Tag: rodeo

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The Cowboy’s Artist

By John Andrews

Tony Chytka fired his sculpture of saddle bronc champion Clint Johnson in his Belle Fourche foundry.

A BLACK CAT PURRS beside a homemade kiln that would raise the eyebrow of any OSHA inspector, but Tony Chytka doesn’t seem worried.”They would probably have a fit with me, but I’m the only one out here,” he says.

“Out here” is Chytka’s 360-acre ranch, which lies in a zigzag of red dirt roads southeast of Belle Fourche along the Belle Fourche River, part of the historic Redwater Irrigation District. The peak of Bear Butte, some 20 miles away and still snowcapped on an early May morning, is just visible on the southeastern horizon. He bought the place 20 years ago. He keeps a few cows and horses and puts up some hay. Chykta also does some irrigating; piles of irrigation pipe lie near an old tin cattle shed that doubles as a foundry, where Chytka produces some of the best contemporary Western art in North America.

When we spoke, Chytka was laboring on a 3/4 life size sculpture of Spearfish native and four-time PRCA world saddle bronc riding champion Clint Johnson. When it was unveiled in August of 2019 at the Casey Tibbs Rodeo Center in Fort Pierre, it became the third and final piece added to the center’s sculpture garden, which is a tribute to South Dakota’s amazing history of exceptional saddle bronc riders.

Chytka has been on a lifelong path to becoming one of the country’s premier Western artists. He grew up on a farm west of Yankton; his surname (pronounced KIT-ka) is typical of the Bohemian families who settled that country in the late 1860s and 1870s. Growing up, he developed two passions — art and rodeo. The Chytka property also included the local saddle club arena, where South Dakota rodeo greats like Casey Tibbs performed. Chytka became enamored with rodeo at a young age. He remembers that after school at the one-room Longfellow District 11, he held on for dear life to a barrel suspended by ropes while his older brothers tugged the lines, simulating a teeth-chattering bronc ride. That led to competition in Little Britches and the high school rodeo club.

Teachers at Longfellow and the high school also encouraged his artistic endeavors. He took art classes and was introduced to sculpture during his senior year through clay modeling. While the other students were fashioning clay pots, Chytka created some 300 individual fired one-of-a-kind ceramic pieces.

After the Casey Tibbs Rodeo Center opened in 2009, Chytka donated sculptures of Casey Tibbs (left) and trick rider Mattie Goff-Newcombe.

After graduating in 1972, Chytka enrolled at the University of South Dakota in Springfield. He took as many art classes as he could and became a member of the rodeo team, competing in bull riding and bareback bronc riding. He transferred to Black Hills State University in Spearfish in 1974, where he continued studying art and rodeoing. Chytka became a contemporary of Clint Johnson, who was on the rodeo team at South Dakota State University in Brookings.”He was a very strong rider,” Chytka recalls.”Very positive and an easy-going guy. Always had a chuckle to him.”

Drive around Belle Fourche and you’ll see evidence of Chytka’s success in Western art. Sculptures honoring brothers Marvin and Mark Garrett, two of the nation’s best bareback bronc riders, stand at the corner of Sixth and State streets. Another Chytka creation called Legacy, placed along Highway 85, was completed for the South Dakota centennial in 1989. Chytka has also memorialized Jerry Olson, a former rodeo clown and bullfighter from nearby Fruitdale, and his tribute to 1920s trick rider Mattie Goff-Newcombe can be found in Sturgis.

Chytka’s pieces are part of private collections around the world. Several are on display at the ProRodeo Hall of Fame in Colorado Springs, Colorado. So when the Casey Tibbs Rodeo Center was becoming a reality in the mid-2000s, and its directors sought art to place inside, they turned to Chytka, who donated two pieces that greet visitors as they enter: Casey Tibbs in the moments leading up to a bronc ride and Goff-Newcombe performing at the Faith Fair and Rodeo in 1928.

“He’s really a perfect fit,” says Cindy Bahe, longtime director of the center.”He’s a rodeo guy and rode broncs, so he knows exactly the stature of the cowboy and the animal. They are pretty true to life.”

The center sought Chytka’s expertise again when planning began for a sculpture garden overlooking the Missouri River. Johnny Smith, a former board member of the Casey Tibbs Foundation, was particularly proud of South Dakota’s saddle bronc riding champions and wanted to honor the very best. Plans called for three sculptures, all produced in Chytka’s Belle Fourche foundry. The first, placed in 2013, depicts Ree Heights native and five-time world saddle bronc riding champion Billy Etbauer scoring 89 atop Painted Valley at the 2009 Cheyenne Frontier Days. The second, added in 2018, is Casey Tibbs on The Old Gray Mare, honoring his performance at the Cheyenne Frontier Days in 1949, the year he won his first of six world saddle bronc riding championships. Clint Johnson, a four-time world champion, took his place in 2019.

Legacy, completed for the state centennial in 1989, was Chytka’s first large-scale piece. It stands along Highway 85 in Belle Fourche.

For Chytka, the creative process begins with a pose that perfectly encapsulates the subject and the context of the piece.”Then I’ll use other photographs to try to get a three-dimensional draw from it,” Chytka says.”It’s really hard to work off a flat surface when you’re working three dimensionally. That’s what’s unique about it. You can walk around to the other side and see the depth of it.”

Those drawings eventually become a table-size clay model on which Chytka does the brunt of the shaping and sculpting.”That’s where you do all the designing, work out all the detailing and that type of thing. There are certain guides you can use for the length of the horse’s head, the legs. A lot of it is just the view. I like to just stand back and see it all together.”

Over the next four to six months, the project goes through various stages. A rubber layer is applied on the outside of the clay, and then plaster of Paris on top of that. The process yields a wax version of the sculpture, and a ceramic shell is built around it. When the wax is melted, the shell is ready to receive molten bronze from Chytka’s homemade kiln.

Chytka brought his pieces to other foundries until 1984, when he learned the process himself at a foundry in Bozeman, Montana.”The casting process has always intrigued me,” he says.”When you use commercial foundries, pretty soon all the work from that foundry starts to look the same. There’s just as much art in the foundry process as the beginning sculpture.”

His kiln, fueled by propane and powered by a Kirby vacuum motor, heats the bronze to 2,200 degrees. It’s a two man pour, he says, meaning a man at each end of an 8-foot-long metal tong holds the piece as it’s dipped into the furnace (the 10-foot tong was too hard to handle, he explains).”After it cools you can hit the bottom of the shell with a hammer and you aren’t going to hurt it,” he says.”The permanence of it is something I always liked.”

Chytka sculpted Johnson atop Kicking Bear, the horse he rode to win his fourth championship in 1989 (his previous titles came in 1980, 1987 and 1988). Visitors who attended the unveiling surely appreciated its artistic merits, but when old cowboys — and even Chytka himself — glance into the horse’s eyes or see the way Johnson sits in the saddle, they might be transported to their old rodeo days. There will be features that only those who’ve landed on their backside in the arena will notice.

“There are little things. Positioning, the equipment, the action and that kind of thing,” Chykta says.”I’m not hung up too much on detail, just as long as it flows. But when somebody who does know rodeo says, ëHey, you did a good job on that,’ then that means just that much more, coming from people who have been there.”

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the July/August 2019 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Cowboy Up at Interior

There’s a rodeo nearly every weekend during summer in South Dakota, and few are as steeped in tradition as the gathering in Interior. Cowboys have challenged each other’s roping and riding skills there since the early 1920s, when it was among the largest rodeos in the country. Today the Interior rodeo doesn’t draw as well as it once did, but bronc rides and bull rides at the edge of the Badlands are still as entertaining and exciting as ever.

Rapid City photographer Jeremiah M. Murphy made his annual visit to the Interior Frontier Days rodeo on July 4. Here are a few snapshots from the evening’s bronc rides and behind the chutes scenes. If you want to take in a South Dakota rodeo with your own eyes, there are great opportunities this weekend at Boss Cowman Days in Lemmon and the Wall Celebration, or next weekend at the Burke Stampede Rodeo and the Geddes rodeo.

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Artists with Ax and Saw

Our November/December issue includes a story on the Juso Brothers, sons of a Finnish immigrant who brought western European log construction skills to South Dakota. We gathered several photos for the story on the family’s craft. Here are some that didn’t make the magazine. Color photos by Stephen Gassman. Black and white photos courtesy of June Nusz.

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Grabbing Life By The Horns

Story by John Andrews

Photography by Doug Jorgensen

Bull fighter Jerry Norton (right) divert’s a bull’s attention so the rider can escape during a Northern Bull Riding Tour rodeo at Presho. He relies on touch, sound and motion to do his job effectively.

Jerry Norton was 17 the first time he fought a bull. Two friends, working a 4-H rodeo in Highmore in 1985, slapped some paint on his face and dropped him in a barrel.”I tried it, pretty willingly,” Norton recalls.”I had my head up out of the barrel and this bull drops his head. I ducked down and braced myself. I was expecting to get my world rocked. The excitement, the thrill, the scare was just building like crazy.”

Norton, in full bull fighting makeup.

It didn’t turn out to be much of a fight. The beast was long gone when Norton popped up after a few tense seconds, but fighting them was in his blood.”That was the thrill I was looking for, and I had to have more,” he says.

He studied psychology and sociology at Dakota Wesleyan University in Mitchell, but he was already planning a rodeo career. For 14 years he was a full time bullfighter, working rodeos across the country. Winning the World Freestyle Bullfighting Championship in 1998 is the highlight of his career.

Norton says he gradually became more comfortable but bullfighters always enter the arena with a certain degree of fear.”If you’re not scared there’s something wrong with you,” he says.”You have to respect the bulls because they can do anything they want with you. They’re 10 times your size and they’ve got baseball bats sticking out both sides of their head.”

Studying with skilled bullfighters like Steve Mowry of Presho and bullfighting champion Rob Smets, Norton learned basic moves like rounds, step-throughs and reverses. He also learned to control bulls by using touch, sound and motion.

“Sometimes I’ll grab a bull by the horn, sometimes I’ll slap him in the face,” he says.”Depending on the situation I’ll grab his tail, or I’ll use my voice. With some bulls, that’s all you need. With others you have to stand there and make them think they’re going to go through you, and you just slip out of there at the last second.”

Sometimes, though, you don’t just slip away. There was the time in California when he took a horn to the face. It split his lips, tore his gum line and broke his nose, cheek, eye socket and upper jaw. And a few years later, at a rodeo in Ipswich, he was gored in the backside. A bull threw its rider on top of Norton, and as he struggled to get up he took eight inches of horn that luckily only broke his tailbone and coccyx.

“They were both pretty devastating,” he says.

But it would take a lot more than a horn through his body to keep him away, and that’s something people outside the bull fighting world have a hard time understanding. Norton tries to explain:

Norton’s job is to protect cowboys, but sometimes the bull wins. “If you had the chance to do something and didn’t, then you should think about changing your attitude or getting out of the business,” he says.

“You drive a car, right?”

Sure.

“What makes you drive a car?”

To get places.

“Well you’ve had accidents, haven’t you?”

Yeah.

“Well why did you go back to driving?”

I’ve still got to go places.

“That’s just what you do. You accept the risk. It’s the same mentality being a bull fighter.”

Norton has slowed down. He still fights bulls, but he also works as a therapist out of his home near Mitchell, where he lives with his wife and two children. He also travels the country as a motivational speaker.

“I talk about living life with a mad-dog mentality,” he says.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the March/April 2009 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Crooks Rodeo

Crooks hosted its annual rodeo and Community Days May 30-31. Fans have flocked to the little town north of Sioux Falls for last 24 years to see events like barrel racing, steer wrestling, bull riding, team penning and calf roping. Over 70 people competed this year with prize money totaling over $16,000.

Crooks was originally called New Hope. A name change was made in 1904 to honor early settler D.O. Crooks, who acted as depot agent, bank president, waterworks and lighting plant owner, township board member, postmaster and school treasurer. Residents have suffered good-natured ribbing ever since. Photos by Kim Nelson, Vermillion.

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More Than Talk

By Paul Higbee

Editor’s Note: We received word that longtime broadcaster Jim Thompson plans to retire at the end of May. He’s been a familiar voice at rodeos throughout the Upper Midwest, but even if you’re not into broncs and bulls you’ve probably heard him calling a baseball or basketball game or as the narrator of the popular De Smet Farm Mutual radio commercials. He’s been hosting the Country Cafe of the Airwaves, an afternoon show on Spearfish radio, for several years, and when the final program is broadcast on May 29, we know those airwaves won’t sound quite the same.

Here’s a column about Jim that appeared in our January/February 2009 issue. We wish Jim the best of luck as he heads down the next dusty trail.

Jim Thompson is a storehouse of rodeo stories, so I invited him out to lunch as I researched bucking horses. Our conversation turned some heads in the little coffee shop. Not that the other diners looked to be rodeo fans, but they knew Jim’s voice from his play-by-play radio broadcasts of basketball and baseball, his syndicated call-in show, and his great memories from De Smet Farm Mutual.

Jim told me some bucking horse stories, sure enough, and confirmed a rumor I’d heard: He and his wife Daryla were leaving soon for Las Vegas and the National Finals Rodeo, where Jim would be honored. There would be a ceremony complete with presentation of boots, jacket and a National Finals Rodeo belt buckle. Very nice, I thought, but not surprising considering Jim’s long career as an announcer for rodeos across the West.

Turns out, though, that Jim’s honor wasn’t an announcing award. Yes, he’s announced the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association rodeo at Kaycee, Wyo., for 22 years. But he’s also raised money, written press releases, recorded TV ads and pulled the right people into the picture. There are about 700 PRCA sanctioned rodeos across the nation. Jim’s behind-the-scenes work for the Kaycee rodeo earned him the John Justin Standard of the West Committeeman of the Year award.

“I’ve always thought if someone expects an award, they really don’t deserve it,” Jim once told me. He certainly didn’t expect this one. When the phone call came telling him he’d won, it took Jim several moments to grasp what the caller was talking about.

Those who know Jim’s schedule — daily shows, commercial work, producing broadcast events through his Creative Broadcast Services company — wonder how he found time to be so deeply involved in a Wyoming rodeo. The short answer is he likes the people there and the event is a memorial for Deke Latham, a rodeo cowboy Jim admired who died young.

But there’s a longer answer, too. Several aspects of Jim’s career hint at that longer answer, but I’ll tell a story that began in De Smet in 1976. Jim sat down with Bill Poppen of De Smet Farm Mutual Insurance to discuss whether there was anything radio might do for that company. Bill said he didn’t need radio to sell insurance — he had agents doing that. But he might be interested in commercials that communicated how his company understood and appreciated people committed to farming and ranching. A few days later Jim was back to read some text he’d composed. It started out,”You know, my dad was really quite a guy …,” and continued to relate a memory, in just a few seconds, of Jim’s dad helping him take a steer named Yogi to a 4-H fair years before.

There have been a thousand or so great memories to hit the airwaves since, voiced and written by Jim, sometimes with writing input from Marian Cramer. In fact, Marian sat at a booth at the state fair for a while, gathering great memories from South Dakotans. It could be argued these are not just commercials, but a long-running radio serial. Jim records them against a background of what he calls”lying on a hill watching the clouds music.” He hopes the spots”transport people from where they are to where they’d really like to be.”

For 33 years the commercials (impossible to imagine with a voice other than Jim’s) have indeed communicated the sponsor’s understanding of rural America. At the same time they strongly imply that Jim understands and is committed to that way of life, too. And the first thing to understand about small towns, where Jim is especially popular, is that they need people who will work to create community amenities. That could mean organizing rodeos, staging events for an emerging museum, figuring out how to broadcast hometown American Legion baseball games and pitching in to build the press box for those broadcasts. Jim’s done all that, and much more. In urban areas, where no one expects to really know anyone, a broadcaster can get away with simply being a know-it-all”personality.” That doesn’t fly out here, where, strangely enough for a field that’s seemingly all about words, actions speak louder.

In addition to his National Finals Rodeo honor, Jim has been inducted into three rodeo or general sports Halls of Fame, and was South Dakota Sportscaster of the Year. Yet the day we met for lunch he was getting ready to promote a small town charity pie auction. Some accomplished broadcasters, especially sportscasters, would say no to that. But Jim knew he had listeners counting on him to help move some pastry.

Besides, a good pie auction always holds potential for another great memory.

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A Cowboy’s Dream

Editor’s Note: We attended the Crystal Springs Ranch Rodeo in Clear Lake in the summer of 1988 and met E.W. Weisel, the cowboy who made his rodeo dream come true. This year’s rodeo takes place June 23-26, so we thought we’d share the story of how it all began.

By Bernie Hunhoff

No sport attracts more fun-loving folks in South Dakota than rodeo, and one of the granddaddies of them all, the Crystal Springs Ranch Rodeo, is among the best.

Clowns and trick ropers. Flag bearers and guitar players. Fans wearing 10-gallon hats and hawkers of pink cotton candy. Young cowboys wrapping last week’s bruises and old cowboys watching wistfully. Barrel-racing girls and wranglers herding stock.

That’s what we saw at Crystal Springs this summer — an Old West tradition that continues to capture the fancy of people everywhere.

Rodeo is a romantic reminder of the “rawhide and ride-hard” days of the Old West. Although nobody knows the identity of the dupe who first climbed aboard a Brahma bull, all the other rodeo competition grew out of routine chores on Western ranches. Cowhands balanced atop bucking broncs because they needed transportation. They roped and wrestled calves because it was their job.

Boys being boys, it was only a matter of time before they began to pit their skills against one another. Friendly competitions to see who could ride the ranch’s wildest critter were often accompanied by wagers and a smattering of onlookers.

Before long, the big ranches held rodeos as a uniquely Western festivity. Food, dancing and music were usually included. By the 1920s, the Rodeo Association of America was formed and today the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA) rides herd on a professional sport that in 2012 paid almost $40 million in prize money on several circuits and tours.

PRCA was organized in 1945 as the Cowboy’s Turtle Association to protect the interests of cowboys and ensure fair prize money. That was the same year that a South Dakota rancher drained a duck pond in his hilly and rocky pasture near Clear Lake, put up a corn-cribbing fence, and held a rodeo on a Sunday afternoon.

“I’m just a cowboy who had a dream,” says E.W. Weisel, “And I made that dream come true.”

Weisel bought the Crystal Springs Ranch in 1936 and more than once he sat on horseback atop a hill that formed a circular valley and imagined what it might be like to hold a rodeo there. “I dreamed it,” he said.”I dreamed it was all there, with horses and cattle and the people all laughing and having a good time.”

Hundreds of people showed up on that first Sunday, so he tore down the corn cribbing and put up a permanent corral. A Clear Lake banker gave him a loan and he put on a bigger show in 1946. By 1947, he had lights in the natural arena.

But he never built bleacher seats, and for good reason. The surrounding hillside makes a natural outdoor amphitheater. Every clump of grass provides a great view of the action below.

A promoter from the old school, Weisel advertised it as “America’s Most Natural Rodeo Bowl.” He never apologized for the bumpy gravel and dirt roads that still lead to the site. Instead, he turned it to an advantage, calling it “Where the Pavement Ends and the West Begins.”

For 25 years, Weisel and his wife, Josephine, ran the rodeo along with the help of their daughter, Cleo, and veteran ranch hands like Two Gun Kelly and Little Joe the Wrangler.

“Everybody said I was crazy when we started,” recalls Weisel, who at age 90 has never missed a performance. At the last event, he sat high on the hill in a lawn chair, joshing with friends and watching each bronc bolt from the chutes.

He laughs at the doubters who thought he’d better stick to raising Herefords and horses. “It worked. We ran it 25 years and never went in the red once.” Not one to fiddle with balance sheets, Weisel can look over the hillside during the performance and determine success or failure. “See that over there,” he says, “there’s too much grass showing over there. There’s not enough people. That should be solid people.”

The Weisels entertained as many as 20,000 fans during the three-day competition in their best years. However, when they sold the ranch and rodeo operation and retired it slipped in attendance. There have been four owners since him, but now the rodeo is back in local control.

Realizing the importance of the event to the town, a group of 10 Clear Lake businessmen and ranchers assumed responsibility for the event four years ago and it is coming back faster than a coughing calf on penicillin.

“The guy that bought the ranch several years ago was no longer interested in running the rodeo,” explains newspaper publisher Gary Dejong, one of the 10. “It has been such a fine tradition for the community that we really hated to see it stop, so a group of us got together to keep it going.”

Dejong says more than 5,000 people attend the three-day rodeo in an average year, coming from as far away as Minnesota’s Twin Cities. Although the rodeo grounds are a few miles out of town, the community buzzes with activity during rodeo week, culminating with a gala parade through main street on Saturday.

The newspaperman says there’s more to putting on a rodeo than most people think. Though the duck pond has already been drained, it’s a big job to attend to the details of publicity, grounds keeping, ticket sales and concessions. The biggest challenge — and the task at which E.W. Weisel excelled — is putting together an entertaining show.

The community of Clear Lake has gotten involved. The weekend now features a carnival, car show and parade down Main Street on Saturday afternoon. Bullfighters, clowns, guitar-pickers, a mellow-voiced announcer, and hillsides full of people complete the cast.

A cowboy’s dream lives on.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the September/October 1988 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Name That Film

Jamie McDonald, British actor and part-time cowboy.


Editor’s Note: Below is a short interview with Jamie McDonald, England’s lone bull rider, conducted after the main event. Click here to watch a short video of McDonald’s trip to Burke.


What do you call a movie about a brand new cowboy making his first bull ride? Jamie McDonald, the British newbie at the Burke Stampede Rodeo, is looking for ideas.”Please ask your readers to write in with suggestions and we’ll credit any winners in the film,” he says. We asked him a few questions in the hopes that his answers might stir your creative juices.

1. What does it feel like to get that first bull ride behind you?

I felt riding a bull for the first time was much like meeting your girlfriend’s parents for the first time: potentially dangerous, never as bad as you think and you’re very glad when it’s over.

2. What was the name of the bull, by the way?

I never found out the name of the bull but retrospectively I think I’ll call him Alex, someone I was at school with. He was also big and hairy and gave me a hard time.

3. What brought you to Burke?

We chose Burke because of the Suttons and their incredible hospitality. Zach spoke with several people about where to go and it was Billie’s kindness and willingness to help our project that made us pick Burke. And we’re sure pleased we did — what a reception.

4. What surprised you most about the weekend rodeo and the town?

We were blown away by the level of hospitality we received, not just from the Suttons but all over. Riders, new and old, were more than willing to help us out and extend some words of wisdom about bull riding. Justin Hathaway in particular was a great find for us and he helped us an enormous amount.

I was also surprised how beautiful South Dakota is; maybe it’s your intention to keep it a secret, but you should advertise that more. It’s stunning countryside.

On the flip side, I was amazed how bad I was at singing. I thought I was good until then.

5. Any advice for someone who’s never been to a rodeo?

For those riding for the first time, like many things, it’s so much mind over matter. If you are too scared, you hold on too loosely and you will get thrown around harder. The stronger you are, the easier it is, so be strong. Also, when you are thrown off, don’t hang around. Run.

Also, if you go to South Dakota, never ask a ranch owner how many cattle he has. It’s not exactly good bovine etiquette.


When McDonald is not riding bulls, he’s busy thinking up new adventures. (He’ll take suggestions on that, too.)”Right now I’m in Alaska typing this from a tiny plane heading into the wilderness to try and see some grizzly bears — so right now I’m all about bulls and bears. It’s almost like I’m working in finance,” McDonald says.

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England’s Lone Bull Rider

By Bernie Hunhoff

London, England’s only bull rider did all right at this month’s Burke Stampede Rodeo. He won a special award and did about as well as anyone when it came to staying on a bull for eight seconds.

England’s cowboy is Jamie McDonald, and truth be told he’s more actor than bull rider. He and a friend from New York are making a movie for the Sundance Film Festival, and for some unexplainable reason they decided it might be interesting to film a Londoner’s attempt to ride a bull.

The filmmakers set their sights on the Burke Stampede, and it was a lucky draw. The cowboys and cowgals in Gregory County welcomed them with open arms. Sure you can come film us! Sure you can ride a bull! Sure, we’ll show you how! Sure, you can enter the talent contest! Sure! Sure! Sure! You know how life is in a small town; you can hardly take a walk because everyone wants to give you a ride.

Burke is the epitome of a small town. All 600 people here are busy, because there are barely enough of them — even with a few hundred rural neighbors who help quite a lot — to run the churches, the schools, the picture-perfect Hillcrest Motel, the farmer’s market on Thursdays, the bank and the other essentials of life. Most of the 600 drive pickup trucks because when you live in the Rosebud Country you never know what you might have to haul home (a calf, a dog, a lawn chair made by the shop students at nearby Bonesteel High School, or maybe five bushels of sweet corn).

Bill and Renee Sutton are as busy as any of the 600. They are longtime promoters of the amateur rodeo, and they happily took the film-making blokes under their wings. First, they saddled McDonald on a horse so he could help drive a herd of longhorn cattle down Burke’s main street on Thursday afternoon. It was blistering hot for the cattle drive, but all went well with that.

The Englishman met the rest of the Burke community on Thursday night when he competed in the talent contest along with 18 other contestants for the privilege of singing at the Friday, Saturday and Sunday night rodeos.

Nobody expected McDonald to be a world-class bull rider but we didn’t know if he could sing. He can’t. Still, the crowd still loved his version of a country song tailored to Burke, and though they didn’t want to hear it three more times the judges did give him a special”Entertainer of the Year” award, hand-scribbled on white paper but an honor nevertheless.

So Thursday was a success, but Friday must have been a long day for our English friend. That morning the Suttons invited him to their ranch to practice bull riding. They tried to teach him the basics — how to use the bullrope, where to grip and even how to fall safely.

I don’t know if the minutes pass quickly or slowly on a day when you’re awaiting your first bull. Jamie McDonald looked fairly relaxed as the rodeo got underway with bronc riding and calf roping. Pretty young Katie Eliason, the teenaged winner of the previous night’s talent contest, came out on the catwalk to sing a country song.

Before we knew it, the time had come for bull riding, and readying himself in the first chute was McDonald, looking rather western in a black hat and black shirt. Without hesitation, he sat himself down on the one-ton white bull, gripped the bullrope like he’d done it a thousand times before, and gave a nod that he was ready. With that the cowboys opened the chute.

Perhaps never before did a Burke rodeo crowd watch with so much nervous apprehension. We all saw the menacing white bull leave the chute with the black-dressed cowboy sitting tall, awaiting the worst.

The bull came out of the chute, took four confident steps into the area and then froze. Yes, he stopped, dead in his tracks. He stood there silently, just switching his tail.

Remember, the biggest challenge for a bull rider isn’t style or form but just not getting bucked off for eight seconds. A second passed. Another second. Maybe even another second. Might the Englishman make eight seconds?

Of course not. Somebody in the arena moved. It might have been the clown, or one of the bull fighters there to save the rider from being kicked and gored. Somebody got the bull’s attention and he reacted as bullies always react; he kicked his hind legs high in the air and Jamie McDonald, England’s best bull rider, came thudding down into the thick soft concoction of dirt and sand in the Burke rodeo arena.

The bull fighters sprang into action and diverted the bull’s attention while Jamie scampered to his feet, a big smile on his face and his friend’s camera catching it all, and ran for the white steel fence and safety.

It was a good show and we figure the movie will be even better. Hopefully the busy people of Burke can find time to watch it.