by Terry Lidral
Denny McCoy has had great success in bucking bull competition. His outstanding bull Bells Blue is a legendary superstar of the PBR. For McCoy, one of the keys to success is to work with every calf as an individual.
“Usually a calf will tell you what you need to do,” explained McCoy. “You need to get to know your calves. If he already stands gentle in the chute, then don’t bother with running him through. The ones with problems you have to sort off and give them special attention.”
One of the most common problems McCoy finds himself working with is wild chute behavior.
“You have to be careful when you’re bucking young bulls. So many of them have problems in the chute,” warned McCoy. “A young calf is like a colt. If a colt bites you and you don’t correct it, then that colt will always bite. If a young calf bucks in the chute and you don’t correct it, that calf will always behave badly in the chute.”
McCoy is especially careful with how he bucks his calves away from competition.
“Try to be extremely careful at home bucking your bulls. They pick up bad habits if you let them and then you have to fix it.”
Bad habits in competition hurt a bull’s performance and McCoy has developed some ways of eliminating the problems. His processes need time and patience. And letting a bull know what he did was good.
“If a bull is bad in the chute, put him in and make him stand right. It takes a lot of rope over the top.” said McCoy. “I had a 4-year-old bull come to me that they couldn’t get out of the chute. He’d jump up in the chute and turn himself upside down. It took me hours to get that bull to stand correctly but I did it.”
According to McCoy, if a bull develops a problem, it may never completely go away.
“A bull can be doing good and then all of a sudden he’s got the bad habit back. Then you have to work with him all over again,” McCoy told us about how some bulls are. “You never get done training one like that. We have a bull that bucks in the PBR that has been doing good and then just went back to being crazy. We’ve been working with him in the chute at home and it’s taken a lot of time to calm him down. A bull needs to be consistent.”
Training a calf to do things the right way can make for consistency and prevent having to deal with problems later.
“Sometimes a calf comes so hard out of the chute that he hits his head. That can be fixed with a 2 X 6,” McCoy told us. “Put the 2 X 6 right in front of the chute. Then run the bull in and make him hop over the board. Keep doing this until he jumps out and then bucks once he’s away from the chute. They’ll pick up that habit and do it right in competition.”
Sometimes a calf can try so hard that he bucks himself right off his feet.
“Bucking calves have been bred so long to turn back, it comes naturally,” McCoy told us. “As far as spin, you can fix that. Often, the more you buck them the closer to the gate they’ll buck. Just keep bucking them. Nowadays, calves are like a name brand. But sometimes their kick and intensity can go too far” he continued. “I had a calf by the name of Scratch Cat Fever that had trouble standing up he was trying so hard. He jumped so high that he fell down. I ended up having to buck him the Friday before a competition to take the edge off when he was real fresh. He had to be tired to buck well in competition. Then there are those bulls that need to rest before they compete. It’s important to get to know your bull so you’ll know what they need.”
The best way to get to know your bulls is to buck them. That way you will have a better chance of success in bucking bull competition. And, in McCoy’s opinion, you can’t buck your bulls too much.
“You’ve got to buck your bull to know him. We don’t worry about bucking them too much. We worry that we can’t buck them enough. You can never buck them too much,” stated McCoy strongly. “Buck them enough that you’re confident in their ability. If they buck 4 or 5 times in a row, then they might make a good futurity calf.”
Author: Terry Lidral
Terry Lidral is a western writer/journalist who lives in Idaho. She is the publisher and editor of the online magazine Bucking Stock Talk and the online magazine Western Living Journal. Her publishing credits include Storyteller for Real American Cowboy Magazine, writing feature articles for Humps N Horns Magazine as well as a wide variety of national and international web sites, historical magazines and news publications. She is known for her "up close and personal" profiles of celebrities and industry moguls such as NPR's Tom Bodett; PBR's Wiley Petersen and D.H. Page, PRCA's Sammy Andrews, Cindy Rosser and Julio Moreno to name a few. She has been applauded for her way of making a personal connection between her readers and her subjects. She indulges in her love of rodeo by serving as an associate board member for the Caldwell Night Rodeo. She is also an accomplished trainer and handler in dog agility. Her shelties Amelie and Milo are titled in NADAC, USDAA and AKC.
