the gut”), but he carefully balances caution against the daring needed to win. “I know they’re always going to have a rodeo next week,” he smiles. “I’m not going to do anything to get myself hurt.” Alabama-born, Big Jim has been bull-dogging almost 20 years, now grows cotton on a farm near Dallas. He tends it carefully in good years and leaves it readily when the sun-withered crop is poor. “They say they can tell how bad my cotton crop is by how much I win,” he grins. But his career winnings—about $150,000 to date—are not the whole fascination. Bynum has never seen a corrida, but he reckons there is a moment of truth in steer wrestling too: “It’s that one instant of balance when you’ve got that steer turning back and he’s just teetering on one foot. I really enjoy it.”

*Bulldogging remains the popular layman’s term, but modern rodeo cowboys prefer to call it steer wrestling; it is one of five standard events of the professional rodeo. Others: calf roping, bull riding, bareback riding, and saddle bronc riding.