Written by: Siri Stevens

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Tyler Jackson burns the candle at both ends. While the twenty year old cowboy, a resident of Salem, Ark., is up and in town by 6 am each day, he’s not home, with chores completed, till after dark, and with a to-do list that isn’t crossed off. He’s a competitor in the Arkansas Cowboys Association, and his main emphasis this year is heading. He’s heeled for several years, and used to bulldog and rope calves, but the team roping is the focus this year.

He has two good heading horses. Nugget, who is twenty, has been his horse since he was a kid. Tyler can rope calves, head and heel on Nugget. “He’s pretty well my all-around horse,” Tyler says. His other horse is a ten year old gelding named Jiggy, who he has owned for a year. In his senior year of high school at Salem High, he bought a sale barn and ran it for a year. He sold it, made a little profit on it, and now works for the man who bought it from him.

Tyler and friend Hadley Deshazo are supplying timed event cattle this summer. They have team roping and bulldogging steers, breakaway and roping calves, and goats. This summer, they’ll have livestock at one to two rodeos each weekend, all over Arkansas, Illinois, Missouri, and Tennessee.

And if he still didn’t have enough to do, he works two days a week at another sale barn, riding horses. Tyler has gone to ACA rodeos since he was 12, and has been an ACA member for seven years. He was the 2010 breakaway champion, the 2012 steer wrestling rookie, and he qualified in the team roping from 2010 through 2013.

When he gets home at night, he has 30 mama cows to do chores for. They’ll calve in April. In twenty years, Tyler envisions himself with a much larger cattle herd and no debt. He plans on making his living in the cattle industry, whether it’s in sale barns, auctioneering, or with timed event cattle. He is the son of Sherry Jackson and Ronnie Jackson.