Any given winter day at Dynamite Arena, Earl Higgins is walking around with an envelope full of cash. In fact, he wins so much cash, he often just keeps the envelope in his chest pocket. That means when you bump into Higgins, who will turn 88 in three months, you can never tell if he was already paid by the secretary that day.
“I’ve been awful blessed to still be able to do this, especially to do it and be competitive,” he says. “There are a lot of old guys roping, but a lot of us old guys are just roping.”
That statement, of course, excludes him and Wyoming’s 85-year-old header Bill Spratt, with whom Higgins placed third in the #7.5 WSTR Qualifier at the Big Daddy in Cheyenne in July to split $14,180.
“Our combined ages were 172,” says Higgins. “That’s a lot of years.”
Higgins, who’s been tied on for 37 years, missed his slack in that short round. When he ran his arm up under his rope to pick it back up, his skin is so thin that the rope peeled his hide. Five weeks later, he was still wearing the band-aids to prove how much he loves to win.
In fact, over six weeks this summer, Higgins banked $37,835. That July roping with Spratt? He didn’t just win third—he also won the roping with Spratt’s virtual daughter-in-law, Laura Pikop, to split another $27,980—plus he placed in the #8.5 with Jim Rose to split $5,110. Then in August at the Heartland Qualifier in Hamilton, Texas, Higgins placed eighth in the #8.5 and won the #9.5 with his son, Joe Burk Higgins, to split $28,400.
“We were high call and Joe Burk broke the barrier,” says Earl. “We had 12.1 seconds to win the roping. And that was our exact time. He turned him and went fast and I throwed.”
No off-season
For well over seven decades, Higgins’ big, patented trap has allowed him to rope the draggers, the ones that jump high—about anything. His reputation as a catcher started with a gazillion loops thrown at a sawhorse, along with those tricky gates he set down in the ’60s and ’70s at feedlots and in between mesquite trees. He was a town kid from Show Low, Arizona, who constantly played with a rope until his uncle finally bought him a horse. Then, he’d ride into someone’s pasture and rope their cows. Later, he tied down plenty of wild cattle in the Arizona desert with Hall-of-Fame steer roper Ike Rude or Hall-of-Fame team roper Joe Glenn.
Higgins became a bull rider, but team roping was always his first love. He married Gail—a Scottsdale roping producer’s daughter who also roped—and raised two kids while at times driving a truck or working on a ranch and always making rope horses. Since 2001, Earl has lived with his daughter, LaRae Branham, in Desert Hills.
“He craves it like nobody I’ve ever known,” Branham says. “He’ll go to the roping all day long, then come to the practice pen in the evening.”
Higgins has earned more money with his heel rope in the past 35 years than he earned working full-time the 35 years before that. The WSTR has determined he’s officially its money-winningest roper, ever. In response, American Hat Company last December brought Higgins to the stage at the Plaza in Las Vegas—the same day he and Branham split $9,100 for fifth in the #9.5 South Point Qualifier—to award him a custom lid. The inscription in the band? “Earl Higgins: A Legend.”
The man never stays out of the arena for long. Each May, Higgins drives his own rig up to his granddaughter’s place near Jackson Hole, Wyoming, to rope all summer. After the Big Daddy, he and Branham follow each other back to Phoenix, where she starts her teaching job. Then, Joe Burk flies to Phoenix and drives Earl to his place in New Waverly, Texas, where they saddle up and rope 10 head every single morning, also roping twice a week at Shannon Wilson’s WireNut Arena.
“When I get to Texas, Joe Burk tunes me up,” says Earl. “If I get lazy and don’t get power on my swing, he gets after me and tells me what I need to do.”
Then it’s back to Arizona in mid-October and four jackpots a week all winter. Earl has been making this circle for years. It’s been harder since the 2022 death of his beloved wife of 60 years. Gail, who always drove and ran the show, used to say that Earl’s secret to winning so much was his ability to lose and keep going, whereas some ropers don’t have enough drive. Earl vividly remembers the first roping he entered after she passed. It was in Athens, Texas.
“I went to get something out of my billfold and this card fell out,” he says. “I’d never seen it before. I picked it up. It read, ‘Put medicine on your shoulder and your hands; follow through; swing with power; rope the burn steer,’ and it was signed, ‘Gail.’ I won the roping that day. And I’ve still got it in my wallet.”
Wanting to catch
When he was 70, Higgins was still classified as a 7 heeler.
“And they still had him at a 6 when he was 80 years old,” says John Miller, Higgins’ friend of countless decades and a two-time world champion header. “I know how much he enters, and that wasn’t right. Nobody better complain about this 3 they gave him this year, either.”
Higgins had mixed feelings about his new number. And his competitors groaned, naturally. But Joe Burk laughs about the ropers who complain.
“Those producers in Arizona have basically just told those other heelers, ‘Hey, if you can’t beat a man who’s almost 90, we’re not going to help you by raising his number.’”
And, more and more every season, people come to the fence during short rounds to whoop and holler as Earl wins yet another jackpot. Because no matter how many birthdays he’s had or what classification he gets, Higgins still craves winning. Miller offers up the perfect word when asked what keeps Higgins going.
“It’s absolutely grit,” says Miller. “Earl rode bulls forever, and he was a very good bull rider. He’s lived in Arizona his whole life and he’s just a tough guy—both physically and mentally. Plus, he’s smart about roping. He knows where to go and how to enter and just about every wrinkle there is to know.”
Nothing Higgins does is easy. He’s had a knee replaced, endured a split pelvis and had shoulder surgery, plus several different operations on his back thanks to his old bull-riding and truck-driving days. Then there’s the ankle. Instead of having it fused, which would have ended mobility in his stirrup, Earl found one of the few surgeons willing to do a complete ankle replacement. Plus, his latest back surgery when he was 77—only necessary to allow him to keep roping—left him paralyzed in one leg until he spent three grueling months at a rehab hospital.
“I love to rope,” he says simply. “What else would I do? I’d get old, fast, if I didn’t rope.”
It doesn’t matter to Higgins that both his feet feel like they’re asleep, so he can’t put much weight in the stirrups. Or that his ankle hurts so much that he has an electric scooter. Or that arthritis cramps his fingers while he ropes.
“When you’re chasing a steer, you black out, you know?” Earl says. “You don’t feel nothing; you’re just wanting to catch.”
Joe Burk says his dad is crazy-tough, but the biggest factor that puts him in all those win pictures is how much he works at roping.
“All of those guys who complain that my dad takes their money—not one of them would put the effort into roping that he does,” says Joe Burk. “None of them hurt as bad as him and none of them watched him rope his sawhorse from his wheelchair when his pelvis was broke, or from his walker when he had his knee replaced.”
And that effort includes taming the horses he rides, which are the opposite of gentle. For years, Higgins won a fortune on a firecracker of a mare called Peanut Butter, until she finally died this year.
“Most old guys couldn’t even start to ride half of what he’s ridden,” says Joe Burk, named after a couple of Hall-of-Famer friends of Earl’s. “That old mare of his would have scared to death every one of them.”
This summer, Earl was making bank on the aptly nicknamed Dinero, a horse owned by his neighbor Brad McRoberts. Joe Burk had sold McRoberts the horse for a friend, and McRoberts never ropes in summertime anyway, so he just sent the horse with Earl.
Dinero is plenty watchy, himself. He spooked hard in the Cheyenne arena, and once pulled back and knocked Earl to the ground. But the bonus? Dinero is getting really good at sidling up to Earl’s set of steps that he uses to mount up.
Winning philosophies
We’ve talked about why Higgins is still going. But how does he win so much, despite decreased mobility and reaction time? Well, he sticks to the same philosophy he learned as a little kid: just throw it in front of their feet and they’ll get in it.
“If you’re in good position and can see what you’re throwing at, and you’ve got a feel for your rope, it’s easy,” he says.
Higgins has always been good at this. But you might think an almost-90-year-old would lack confidence.
“There are actually no nerves that come into play when we rope, whether it’s in Vegas for $200,000 or down the road at Dynamite,” says LaRae, whowas named for Earl (spelled backwards) and who’s earned hundreds of thousands of dollars roping with her dad. “We don’t question ourselves—if you were taught right, then you know how to get it done.”
Higgins is soft-spoken and smiles a lot, which is disarming considering how much he loves to beat the pants off the rest of the field.
“I like to buy supper,” he says. “In our outfit, if you win, then you buy supper. I’ve bought lots of them. I enjoy that more than anything, because it means I’m winning.”
It kills him inside when he doesn’t win, Branham points out. And Joe Burk says his dad has no desire to enter a roping just to hear his name called. Earl flat hates to lose, and doesn’t expect that he will.
“I’ve roped more than literally anybody,” says Higgins matter-of-factly. “You’re supposed to win when you’ve roped forever.”
He insists the way he ropes is not fancy—it just boils down to a big loop. And despite the fact it’s much harder for Higgins to win today compared to earlier decades, his practical mindset serves him well.
“In the short round, a guy’s supposed to catch,” he says. “You’ve already had three steers to practice on, so you sure ought to catch that fourth one.”
The only advice Higgins ever gives young ropers? Eat more candy. Yep, Earl does nothing to stay in shape except rope, and a tad bit of golf. He likes to watch rodeos or old Westerns from his La-Z-Boy, and he’s pretty handy on Facebook. Fact is, the Snickers-loving Earl eats like a 12-year-old boy.
“He’s constantly eating candy and ice cream and only finishes half his meal,” says Joe Burk, chuckling. “But since I started eating like Dad, I’ve lost quite a bit of weight!”
After stomping all of the younger heelers at Dynamite for a solid month, Earl will head to Las Vegas in December, where he has three great Finale runs this year. Odds are good that he’ll add to his epic lifetime earnings, as well as his ever-growing fan base.
“Despite all the pain and everything he puts up with, heeling is what he loves to do,” says Branham. “He’s going to do it as long as he possibly can.”
—TRJ—
