DT Horses’ DT Hickorys Angus and Jeremy Buhler won the 2025 ARHFA Heeling World Championship by a full 10 points after marking the highest score of the Nov. 1 short round at high call, winning $27,296.
Their short round score of 232.83 put an exclamation mark on their dominant four steers in Amarillo, Texas at the Amarillo National Center, and it solidified DT Horses‘ sire Hickory Holly Time’s leadership in the heel horse game. Hickory Holly Time started the ARHFA World Show as the ARHFA’s leading sire, and the win (as well as the $13,648 Buhler won with DT Get Yer Mask On at fourth) simply extended that lead.
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And when 2016 PRCA World Champion Buhler pulled back on that final steer, he was overcome with one emotion: “Relief.”
“It’s a lot of pressure riding one that you know is capable of getting the job done,” Buhler said of the gelding he’s shown the last two years. “And it’s the end of his 6-year-old year—it’s not like we get another shot. It was really important to me to show him to the best of his ability and complete the course so he had a real chance.”
DT Hickorys Angus Backstory
DT Hickorys Angus is great by design. He’s out of one of DT Horses’ flagship broodmares, the Kings Zantanon daughter Kings Sly Sugar, the dam to Brady Minor’s former Horse of the Year Rey Shines On Top. And by $4.5 million Hickory Holly Time, who carried Kelby Phillips to the World’s Greatest Horseman title in 2018, DT Hickorys Angus was destined to be great.
DT Horses’ Dean Tuftin—a former NFR heeler, businessman and one of the ARHFA World Championship’s biggest supporters since its inception in 2017—started the gelding with his team at his Scottsdale, Arizona ranch. The DT Horses team takes things slowly and patiently, which Tuftin credits for Angus’s ability to stay cool, calm and collected no matter the scenario.
The horse bruised a coffin bone early in his career, so Buhler didn’t start showing Angus until he was 5. He took him north of the border to the Canadian futurities, cleaning house everywhere he went. He had $106,837 won prior to the ARHFA World Show, having won Royal Crown titles as well as consistent placings at nearly every futurity throughout the year.
His time at home is split between Buhler and Tuftin, and he’s so easy to rope on Tuftin rides him in a halter many days. Buhler and Tuftin have both dedicated themselves to perfecting the craft, spending time with trainers like Clinton Anderson and reiners like Andrea Fappani to constantly improve the program.
“Anytime you’re riding with those guys and working at it—that’s what I love,” Buhler said. “It’s not just ‘get on and see what happens.’ Every part is broken down—how they stop, their frame, body position, softness—it’s all a science. And they’ve studied it so much. With this horse, that’s what we always aimed for. I got him as a young 5-year-old and he came equipped with a really easy, smooth stop and great timing. The key was just keeping that intact through two years of roping—not losing it along the way.”
The horse is built to stop wide, with his head up—a trait Tuftin sees as critical for lasting, strong stops. It’s one of the things Tuftin breeds for in his program.
What’s Next for DT Hickorys Angus and Jeremy Buhler?
“With the relationship Dean has with him, I’m going to say he is probably moving into the Tuftin house,” Buhler joked.
DT Hickorys Angus will show at the Gold Buckle Futurity in Abilene, Texas, mid-November before returning to the DT Horses’ compound in Scottsdale to go into Tuftin’s personal jackpot string. Buhler—who this year won both the Reno Rodeo and Cheyenne Frontier Days this year—will go to the winter rodeos with Aaron Tsinigine, and Angus won’t ever be too far away in case he’s needed to tag in.
“I think that what we’re doing here ties in directly with rodeoing,” Buhler said. “I try to make these horses so that they’re ones where when they do graduate, like Angus, they’re ones that you can plug in and you can go to rodeoing on. That’s sort of the hybrid deal I’m looking for. I’m not really wanting show horses versus rodeo horses. I’m wanting the show horses to work the way that you want to rodeo one to do it. Maybe just a little softer.
“We haven’t gotten there, past the futurities, with a plan,” Buhler continued. “He’s one of the horses he truly can take any credit for. He’s just one that you sit on and you hope that you don’t make ’em move the wrong direction because they’re going to make themselves.”
—TRJ—
