Ketch Kelton and Denton Dunning added another win to their summer run, taking the War Bonnet Round Up in Idaho Falls, Idaho, with a 4.1-second run worth $4,179 a man.
For Kelton, the 20-year-old Resistol Rookie contender from Mayer, Arizona, and Dunning, the 20-year-old from Surprise, Arizona, the Idaho Falls win was another piece in a summer that has kept both of them in the PRCA world standings’ Top 15 heading into August.
Kelton is No. 11 in the world with $80,779.27 won, while Dunning is No. 9 with $89,634.58.
Even if the two didn’t exactly leave the weekend feeling like everything was clicking, they’re still doing what matters most.
“I mean, when we do connect, when we do catch the cow, we do good,” Dunning said.
That has been the theme since Cowboy Christmas, when Kelton and Dunning were the No. 2 high-money team ropers of the Fourth of July run. That week moved them into the Top 15, but the Idaho Falls win helped to keep the momentum rolling.
Kelton and Dunning made their Idaho Falls run in the slack. They were toward the middle of the draw, and while the rodeo hadn’t gotten especially fast before they went, they had a steer that fit the setup.
“They were big and old,” Kelton said of the cattle. “I’d seen a video of him from somewhere, and he looked pretty true and honest, so I just went off that.”
The run was fast enough to win the rodeo, but in typical Kelton-Dunning fashion, they didn’t make it sound all that complicated.
“I just threw a really tight head loop on there and the steer turned really fast,” Kelton said. “I threw about as fast as I could within the rules I was given. I got a good dally, and he faced really good. Not a lot of wasted motion.”
That has been the difference for the young team. When they put a run together, they are not just getting by—the amount on each paycheck is enough to matter in the world standings.
Somewhere through the last couple weeks, they put together five straight runs that all paid: Salt Lake City, Salt Lake City again, Deadwood, Deadwood again and Idaho Falls.
“We caught five in a row and placed on all five,” Dunning said.
Numbers on those five head look like this: $3,934 for fourth in both long rounds in Salt Lake and $1,403 and $1,595 for both round placings in Deadwood and $4,401 for first in the average.
That stretch is not a bad sign for a team trying to survive the back half of the summer. Kelton may be leading the rookie race by over $25,000 but he still learning the ProRodeo pace in real time, and Dunning is trying to finish what he was close to doing a year ago—stay inside the top 15 all the way to the end.
They were honest that the last few days have not felt perfect. There have been misses, long drives and runs that did not turn into a pot of gold at the end. After Idaho Falls, they were already pointed toward Sikeston, Missouri, staring down another long haul and another chance to keep adding to the season.
But that is the August run for you. It does not have to be perfect—it just has to keep paying.