Category: Rodeo LIFE Cover Feature

Wally Woods was born in Victoria, Australia, the second youngest of four brothers. “When you’ve got four brothers, and I was the second youngest, I had to fend for myself,” said the 84-year-old Australian cowboy. “My father worked on a cattle/sheep property. My mother died when she was very young. When I was about five years old, we had a post office and I would deliver the mail bag three miles up the road five days a week on a horse.
Wally started competing in the steer riding when he was 14, winning the first one he entered. “I left school when I was about 11- there was no high school – I went traveling with a Wild West show, traveling all over riding bucking horses and doing all kinds of things in the show. You name it, I did it. We used to do two riding a bucking horse, one in the saddle and one behind, and we’d jump off.” He performed every night, and was part of each act. He traveled with the show for three years, and then switched to rodeo.
He worked in a spare car parts place and competed on the weekends. “In them days, in this country, money was hard to come by. We’d go to any buck jumping contest we could find (bronc riding).” He got his first big win in 1951, winning the Jubilee Championship of South Australia in the bronc riding. “I won a big cup and 100 pounds. From then on, at different times, one of me own brothers and I used to break in horses and a money earning contest, and travel around to different rodeos all over the country.” He entered every event. “There were five events in those days; bronc, bareback, steer riding, bull dogging, and roping. The roping was either calf roping or wild cow milking. Through the next ten years, I won four all around champions of the year, that’s the highest money winner over the five events.”
Wally was part of the Australian Rough Riders Association, which started in 1944. “They had a secretary, and a spokesman. It was just a membership that organized it all, and one secretary. From 1945 until 1959, then we formed a board of directors and all that,” he said. “They nominated me as the first president in 1959, and I was that until 1965, competing the whole time.” The ARRA is now the national governing body for professional rodeo competition in Australia, the oldest national rodeo organization in the world.
The first national finals was held in 1961. “It was an 8 round contest, so you’d ride eight of everything; eight saddle horses, eight bareback horses, eight bulls, bull dog eight steers, and rope eight head,” he explained. Wally, who is 5’6” and 11 stones (14 pounds = one stone) won the bull riding by three bulls, riding seven out of the eight. He won the high pot all around champion for the year, second in the bronc riding and placed in every event.
Wally met his wife, Lexi, at a rodeo in Victoria. “She was only a girl when I met her,” he said. “I waited seven years to marry her – my brother married her older sister.” Once they were married in 1958, she traveled all over the country with him. They have two children, a son, Guy, who is a cutting trainer in Texas, and a daughter, Lindy, two years and two days older than Guy.
They traveled around in a Ford 250, with his dogging horse in the back, and towing a caravan behind where they lived. Wally made a good living from rodeo. “In them days if you won 100 pounds (one pound = $2) in five weeks you were doing good; I won 500 pounds, which is good.
We used to buy petrol at about 2 shillings (.33 a gallon), now it’s $4.80 a gallon. We traveled anything up to 700 miles – there is some big distance between towns. From Victorian border to New South Wales is 600 miles.”
He continues to hold the record for winning three riding events in one day, and fourth in the bulldogging, at the Australian Championships. In 1958, he won the World Bronc Riding Championship, which included America, New Zealand, and other countries. “All told, I won 40 state Australian titles, and over the years, I’ve won 170 first places. We used to get a big sash when we won a contest, and I counted them out to see who many I won.”
He continued to compete well into the 1960s, and when he hung up his bull rope, he picked up a stopwatch and started judging. “I knocked off when I bought a transport business in Queensland, which I had started in Victoria. I transported cattle, sheep, horses, whatever livestock there was from one end of the country to the other, anywhere at all.” He still rodeoed around the arena for a little while, but he only went to a very few because he was too busy.
Wally is officially retired, but he still has some horses. “I breed them, since I give up rodeoing, I’ve managed two big quarter horse breeding properties and I’ve got a little place that we breed horses, Guy sent me a horse to breed here.”
He’s made several trips to the United States to visit his son and grandchildren, but since his four-way bypass a year and a half ago, he hasn’t done much traveling.
Wally has seen many changes to rodeo over the years. “It’s the same thing, but we used to ride in an Australian saddle. I was one of the very lucky ones that got to introduce the American saddle to the Australians. There’s a big difference. The
Australian saddle is an English saddle, but a lot smaller. It has a very low back, and very little, 1 ½ front on it. Once you got used to riding, it’s just like everything, you’re good at it or you’re not.”
The bareback riggin was completely different than today. “I used to make them and sell them. In 1956, a friend of mine that went to American brought me back a Dixon riggin. The ones they have now, you couldn’t even put them together. It was a straight head one – the original ones were like a bull rope, in fact, we used to use bull ropes riding horses.”
Bulldogging steers were much different back in his days of rodeoing too. “One of the best bull doggers this country had seen was 6’1, 15 stones (14 pounds per stone – 210 pounds) and I seen his feet not touch the ground for 100 yards after he caught the steer.
“All the years that I did it, I enjoyed it,” he said of rodeo. “There were quite a few of those fellows that rodeoed and traveled around and we became very good friends and it was also a way of life, it was a way of making money.”

courtesy of Scott Breen & Brandon Sullivan, Montanasports.comand and Siri Stevens

‘Routine’ is hardly the word that comes to mind when traveling with CR Boucher. But lunchtime may be the exception.
Every Monday through Friday he drives eight miles into Pryor, Montana, spends about two hours telling stories with friends at the Senior Center, checks mail at the post office, then drives eight miles home. This world champion cowboy is still sharp as a tack, and witty.
“I didn’t ride bulls,” said Boucher. “I just entered. My percentage wasn’t that great,” said the 85-year-old that has replaced bulls for a four wheeler and a cane.
CR – short for Clarence Raymond – grew up in Livingston, Montana. His father worked repairing steam engines. He spent his freshman year as a linebacker on MSU’s football team. He joined the army, and continued to play football for Ft. Worth for two years. When he got out in the 1958, a guy named Aubrey Rankin told him, “I’ll pay your entry fees, you wrestle steers and ride bulls. We’ll split the money.” He had a dogging team, and CR rode his horse. As CR tells it, he’d rarely even seen the sport – but just thought he’d give it a try.
“So, we got down to about the last rodeo there before we were both broke, and we was at Odessa, Texas,” he said. “I drawed a big ole charolais bull. By God if I didn’t ride him and win second. From then on we just started winning.”
Eventually a bull stomped on CR’s leg in Farmington, New Mexico, and Aubrey convinced him to stick to steer wrestling. That worked out pretty well for the pair. “Aubrey pumped me up pretty good, making me think I could throw a buffalo bull.” A freak accident at a rodeo performance in Mesquite, Texas, killed Aubrey. He was hazing for CR when the horse he was riding was clipped by a steer, and rolled on top of him. It whipped his shoulder and knocked a bone through his jugular. and when CR got to the back of the arena he wanted to go see his friend. “And they said you don’t want to go up there and look at him,” said Boucher. “They said, there’s blood running out of his nose, ears, everything. So there was a guy there who took me in his car, following the ambulance. Two or three guys in suits. Told me ‘you don’t need to go in there.’ He said D-O-A. And I said, ‘God dang’… That ended our deal.”
CR picked himself up and made it to the National Finals in Dallas, the last year they had it there in 1961, where he won the average. He went on to become a steer wrestling world champion in 1964. His earnings for the entire year were a little less than $20,000. His kitchen and fireplace mantle are filled with snapshots, trophies, plaques and buckles.
He qualified six times, then went to work as an arena director and pickup man for 19 year for Beutler Brothers Rodeo Company, picking up at the NFR the first year the NFR was in Las Vegas. CR is one of the very rare professional cowboys to hit every NFR site either as a competitor, or a hired hand. Dallas, Los Angeles, Oklahoma City, and Las Vegas. In fact, while living in Texas, he remembers qualifying for the first NFR in Los Angeles — shortly after JFK was assassinated in Dallas. “Yeah, everybody that had a Texas plates on their car, or pickup or trailer, they throwed rocks at you,” he remembers. “And they thought everybody from Texas was involved in that deal.”
That was over half a century ago. Today, CR’s credentials are listed in the AKSARBEN Hall of Fame at Omaha, and at both the PRCA Hall in Colorado Springs and the Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City in the same year – 2001. Earlier this summer, a brand new buckle was sent to him as an inductee to the Texas Cowboy Hall of Fame. His name, with honors, went on the Montana Pro Rodeo Hall and Wall of Fame, located at the Metra Arena in Billings, in 2003 as World Champion Bull Dogger (1964). He is being inducted into and put on the Legends Wall as a Rodeo Legend this coming January.
He married Wilma Landie in 1985, the first year he quit picking up bucking horses. They moved to Pryor in 1987 and has been there ever since.
If he were younger, would he do it all over again in today’s rodeo era?
“You better believe it. I’d be the first one there. Too much money up.”
The National Finals Rodeo (NFR) showcases the talents of the nation’s top fifteen money-winners in each event as they compete for the world title. The first National Finals Rodeo (NFR) was held in Dallas in 1959 and continued at that venue through 1961. In 1962-64 Los Angeles hosted the competition. In 1964, however, Oklahoma City successfully bid to be the host city. In 1965 the first National Finals Rodeo (NFR) in State Fair Arena drew 47,027 fans. The world event remained there through 1978 and thereafter was held in the Myriad Convention Center.
The National Finals Rodeo (NFR) remained in Oklahoma City through 1984, bringing Oklahoma merchants an estimated annual revenue of $8 million dollars. In 1984, however, the city of Las Vegas, Nevada, bid for the NFR (National Finals Rodeo) event. Although the Oklahoma City Council considered building a new $30 million arena at the State Fairgrounds, the Las Vegas bid won. Since 1985 the NFR (National Finals Rodeo) has been held in the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas.
The NFR (National Finals Rodeo) has become Thomas & Mack Center arena’s biggest client, bringing in more than 170,000 fans during the 10-day event. In 2001 a landmark sponsorship agreement was achieved and Wrangler became the first title sponsor of the National Finals Rodeo (NFR). In 2014 contracts were set for the National Finals Rodeo to remain in Las Vegas until 2024.

story by Kyle Eustice

In the early 1950s, Ralph and Helen Rand used to frequent the Calico Rock Café in their hometown of Dolph, Arkansas, and the pair quickly grew fond of one another. The only problem was Helen was just 14 years old and Ralph was 24. Understandably, the age difference caused a lot of controversy in the family, but they were undeterred. They started seeing each other anyway, even though Helen’s father, Homer Pat Sanders, was adamantly against it. Despite his resistance, they fell in love, ran off together and got married in 1953.
After a whirlwind romance, the couple is still going strong 63 years later. Their eldest son, Tommy Rand, 57, was born into the cowboy way of life, along with older sisters Rema and Judy, and younger brother Tony. Ralph started producing rodeos in 1969 when they were all young children.
“I was 10 years old when dad started producing rodeos,” said Tommy. “The hardest part for me was catching cattle. There are 310 acres where the arena is, so it was a full day.”
As a child, Tommy helped his father raise horses and bulls. Several of them have been bucking bull or horse of the year. It started with his grandfather, Owen Rand, who bought and traded horses for a living.
“My dad basically turned it over to me when I was 12,” said Ralph. “I’ve always been a horse trader.”
Ralph started riding bucking bulls and horses at a young age, too. He loved the rodeo lifestyle from the first moment he was exposed to it.
“He’s always had horses as a kid,” said Tommy. “He just loved being around the rodeo and the people he met.”
In 1969, the Calico Rock Lions Club wanted Ralph to put on a rodeo. At that time, he didn’t have any bulls. Instead, he had bucking horses that weren’t broke yet. In fact, Ralph would regularly have his kids ride the unbroke horses and then take them to the local horse sale.
“If they sold and made money, the kids got to stop at the local truck stop to get something to eat, which was a real treat for them,” explained Judy. “But if the horses did not make any money, they didn’t get to stop. They would just drive by.”
At Ralph’s inaugural rodeo, instead of using bulls, he used cows to buck, while Helen would work the gate. His longtime friend, Paul McCarson, showed up to help him and essentially produced the first amateur rodeo along with Ralph.
“It didn’t require a membership,” said Judy. “It followed typical rodeo rules, but there was no rule book.”
Word started to spread that Ralph was producing quality rodeos on his property and soon people were asking him to produce rodeos in their town. That’s when the traveling began. Ralph had an old Bob Truck that could haul five horses and five bucking bulls. At one particular event in Ravenden, Arkansas, they ended up having the rodeo by moonlight after all of the lights were shut off. They did whatever it took to keep the rodeo going.
“In Imboden, Arkansas, the arena was a T-ball field, so it was not typical square arena,” said Judy. “This guy got in there with a bull and it knocked him completely through the fence. We had to fix the fence to finish the rodeo.”
With his unwavering dedication to producing the best rodeos in the area, Ralph dove head first into the production side, where he could be behind the scenes. While he’s not as involved as he used to be, he still raises several bucking bulls and horses on the Rand farm, where he hosts a “Born to Buck” program.
“We keep about 100 horses and 50 bulls,” said Tommy. “We put on junior rodeos, too. There’s always something going on.”
As a member of associations like the ACA, Arkansas Family Rodeo and Great American Bull Riding Association, Ralph has amassed countless accolades over the years. He served on the ACA board in the ‘80s, earned the GABRA Bucking Bull of the Year Award in 1994, and was named the ACA Cowboy of the Year in 1996. In 2013, he was the ACA Cowboys Choice Producer of the Year and two years later, earned the ACA Bareback Horse of the Year and Ranch Bronc Horse of the year. The Rand family’s most coveted award, however, is the 1998 Izard County Farm Family of the Year Award.
“I was shocked when I found out we got it,” said the now 78-year-old Helen. “I wasn’t expecting it. I came home from work and there were 70 or 80 people for a surprise potluck. There were six or seven photographers there to take pictures. Ralph and I were shocked. We had no idea they were going to do this surprise dinner.”
Every August, the Rands recreate the very first rodeo they had in 1969. Called the “Old Timers Rodeo,” they replicate the initial hand bill from 1969, when attending the event was only $2.50. It’s a huge spectacle and captures the hearts of their entire community. At 88, Ralph can watch the event unfold and soak in the magic of what he’s created over the years.
“It’s unreal how many people show up,” said Tommy. “About 1,100 to 1,200 people usually come. We give out buckles and just have a great time.”
Ralph is proud to watch his son take over the family business. He knows Tommy won’t stop until it’s the best rodeo it can be.
“He’s that kind of person,” said Ralph. “He’ll fight to get to the top. I tried other people in the past, but Tommy really does it the way we have always done it. He loves the rodeo.”
Ralph still checks on the cattle on a daily basis while Helen is content staying at home and spending time with her family. After such a long, fruitful career, they can look back with pride at everything they’ve accomplished, including Ralph’s biggest goal.
“I always wanted to be a cowboy,” said Ralph. “That was what I wanted to do as a young boy in school. The number one thing I said I wanted was a big ranch and I did it.”