by Terry Lidral
Kaleb and Kaylee Stevens of Stevens Bucking Bulls, located in Chunchula, Alabama, are building a future with their 2022 Oklahoma City Classic Champion #863 High Hopes. After years of focusing on rider bulls, High Hopes gave them a reason to invest in ABBI competition and it led to big success. Now, with High Hopes and his ranch mate Hou’s Time as their foundation, The Stevens are moving into raising futurity calves. It’s a direction they are excited about.
#804 Hou’s Time is a grandson of Showtime on top and Houdini on the bottom. High Hopes is a Cracker Jack son out of a daughter of Casino Royale. The Stevens strong potential in those genetics to breed futurity prospects.
High Hopes and Hou’s Time, along with a bull from Twisted T Livestock, won the 2022 Boot Barn Jerome Davis Invitation Bull Team competition. These 2 bulls represented the John Brennan/Bucking Stock Talk Bull Team at the 2023 PBR Velocity Tour Collision at the Coliseum. Read more here: https://buckingstocktalk.com/from-the-ranch-through-the-bucking-chutes-with-the-john-brennan-bucking-stock-talk-bull-team/
Raising futurity calves is a new venture for the 4KS Ranch. Their main focus in the bull business has been buying and hauling bulls to rodeos.
“I rode bulls and I had bulls that I hauled to practices. Guys started calling me up to haul my practice bulls. Then I got calls to haul to rodeos,” Kaleb Stevens tells of how he got into the bucking bull buiness. “I found I liked hauling better than riding so I got done riding and bought bulls to haul.”
Kaleb did think about raising his own bulls at one point in time. He even bought cows to breed to.
“About 3 years in, I bought some cows from the Shippys in South Dakota. I started raising some calves but I was raising them for rider bulls. I wasn’t thinking about futurity bulls then,” Stevens explained.
Stevens had a small operation and he didn’t have the space or the patience to wait 3 or 4 years to see if a calf had potential.
“I got tired of waiting for the cavles to grow up. I went back to buying bulls and hauling them to rodeos.”
In 2015, Kaleb married Kaylee and she joined him in the Stevens Bucking Bull business. They began to expand to bigger rodeos which meant they had to make some changes.
“Kaleb had 7 or 8 good rodeo bulls when I met him,” Kaylee Stevems said about the business she married into. “They were 80 to 85 point bulls to fit the caliber of the riders at the rodeos we were hauling to. We started to get calls for bigger rodeos and we had to step up our bull power to meet the calibre of the riders at those bigger events. It also meant that we were buying a lot of bulls.”
Their Oklahoma City Classic Champ High Hopes was in a group of bulls that The Stevens bought from a friend in Texas.
“We like to purchase young bulls and try them out. In 2020, Kaleb went to Texas to pick up a group of 2-year-olds that hadn’t had a rider or only 1 trip,” Kaylee told us of the way they acquired High Hopes. “Hope was smaller framed so we put him the field and let him grow to where he could hold a rider.”
High Hopes’ first trip with a rider was a big surprise.
“That bull hadn’t done much when he bucked with a dummy. So, we told the rider for his first trip that he wasn’t going to be hard to ride,” Kaylee Stevens said with a laugh. “Did that rider get a shock!”
“We saw that first trip and it was something to write home about,” Kaleb Stevens continued the story with a hint of awe in his voice at the memory of the moment he first saw his bull buck. “He kicked the lights out.”
The Stevens were excited to find out exactly how good their bull really was.
“His first road trip from Alabama was to the Premier Bull Tour Finals in Florida,” said Kaleb Stevens about his talented bovine athlete, “and he came in number 2. He made short work of his rider, one of the top riders at the event.”
“High Hopes was more than what we needed for a bull to haul to rodeos. He was much better than that and we considered entering him in some ABBI events,” Kaylee Stevens continued. “We decided to enter Hope in the East American Heritage Derby (2021). It was a huge test trip and he responded by winning the event. So, we decided to enter him in more ABBI events.”
High Hopes went on to finish the 2021 season in the top 20 in the ABBI Derby final standings. He started out 2022 with some impressive scores in PBR Unleash The Beast and Touring Pro events. And he went to the 2022 UTB PBR Finals.
“High Hopes had Luciano De Castro in the fifth round and he bucked Luciano off,” Stevens told the story. “But he kicked the back of the chutes on the way out and tore tendons.”
Despite the injury, High Hopes bucked through the pain and earned a 44.25 bull score and a 4.69 second buck-off. But the damage had been done.
“That bull never quit and he finished his job,” Stevens went on to say about the disastrous out. “Luciano picked him for his next ride but High Hopes couldn’t kick. It was the first time he’d ever been ridden. All we could do was take him home and hope he would heal.”
#863 High Hopes posted at 90.72 bull score to win the 2022 Oklahoma City Classic. See his winning performance here: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=348365433811613
High Hopes was healed in time for the 2022 ABBI Classic season. In fact, his championship performance in Oklahoma City was the first ABBI performance of his season. He placed well in other events, but he was sore when bucked and did not have the “WOW” factor of his derby year. He’s also put on size and mass as he grew up.
“Before, riders would have a chance to be 90 plus points on High Hopes. The whole ride this bull would have height, going nose to ground kicking the lights out, straight up. Now, at the age of 5, there are no handstands in the gate, but he’s intense to the left and honest. He gives riders a good shot at 88 or 89 points,” Kaleb Stevens explained how the bull’s performance has changed.
High Hopes won the ABBI 2021 American Heritage East competition and went on to finish his 2021 derby year in the top 20. In the 2022 ABBI Classic season, he was the Oklahoma City champion, finished number 6 at Little Rock and in the top 10 in the first round at Fort Worth and 13th overall at that event.
There’s another plan for High Hopes that The Stevens have been developing. It’s a plan that also involves their Showtime grandson, Hou’s Time.
“We have cows with Showtime bloodlines and heat. We plan to double breed the Showtime genetics to Hou’s Time, who is a very laid back bull. We hope the cows put the heat in his calves,” said Kaylee Stevens of the selective breeding.
“We have been looking through a lot of pedigrees to pick the right cows to breed to Hope,” she continued. “We have a cow with Showtime bloodlines and she’s wired. We want to put intensity with Hope’s kick and stamina. This cow is super intense. Our goal is to get great calves out of the Cracker Jack bloodlines and make people take notice.”
“We started this business ourselves and we are building it so we will have something to share with our sons. That’s what’s important to us.”
“Our sons Kase and Kade love the bulls. Kase, who is 5, doesn’t want to ride bulls. But he wants to work with them all the time. I see him being a stock contractor,” said Kaylee Stevens. “Now Kade, who is 4, wants to ride everything he can get his hands on. He is fearless.”
The Stevens are excited at the prospect of High Hopes passing on those championship genetics to his calves and that there will be another Oklahoma City Classic champion in their future. It is a legacy they want to extend into the next generation.
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.
