by Terry Lidral
Roy Carter knew from the get go that 13X Kid Rock was a special bull. And he knew he was tough.
“The first time I bucked Kid Rock he was phenomenal,” said Roy Carter with the pride that comes from his memories of the bull who was always in the running for the BFTS PBR BBOY over the course of the bull’s illustrious career. “The second time I bucked him, the gate got slammed on Kid Rock’s head and he bucked just as phenomenal. But when we went to look at him later in the pens, his tongue was out and his jaw was crooked. He’d broken his jaw and he still bucked great.”
Kid Rock was the son of RCX Alligator who was raised by Roy Carter’s brother and hauled on the professional bull riding circuit by David Bailey. Alligator, a highly respected PBR and NFR bull in the 1990’s, was smart and a consistent bucker, attributes he passed on to Kid Rock. But Kid Rock got his attitude from his mama, a cow with some Brahma mixed in with a lot of hot Mexican blood. The intelligence from his sire and the wild temper of the Mexican bloodlines gave Kid Rock mental toughness and a heck of an independent streak. And, according to Carter, these attributes, along with a major stroke of luck, are what saved Kid Rock’s life.
“When Kid Rock broke his jaw, he was a long yearling, coming two and he was hot and very wild,” remembered Carter. “We got him separated and on the trailer and took him to the vet. At the vets’, we got him in a squeeze chute and x-rayed him.”
What the x-ray showed amazed Carter and made it possible for the jaw to be fixed.
“The pieces of the broken jaw were just like a jigsaw puzzle. The vet moved the jaw and it went right back into place,” explained Carter. “As wild as Kid Rock was, there was no way the vet could get the jaw wired. And there was no way we could feed him. The vet told me that the bull couldn’t eat normally and that he would lose a lot of weight but that he would probably survive. So, we took him back home and put him in the pasture to wait it out.”
But Kid Rock wasn’t like any other bull. And he wasn’t going to give in to something like a broken jaw. He found his own solution to the problem of eating.
“When we put Kid Rock in the pasture, he went right over and started licking the feed with his tongue. Then he lifted his head straight up and swallowed. He’d figured out how he was going to eat. That’s when I realized, besides bucking, that bull was pretty something special,” said Carter with emotion in his voice. “He was a really special bull.”
To Carter, Kid Rock was part of the family. And, according to Carter, he was a bull with as much personality as he had athleticism.
“I loved that bull. He was a really smart animal and he was wild but not mean. I handled him all the time since he was a calf and he liked me. Around somebody else, he was wild. Around me, he was calm as could be. I thought of that bull as a son.”
Carter bucked his young bull in futurities with a dummy. He was pleased with Kid Rock’s performance, but the judges didn’t score the bull high enough to win, a fact that didn’t bother Carter. When Kid Rock was a long two-year-old, Carter moved him to a rider.
“I put a rider on Kid Rock when he was going on three,” Carter told us. “He did well when we bucked him and at four years old, I started hauling him to PBR events. His first PBR event was Tampa in 2003.”
That first PBR event turned out to be a big success. In Round 1, his first out ever on the BFTS, Kid Rock quickly threw off his rider with a bull score of 43.25. But the bull was even better in Round 2.
“Kid Rock was a tall bull with a strong back. But he was lean. He was pretty small and I think at first the riders underestimated him,” said Carter of the small bull who began making a big name for himself with his very first event. “Gilbert Carrillo had Kid Rock and Carrillo didn’t even warm that bull up.”
In fact, Carrillo’s ride lasted only a few seconds, just like the first. And Kid Rock earned an even higher bull score of 45.25 on his second trip in the BFTS.
Kid Rock’s second BFTS event was in Fort Worth two months later. For Paulo Crimber, his ride on Carter’s bull lasted once again only lasted a few seconds and the bull score was 45 points. Kid Rock went to a total of 8 BFTS events in 2003 putting up a string of unbroken buck-offs of riders like Mike White, Brian Herman, Ross Coleman, Sean Willingham and future two-time PBR World Champion Justin McBride with bull scores that consistently ranged between 45 and 46.75 points. At the PBR Finals in Las Vegas that year, Kid Rock’s buck-off streak was broken by Sevi Torturo but it wasn’t from lack of try on the bull’s part. The combined score of 92.50 included a bull score of 46.5. And Adriano Moraes started out the 2004 BFTS season with a ride on Kid Rock that earned a combined score of 90 with a bull score of 45.
“I liked to see a good bull score when he got ridden,” Roy Carter said of having his bull’s buck-off streak broken and the new season begin with an 8 second ride.
But Kid Rock wasn’t about to be bested very often. He got revenge by bucking off Sevi Torturo and Adriano Moraes the very next time they met. And, after Moraes’ ride, over the course of the 2004 BFTS season, Kid Rock put up another unbroken string of buck-offs and maintained consistent bull scores in the 45’s and 46’s. At that year’s BFTS PBR Finals, Kid Rock had 3 outs, and predictably, each one was a buck-off.
The 2005 BFTS saw Kid Rock giving up four 8-second rides, including a 92.25 combined score for Justin McBride at the Finals in Las Vegas on McBride’s way to winning his first PBR World Championship. The year also saw Kid Rock’s highest career bull score, a 47.50 with a 6.67 second buck-off of L.J. Jenkins.
In 2006, Kid Rock went to only 5 events early on in the season. And Carter began to see that something was not as it should be with his bull.
“I knew he wasn’t right, but I wasn’t sure what it was. Cody Lambert kept asking me when I was bringing him back, but Kid Rock wasn’t himself. I couldn’t see anything wrong. But then he started looking bloated.”
A trip to the vet told the story. Kid Rock’s injury was as unusual as his broken jaw, but this time luck wasn’t on the bull’s side.
“There was a hole in Kid Rock’s wind pipe,” explained Carter, lingering grief evident in his voice. “It wasn’t noticeable from the outside. He got in a fight with another bull and that bull hit Kid Rock in the neck. It hardly ever happens that a bull gets hit that way, but Kid Rock got hit just right to make that hole.”
Kid Rock’s last out in the BFTS was in March in Duncan, Oklahoma. On April 1st, Kid Rock died.
“That was the worst day of my life,” said Carter about the day he lost his great bull. “I was out at an event and I got a call telling me that Kid Rock was in bad shape. They put him on the trailer to take him to the vets, but he died in the trailer on the way. Kid Rock died on April 1st, 2006.”
For Carter, his relationship with 13X Kid Rock was a friendship. He’d spent the course of Kid Rock’s lifetime building that bond.
“Kid Rock was personality plus. He got to where he was comfortable having me around. I could get right up to him. He’d push me around with his nose playing-like. It was his sign of affection,” Carter reminisced.
“That bull was smart and he had a passion for bucking,” Carter went on to say. “He never lost that passion. I kept him on a good diet and I kept him feeling good with fresh water. His water was cleaned out every day. I kept him relaxed.”
Kid Rock learned from experience and he knew what to do. Carter fondly related a story about the bull’s understanding of his job.
“This bull loved bucking. And he knew how to get where he needed to go. At my place, there are bucking chutes at the bottom of the pasture with a big trap and then a small trap to the bucking chutes. One day, I told the people with me, ‘You all watch this,’ and I went to the bottom of the pasture on my horse. I opened the gate and stayed way back so I wasn’t pushing. Well, Kid Rock walked straight through that small trap and on up through the big trap and walked straight into the bucking chutes without anybody pushing him.”
“I sometimes think about what never was,” continued Carter. “Kid Rock was in the top 5 bulls for BBOY in the PBR every year he bucked on the BFTS. In 2003 he was runner-up BBOY. He was 2nd, 3rd, 5th and 4th.”
Number 26 on the Probull Stats Historical Ranking and Number 25 on the Historical Ranking of the PBR UTB, Kid Rock had a total of 51 outs with only 7 rides, an average bull score of 22.674 and a power rating of 90.71.
Kid Rock had a good reputation on the PBR circuit for being an honest bull.
“Cody Lambert even said he thought Kid Rock was the most honest bull back then,” said Carter with pride. “Kid rock would stand there in the chute and give every rider a chance. He never leaned. He always gave the guys a perfect shot. Everybody liked him. Some of the guys thought he was too nice until they got on him,” Carter said with a chuckle. “Mike White drawed him and he was saying how he was nice. Well, Kid Rock went out there and whumped him on the ground. White came back and told me he was going to go vote for Kid Rock for BBOY.”
When Kid Rock died, Carter lost interest in competing. For Carter, the loss was personal. He considered Kid Rock’s death to be a loss of a family member.
“Kid Rock was an amazing animal. He was smart and athletic, too smart to be a bull. The bucking part was great. But it was his personality that made him so special. I’ve never been around another bull that had that much personality. I loved the way he’d buck a rider off, then throw his head back and take his victory lap. I sure miss that bull.”
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.
Awesome article thank you for the interview with a great bull man