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Max and George Ann Burch come from a long line of ranchers. The couple, who are in their 70s, met back in the 1950s in high school. “My folks had a ranch north of Moorcroft and her dad bought a ranch adjoining the ranch that my dad had,” said Max. They got married in 1965. The couple eventually settled back on the family ranch, living in her grandmother’s (Hazel Pickrel) original homestead, built in 1929 and added on to throughout the years. The ranch is 15 miles southeast of Rozet, Wyoming, which has a post office, school, and café/bar.

Their sons, Matt and Chad, were born in 1976. Chad is older by two minutes. George Ann found out she was having twins less than two weeks before they were born. Both boys grew up ranching and rodeoing, competing in junior rodeos through junior rodeos, high school and on to college. George Ann admits that she couldn’t take her eyes off them for more than five minutes at a time. “We got new knives one time,” recalled Matt. “So we went to the barn where the saddles were and shortened all the saddle strings as well as the cinches. One of the hands thought it was mice, but dad knew better. Our punishment for that was to stay home from cattle work that day – we didn’t mind – it was 30 below.” Matt competed in bareback riding, winning the Wyoming High School Rodeo Finals three years in a row and went to Nationals, placing in the top ten each year. He went on to PRCA and made the circuit finals, won it a few times, filled his permit. He quit competing when the family got busy in the rodeo stuff and he had a daughter. Chad competed in saddle bronc riding and bull dogging; both boys team roped.

Max started in the rodeo business in 1981. “Burch Rodeo Company started as a side line we got in on and we’ve gotten bigger in it than we ever planned to be,” said Max. “It’s what the boys want to do.” The business started when Pat Byrne from Mill Iron, Montana, came looking for pasture. “He was raising bucking horses and we made a deal to run 25 mares on shares. In the fall, when we pulled the colts off, he got the studs and we got the fillies. We had a stud we used in partnership.”

In 1985 it got really dry and things were getting slow with the drought and Pat decided to sell out. Max bought the mares that were on the place. “We continued on with that stud until 1987. They called him Last Stand. In 1987, right after we turned him out with the mares, he was injured and I called Ernie Toot in Montana and asked if he had a stud I could buy. He had some young studs so we drove up there.”
The plan was to pick up a gray stud, but Max eyed a different one – a three year old bay. “I walked through them horses looking at them and what impressed me about that horse – those horses would be chewing on each other, but that horse never quit looking at you as long as you were there and moving around.” The horse ended up siring many NFR broncs for Burch Rodeo. “Everything just worked,” said Max, who bought Tooke for $800. His offspring were big horses, one of them being the most recently retired Lunatic Fringe, out of an own daughter of Tooke.

Even though Burch horses and bulls make appearances at the WNFR, Max and George Ann have only been to Vegas once. “I don’t like flying or crowds,” admitted Max. Instead they send Matt, Chad, and most recently, Matt’s daughter, Bailey, who has moved back home to help on the ranch.
Bailey lived on the ranch all her life, and left for three years to go to college on a rodeo scholarship in Ranger, Texas. The 21 year old came back this year in May of 2016. “I wanted to start helping with the ranch and rodeo company. I want to see it progress and it’s a family tradition,” she said. “I really loved the coach (Llew Rust) and I liked the environment and I’m going to finish my degree in Ag Business online. I missed home.” She lives seven miles from the ranch and travels with her dad and uncle to the rodeos where she flanks the bulls and will eventually flank the horses too.

The ranch, which encompasses 170,000 acres of owned, deeded, and leased land, is home to 750 bucking horses, 140 bucking bulls, and 2,000 Red Angus mother cows. Ten people work on the ranch and the winter chores include feeding hay to the rodeo stock that will be competing throughout the winter months. “The only hay we feed is 200 head that we are bucking. The rest are all running out on grass.” The majority of the bucking horses are kept in an 11,000 acre pasture. The yearlings up to the coming four year olds all run together and are gathered once a year to sort off the older ones and add the weanlings to the bunch.

One of Chad’s favorite parts of ranch life comes in September when he brings in the horses. “It takes 10 days to halter break, brand and castrate the yearlings,” he explained. “They we turn them loose until they are coming 5.” They have a big barn by Moorcroft that is set up with bucking chutes, and that’s where Chad spends many days, putting dummies on the horses, bucking them out four or five times, and making sure they behave in the chutes. Foaling starts the beginning of May and by then the horses are sorted into pastures with a stud, where they will stay until September.

While Chad is busy breaking the horses, Matt is busy with the hunting operation. “The lodge is 35 miles from here, between Moorcroft and Upton. We have hunters from September 1 until November 30. Hunters come from the East Coast to the West Coast, Canada and as far as Germany to the ranch to hunt antelope, deer, and elk. The family runs the ranch like a well-oiled machine. Chad and Matt both agree the secret is being able to compromise. “If we’re sorting, I have the list memorized in my head and we go through it,” said Chad. “It’s a give and take.” Most recently, the crew sorted 66 head to go to Rapid City. “We’ll come back for another 32 later in the week.” After Rapid City, they will have a rodeo every week all year long.

“I think the future of the bucking horses is going to get big,” said Matt. “The bucking bulls got big because of the PBR, and the ABBI has helped with that. You could prove the genetics. Bucking horses are the same way, and BHBA, Steve Stone and Kenny Andrews, and ABBI – It’s moving forward and there are more futurities for horses. If you go to a sale now, you can prove what your horse is. We love doing it …”

“We’ve got a lot of land, and could run a lot of cows if we got rid of the horses, but they mean as much as the cattle to us, ranch or bucking, it’s what we’ve always done. We’re going to keep raising them and hopefully Bailey will keep running with it. Mom and Dad provided us this lifestyle and it took a lot of years to get where we are with our card, and now we’re going to big rodeos that we want to go to … everything is set and ready to go.”

James Hajek is a cowboy by blood and by choice, making a living in the stock pens and arenas of the South and Midwest since he was a child. Today, the 32-year-old from Hennessey, Oklahoma, is known for his finesse as a pickup man, finding his niche in the rodeo world while attending Northwestern Oklahoma State University.

“My dad used to rodeo and he co-owned Carpenter Rodeo Company in Kansas, so from the time I was little, rodeo is all I’ve done,” says James. “Growing up, I knew where every playground and park was in Kansas. We went somewhere every weekend, and I had friends all over the place. I didn’t know any different, or what it was like to go to the lake, but I loved it!” James and his older sister, Jena, became all-around hands, even riding a pair of mini mules to move cattle. “They were about the size of Shetland ponies, and we’d take them to every rodeo and drive cattle out. If there was a return alley, we’d bring the timed event cattle back up. We ran 140 – 150 team ropers a night, so we’d be there a while.”

When James was ten, his parents, Danny and Aronda Hajek, sold their half of the rodeo company. They kept a handful of bucking bulls, and James and his dad continued to raise bulls until 2014. In 2004, the rodeo coach at Northwestern Oklahoma State University had offered James a scholarship for supplying the team’s bucking bulls. Rodeo clown Justin Rumford was also a NWOSU student at the time, and James recalls, “We weren’t in very many of the same classes, but we did lots of extracurricular activities together. There were always good times to be had with him around.”

James also watched rodeo practices and helped run the roping chutes, but the itch to be doing something more was always there. His sophomore year, James brought a trailer full of broncs to college, partnering with Andrews Rodeo Company, who sends James colts to start bucking every year. They’ve started a number of WNFR broncs such as Cool Water, PTSD Power Play, and Fire Lane. Picking up broncs naturally came next, and though James hadn’t spent much time on horseback during his teens, the muscle memory was still there. “When we sold the rodeo company, I’d sold my horse and mules, and I never even rode when I was in high school. I’d mainly worked rodeos, and I never had too much interest in competing since I was guaranteed a paycheck. I started picking up at practice, and the finessing and fine-tuning took a while to learn, but as far as setting riders down, I’d cowboyed enough to know where I needed to be and what to do.”

Nearly 12 years later, James works as many as 25 rodeos a year, along with bull ridings like ABBI and PBR. “I work all of Andrews Rodeo Company’s rodeos, and I’ll fill in for Phil Sumner, who partnered with my dad on some rodeos.” This is James’ seventh year picking up pro rodeos, and he’s also picked up for Beutler & Son Rodeo Company and Frontier Rodeo Company. “I’m just enough of an adrenaline junky that I really enjoy that part of it, and it’s fun to be doing so many things at one time, even if nobody can see it all.”

Yet those unnoticed moments are what catch a photographer’s eye, as is the case with the cover photo, taken at the 2015 Rylee Miller Memorial Ranch Bronc Riding in Cherokee, Oklahoma. James started the annual bronc riding in memory of his girlfriend, who passed away in 2013. “We did a winter series jackpot bull and bronc riding first, and after that I decided I wanted to set up a scholarship fund and do the ranch bronc riding,” says James. “Phil Sumner and Jaymie and Rooster Swartz have brought horses to the bronc riding, and we do it early in the year so the horses are coming in fresh and ready to go. That makes it pretty wild. We’ve also had women’s bronc riding, junior broncs, and mini broncs, which are a crowd favorite. We won’t be able to hold the bronc riding this year, but the goal is to come back next year and do it bigger and better.”

While he’s on the road for the summer, James’ family and friends look in on his livestock. He has 125 head of cows, originally starting with 30 – 40 head to help pay for his rodeo habit. “I work at a sale barn about twenty miles from the house, and I buy cows like some people buy shoes. I’ll go to work a sale and come home with four or five more. My fiancée, Jill Shaw,  and I are partnering on forty head of mama cows, so we have a nice little ranch, and it keeps me going in the winter. It’s also something to do with my horses to get their minds back after a long summer of rodeos.”
James says his horses share his love for adrenaline, adding that they have to be gritty and tough, with plenty of run in them. “They’re all a little kamikaze with no hesitation in them. My dad said you know you have a good pickup horse if you can run them into a brick wall. I run my horses at anything I think they’ll be scared of.” Scooby, a 19-year-old gelding, is his best horse, starting out as Jena’s barrel horse in college. “Scooby had a motor on him, but he didn’t want to run the pattern, so Jena asked me to ride him a while. I was working at three sale barns at the time and cowboying. Scooby picked up rodeos so well, I told Jena she could either sell him or give him to me, because I wasn’t giving him back.” James found another of his horses, Colonel, in college, while he recently purchased Peso from Cody Webster. He also rides Cisco and Pepper, while the red roan featured on the cover is a former Canadian bronc. “Bromby didn’t have an ounce of buck in him, so I bought him from Sammy. I don’t pick up on him very much because he’s seventeen hands and it’s a long way to reach some of those broncs.” Bromby and James received a standing ovation several years ago at a rodeo in Longview, Texas, when a barrel truck was stuck in a muddy arena. James threaded his rope through the front tow of the truck and Bromby pulled it out within minutes.

“I think pickup horses are about the toughest horses in the rodeo,” James adds. “We get them hot and tired as they can handle, but then we don’t always have time to cool them off before getting another horse and going back to work. Jill takes off work to travel with me, so she’ll go back and cool horses out for me between events.” James met Jill six years ago at the North Texas State Fair, which her family has helped produce for many years. “Jill is part of a drill team and a flag team down there, which she’s really passionate about, and she runs sponsor flags. I met her while I was working that rodeo, and in 2015, we really hit it off and dated for about a year. I proposed to her in the arena, and we’ll be getting married in September in Texas.” The couple is taking their longest trip yet in August, on the road for two weeks traveling to rodeos. “We’ll see how much she likes me – it’ll be me and her and five dogs,” he jokes.

James’ one-year-old son, Hagen, is also showing interest in the western lifestyle. “Whenever he goes to feed with me, all he pays attention to is the horses and cows. He may be the only kid around with a seventeen hand Canadian bronc for his first horse.” Any time at home is spent with Hagen, while James also enjoys catching up with friends and doing day work in the area. One of his goals is to bring the Rylee Miller Memorial back in 2018. “We always have good horses, and I’ve even had guys talking to me from Idaho and northern California about it. I want it to become the premier ranch bronc riding in the country, and I think we’re fairly close.”

Dave Dahl can spot one of his saddles from a mile away. When the bronc saddle maker from Ft. Pierre, S.D. watches pro rodeo, he can see the saddles he’s made aboard the bucking horses in the saddle bronc riding.

And the list of cowboys using his saddles sounds like a “who’s who” of great saddle bronc riders: 2016 world champion Zeke Thurston, world champions Taos Muncy (2007 and 2011), Jeff Willert (2005), Glen O’Neill (2002), and Cody DeMoss, Jake Watson, CoBurn Bradshaw, Chuck Schmidt, Clay Elliott, Wade Sundell, Cort Scheer, Kyle Whitaker, Jeremy Meeks, Shade Etbauer, and more.

The 72 year old cowboy grew up on a farm near Keene, North Dakota, next to an Indian reservation, “where there were cowboys,” he remembers. He and his friends used to go to the reservation, round up horses, and ride them. “We didn’t know what the horses were like,” he said. “We just ran in a bunch of them. There were a few chutes, and we practiced. We had some wild times,” he chuckled.  After graduating from high school in 1962, he went to the oil fields. But he knew he didn’t want to spend his life there, so he went to college in Madison, S.D.

Eastern South Dakota wasn’t for him, either. “It was too much ‘east river’ for me, and I liked the Black Hills.” He made a phone call to Black Hills State University in Spearfish, S.D., and a few months later, he was there, on the rodeo team riding saddle broncs. As a member of the men’s team, he won the 1967 National Inter-Collegiate Rodeo Association year-end saddle bronc riding title, qualifying for the College National Finals Rodeo four times and competing there twice.

After graduating with a teaching degree, he taught a year at Pine Ridge, S.D., a year at a country school near Fruitdale, S.D., and a year in Eagle Butte.

He was doing construction work in Ft. Pierre, when he and a rodeo buddy, Dick Jones, ran across each other. Jones was making saddles, and Dave wanted to make his brother one. Dick helped him, and that was the beginning of Dave’s saddle career. Dick had made some saddles, and he gave instruction to Dave. “He knew a little bit, and I didn’t know much,” Dave recalled. “He showed me, and one thing led to another.” The two began a partnership in a saddle shop in Ft. Pierre.

Dave, being a saddle bronc rider (he won the 1968 SDRA title and had a Rodeo Cowboys Association card), made bronc saddles. His saddles are different from other brands, and the cowboys who ride them, love them.

Dahl’s bronc saddles differ from other makers in several ways, including the swells and the cantle. The swells are set higher so that a cowboy’s feet can set high in the neck of the horse, but not too high. The seat is a bit deeper, and the cantle is higher. Where a cowboy’s hips are is crucial. Chuck Schmidt, a saddle bronc rider from Keldron, S.D. and a three-time Wrangler NFR qualifer, has ridden a Dahl saddle since he started pro rodeo. “As in any sport, your hips are your power, and bronc riding is the same,” he said.
“You almost have to sit back on your butt a little, not just sitting there straight up, like you’re going to rope. You want to set back, (to reduce) the force the horse will use to throw you forward. You counteract it it by sitting back.”

The gullet on the saddle is also set narrower, so the saddle can sit higher up on the withers. “Beings it’s not a roping saddle, you can set your swells higher by bringing the bars in, thus allowing the cowboy to spur better,” Schmidt said.  “If the swells are set too low and too wide, it’s harder to reach your feet up into the neck. When you narrow the swells and set them up higher, your legs are closer to the horse’s neck, creating better spur contact when you ride.”

Dahl’s saddles make riding broncs easier, Schmidt said. “Dave designed a saddle to take away half of your work as a bronc rider, the way it sets a horse and the way it sets the cowboy. It sets it up a little more natural, the way everything moves. There are minimal things to get in your way.”

For some cowboys, switching to a Dahl saddle made them a better rider. It happened for Zeke Thurston, who won last year’s world title. The Big Valley, Alberta cowboy wasn’t riding well last spring. He decided to give Dahl a phone call. Dahl had a new saddle to him within five days, and Thurston took it to the Guymon, Okla. rodeo. “It took me a few rodeos to get it dialed in,” he said. “Once I broke it in, my spring skyrocketed. There were probably four weekends in a row where I won $12,000 or more.” He credits the saddle with giving him better spur outs and better upper body control.

Jake Watson, Hudson’s Hope, BC., finished the 2016 season in fifth place in the world, and also uses a Dahl saddle. “The way the swells and cantle are shaped, the structure of them, they have a lot of forgiveness in them,” he said. “If you lift on your reins, you can turn loose and the saddle will do its job and keep ahold of you.” The different shaping of the swells and cantle make a difference. “Say you’re getting bucked off, and you’re still trying to spur, more often than not, you’ll end up back in the saddle and regain your position in the seat, which is definitely what you want.”

Watson has used a Dahl saddle since June of last year, and it has made a difference for him. “It changed my career, honestly,’ from the very first horse I got on,” he said. “I was having hell. I had won $2,000 that season (up till June), and from the end of June till September I ended up winning $20,000. Itw as a big turning point in my bronc riding.”

Dahl works out of his shop, the Diamond D Western Wear and Saddle Shop, on the main street of Ft. Pierre. He sells clothing, boots, hats, tack, and ropes, and does his leather work in the back of the shop.

And when most people are retired and drinking coffee all day, Dahl is working. He’s turning out about a saddle a week, working on number 1657 in mid-January. He puts in long days, clocking in about 8:30 am and working till 6:30 or 7 pm, six days a week, “depending on how bad I want to finish something.” The good work ethic comes from the motivation to succeed. “I guess I made up my mind that I wanted to be the best at what I’m doing. When you see the good results of the cowboys, it’s a big incentive.” And making saddles supplements the store’s income. “I’m fortunate that I can make a good living in my workshop when things are quiet in the store. That makes it nice.”

As cowboys call him to order saddles, he chats with them, finding out how they’re doing, what rodeos they’ve been to, and how they’re riding. He checks the internet nearly every day, to see the standings, and watches rodeos on the Wrangler Netowrk. He can pick his saddles out every time. “Everybody’s saddle looks a little bit different,” he said. “I have distinct little straps, little buckles. Most everybody has a buckle through the skirt (of the saddle), but my buckle is on the little piece that goes around the front of the swells.”

Dahl ships saddles to Australia and now the second generation of cowboys are using them. And the “old-timers” – retired bronc riders –refer young guys to him. National Finals average winner Rod Warren “sends boys to me,” Dahl said.
Six cowboys at the 2016 Wrangler NFR rode on Dahl saddles: Thurston, Schmidt, CoBurn Bradshaw, Cody DeMoss and Clay Elliott. And the list extends beyond the NFR. Wade Sundell rode one to win the $1 million at the American Rodeo last year. Cort Scheer won the Elite Rodeo Association title, Thurston won $100,000 at the 2016 Calgary Stampede; Jeremy Meeks won last year’s Indian National Finals Rodeo on one; Clay Elliott was on a Dahl saddle for his Canadian National Finals win, and eight-time Linderman winner Kyle Whitaker uses one.

Retirement is not on Dahl’s radar. “I have  a lot of work to do,” he said. The man who supplies the d-rings for Dahl’s saddles is 95 years old, and still going. “I”ll have to work a while to catch up to him.”
And saddle bronc riders hope he keeps working.

Brenten Hall and Jake Clay may as well be brothers. They both come from rodeo families and they’ve grown up together as best friends. Both handy with a rope, it only made sense that the two 17-year-old cowboys should team up together in their professional rodeo careers. And if this year in the International Professional Rodeo Association is any indication, it was a smart move.
Both Brenten and Jake will be heading to the International Finals Rodeo this January in Oklahoma City to compete as two of the youngest in the field of competitors from the U.S., Canada and Australia.

Growing up in Oklahoma, Brenten and Jake met around the age of 7 and were quickly rodeoing together.  “I don’t ever remember not roping or being around it. When I was little I went to rodeos with my mom and dad. It is just something that I do, I don’t see myself doing something different,” Jake describes of rodeo. His entrance into the IPRA was natural too. Both his father Dwayne and mother Julana are multi-time IFR qualifiers, his dad as a header in the team roping and his mom as a barrel racer. She won Rookie of the Year back in 1986 and continued on from there. Brenten’s mom LeAnna ran barrels and team roped, like Jake’s parents, his father Bob was also a multi-time IFR qualifier and team roping director for IPRA. Bob passed his love of roping on and coached Brenten to where he is today. Sadly, Bob passed away in 2015 from pancreatic cancer. Now they rope in his honor.

Brenten and Jake grew up doing junior rodeos locally and have both gone into high school rodeo, but have quickly made a name for themselves as professional competitors too. This is Jake’s second year in the IPRA and Brenten’s rookie year. They have focused on preparation and practicing while they have done home school through high school.

“We’re both homeschooled so it made it a lot easier. We couldn’t have done this if we couldn’t home school. We’d have had too many absent days, but you can kind of get ahead and prepare for what’s happening and take off for the weekend and not have to worry about it,” Brenten describes. He adds that his season had a slow start. “It’s been real fun. There were some very hard times. I went through some stuff I couldn’t figure anything out, I was having a hard time, I was missing, but the worst part about it is I felt like was letting my partners down, because I don’t do very good with that stuff,” he admits.

Then things turned around for the team. “I wasn’t doing very good then come about Pawnee rodeo it just kind of worked. I won 1st and third there and that shot me in 17th or 18th in the world, and then I got to where I thought, ‘you know, I’ve got to go, I’ve got to try to make it [to IFR] since I went this far, closer than I was, not there, but closer than I was,” Brenten says.
He and Jake make a good team for organizing a pro-rodeo career. “Pro-rodeoing has been fun, a lot of ups and downs. Entering, I still have zero clues whatsoever, I think I entered one rodeo,” Brenten says and adds of Jake, “he’s done every entering job, I just kind of tell him where I think we should go and then he does it whichever way it’s supposed to be done,” he laughs.

Jake chimes in humorously that he also does all of the driving, to which Brenten replies, he looks after the animals. In reality, they get along well. “Neither one of us demands anything very often. Neither one of us are really that organized whatsoever. It takes us a good two hours to figure out how we want to go [to rodeos] just two a weekend but [our] moms take care of us,” Brenten laughs. Jokes aside, both acknowledge the great support they get from their families and sponsors. Brenten would like to thank his sponsors, Classic Ropes and Horselic, and Jake would like to thank Mid-States Industrial Sales and Tulsa Stockyards.

The fact that Brenten and Jake are both laidback, works great for their team dynamic. They can hardly recall ever fighting, maybe twice, they agree. And the sport of team roping is unique they realize, because, as Jake explains, “It makes you want to try harder because you know your partner is trying just as hard, and if you mess up you let not only yourself, but him down too.”

The boys split their days between school work and practicing. Jake also trains horses with his dad, and Brenten’s family has cattle and owns the local feed store in their town of Jay, in northeastern Oklahoma. Jake lives closer to the city of Tulsa, Oklahoma in the town of Sapulpa. It’s about an hour and 45 minutes-drive between their towns, but they practice together when they can, when they’re not on the road competing, which isn’t a lot now days. They’re usually gone every weekend to a rodeo.

Both Jake and Brenten credit their horses for helping them get where they are. Jake mostly rides a 10-year-old sorrel gelding he’s competed on for the past four years, and is special because his dad trained the horse. And Brenten’s main horse is a paint he actually bought off of Jake a couple of years ago.

Another component to success for the boys is a positive mindset. “[You’ve] just got to be humble in everything, because you could win one day and then not win for three weeks or however long,” Jake says and cites his favorite quote, ‘if you want to be the best, you’ve got to do things other people aren’t willing to do.”  As for Brenten, he thinks of the saying, ‘if you want to succeed as bad as you want to breathe, you’ll be successful.’ “I think that’s something you should live by if you try to win,” he says and adds another motto, “for a successful Plan A is not have a Plan B’ so keep after that plan A, practicing a lot, keep your head down, keep going for it.”

Those mottos are clearly working for both Brenten and Jake. Beyond qualifying for the IFR, Brenten split the $100,000 win at the USTRC in October in Oklahoma City, “it was exciting, I wouldn’t know any other way to put it. I’m still kind of bumfuzzled over it,” Brenten says of that win. “I needed something, some kind of money so I could keep going and maybe get another horse, and it ended up coming through, and it helped,” he says but adds, “That money sure is good, but winning, the success, is what makes you happy.”
And in December, the team saw even more success. Together, Jake and Brenten roped to a first place finish and a $150,000 paycheck at the World Series of Team Roping #15 Finale.

Impressive accomplishments for two teenage high school kids.
Both boys will be soon looking to colleges and college rodeo, as well as continued success, but for January, all the focus is on the International Finals Rodeo, Jan. 13-15, 2017 in Oklahoma City.