Back When They Bucked Archives

Back When They Bucked

Back When They Bucked with Dallas Hunt George

April 25, 2022

Because of her grandfather, Dallas Hunt George began a lifelong love of horses, rodeo and rodeo queening. Born in Lincoln, Neb. in 1938, the now-Arizona resident served as the first Miss Rodeo Nebraska in 1956 and then as the 1957 Miss Rodeo America, at age eighteen. But eight years prior,…

Back When They Bucked with Roy Rodriguez

March 23, 2022

“He was extremely fast from the horse to the calf, he was well mounted, and he was a competitor. He wanted to beat you and still be good friends while doing it.” Roy Rodriguez let his actions speak louder than his words. Whether it was in the rodeo arena, on…

Back When They Bucked with Lavonna “Shorty” Koger ( Shorty’s Caboy Hattery )

March 2, 2022

“Something about me never wanted to work for somebody else,” says Lavonna “Shorty” Koger. The owner of world-famous Shorty’s Caboy Hattery in Oklahoma City, she forged the path of becoming one of the best-loved Western hatters in the country—one of few women to do so. Before Shorty’s skilled hands knew…

Back When They Bucked with CR Hall

February 2, 2022

C.R. Hall didn’t let anything get in the way of his dream of being a rodeo cowboy. Including the color of his skin. The black bareback rider and steer wrestler was raised in New York City and never got on a horse till his high school years. Then, through hard…

Back When They Bucked with Shawn Davis

December 2, 2021

Shawn Davis has spent his life in the western or equine business with his biggest impact being in the sport of professional rodeo and specifically the National Finals Rodeo. Born Dec. 7, 1940, in Butte, Montana, Davis bought his RCA card in 1962 (RCA became the PRCA in 1975) and…

Back When They Bucked with LaTonne Sewalt Enright

November 1, 2021

LaTonne Sewalt remembers the first barrel race she was in at Comanche, Texas. She was 9 years old and was riding her horse, Little Joe, just for fun, on a trick-riding saddle her folks had given her. She wasn’t even in western clothes, she was wearing shorts! The barrel race…

Back When They Bucked with Sherry Price Johnson

June 14, 2021

As a young girl, Sherry Price Combs Johnson spent her days on horseback, riding bareback, playing “cowboys and Indians” or “bad guys,” with her bb gun on her family’s ranch near Addington, Oklahoma. Little did she know the hours spent on horseback would spill over into thousands of hours in…

Back When They Bucked with Bob Hagel

November 4, 2020

As a kid, all Bob Hagel wanted to do was be horseback. The saddle bronc rider, now a resident of Mobridge, S.D., was born on Feb. 25, 1935 and grew up in Ft. Pierre, riding horses at his maternal uncle’s ranch every minute he wasn’t in school. When he was…

Back When They Bucked with Roy Lilley

October 5, 2020

“I’m pretty talkative and used to edit a magazine, so it just made sense to write a book,” said Roy Lilley, the 90 year old rough stock rider from Fort Collins, Colorado, who wrote a 567 page memoir called Just As I Am. The book took three years to complete.…

Bud Tillard

June 23, 2020

For the first time in history, three generations of one family will qualify for the National Finals Steer Roping, held in Amarillo, Texas, Nov. 19 – 21. Steer roping is the only Pro Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA) final event not held at the Thomas and Mack Arena in Las Vegas,…

Back When They Bucked with Jan Youren

June 23, 2020

If the boys could do it, Jan Youren was there to prove that girls could do it, too. The Idaho woman was a roughstock cowgirl for nearly all of her life. Born in 1943 as the second oldest child of Sterling and Madelyn Alley, the family lived on a farm…

Back When They Bucked with Bill Skavdahl

May 12, 2020

Bill Skavdahl has gotten plenty of adrenaline rushes in his life. Some of them were ones he planned on, like when he rode bulls and bulldogged, and some were unpleasant ones, like when his helicopter was shot down while serving in the Army Air Corps in Vietnam in 1968. The…