MISSOULA — It takes an insane amount of courage and strength to take down a steer running at full speed, and athletes in steer wrestling work tirelessly to achieve just that.
It is a race against the clock and the animal when the athletes, or bulldoggers as they’re known in the rodeo world, saddle up for steer wrestling.
WATCH THE VIDEO:
To the untrained eye, this event may look chaotic, but Tatum Hansen from Montana Western said it requires a lot of technical skill and precise timing for these bulldoggers to take down a steer.
“The best feeling in the world when you make a run on a steer, and they feel featherlight just because you do all your mechanics right and everything goes well,” Hansen said. “You move their momentum well enough that you just use 90% of their body weight against themselves.”
Even though only one person gets the buckle and the glory for winning, it takes a whole team of people in the chutes and on the grounds to produce a perfect takedown.
One of the most important but often overlooked contributors to the sport is the hazer, whose job is to keep the steer running in a straight line for the wrestler.
“That guy has a huge role in setting up your run,” Hansen said. “Your hazer gets out there and gets the steer lined out for you, and the best part about steer wrestling, everybody's there for everybody, you know? Everybody wants to win. Everybody wants to see everybody else do good. And it's just a big brotherhood, too, so it's just really easy.”
Although the bulldoggers compete against each other, Montana State steer wrestler Ryder Gaasch said the shared and unique experience of jumping off a horse and taking down a steer is something that unites them, unlike other rodeo events.
“We travel together and ... it's a great sport. I love it, there's two horses, an adrenaline rush,” Gaasch said. “It's just such an art that people sometimes don't really notice.”
