This year, I plan to go to a few winter rodeos I qualified for—Fort Worth, San Antonio and RodeoHouston—and I’d have to win a ton at those rodeos to decide I’m full-fledged rodeoing again.
Truth is, I’ve got a really, really nice batch of young horses to futurity, and I’ve got three 3-year-olds that I’m excited to bring along. I’d like to futurity more in 2023, and there’s never been a better time to do that.
[READ MORE: The Riata Buckle and the State of the Rope Horse Futurity Market]
There are enough guys bringing good horses to the public now. You can bring your nice young horses and get them out and around and rope on them. You can make money riding them and winning, and when you get done, you can sell them and make more money and even keep some, too. It’s worth it to stay home when I have a really good batch of colts that I can do good on.
If I look up and things aren’t going well at the futurities and the colts aren’t as good as I thought, I can always go back to rodeoing on my older horses—the rodeos will always be there—but these young ones are only of age for so long.
I’d love for there to be a chance at a gold buckle—someday. If it happens, it happens. If it don’t, it don’t. There are guys who rope plenty good enough to have a gold buckle. They made it 20 times and don’t have one, and it wasn’t ability—just bad breaks or things that happened inside the Thomas & Mack. So I’m not worried and I don’t feel like I need to push it rodeoing while I have this set of young ones.
[READ MORE: The American Rope Horse Futurity’s Top-Earners for 2022 & All-Time]
But for me, it’s always been about making a living. It’s never been about a gold buckle for me—it’s always about making a living on a horse. Whether it’s futurities, AQHA, rodeoing, jackpotting, it all is gross income. And right now, the futurities and stallion incentives look like a pretty good way to make a living.
