ONIDA, S.D. (AP) - After Bad Habit’s four trips to star under the bright lights of the National Finals Rodeo in Vegas and bucking off 98 of the 100 cowboys who climbed on his back the past four years, you’d think the red bull must be bummed about being retired from his glory days as a pro bucker and turned out to pasture.
Not hardly.
His bucking days may be over, but sharing the 160 acres of grass with him here on the Warne Cattle Co. ranch are the 19 cows which now are his day - and night — job.
The big, red, long-eared bull does have a sort of “somebody’s got to do it” look on his face as he follows his harem and their May-born calves around the pasture, the Pierre Capital Journal (https://bit.ly/1hEI3o1 ) reported.
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Randy Warne bred and raised Bad Habit, who is 8. He also owns his father, Bad Action, who is 12 and red and following his own harem around about a mile away.
Bad Habit’s pedigree goes back four generations of red championship bucking bulls.
“His dad, Bad Action, bucked at the PBR (Professional Bull Riders) Finals in Vegas, where Justin McBride, the PBR champ, scored 94.5 on him,” Warne said. “His grandfather, Action Cat, bucked at the NFR and his great-grandfather, Hornet, was at the NFR. So he’s got four generations of bulls who have been to Vegas.”
And it appears Bad Habit is passing it on.
Six of Bad Habit’s sons, conceived during his pre-rodeo spree in 2010, are bucking at rodeos on the West Coast, Warne said.
“To get a bull that bucks and is a breeding bull, is pretty unusual,” Warne said. “Just ’cause a bull bucks, doesn’t mean he’s going to produce calves that buck.”
Bad Habit seems to have both talents covered.
One of the only two cowboys who stayed on Bad Habit for eight seconds out of his 100 rides, was Sage Kimzey, who was a champion bull rider and it was at the NFR last year.
Bad Habit’s last ride was the last weekend in June in Dickinson, North Dakota. He tossed the cowboy before eight-second bell sounded.
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On July 25, Warne turned him out with 19 cows, plus the spring calves still trailing their mothers around.
The small herd is surprisingly spooky in the half-mile-square pasture, more like deer than regular cattle that normally stand and stare as humans approach in a utility vehicle.
But Bad Habit and his cows hightail it away, before Warne’s Polaris Ranger gets within 250 yards.
“They are not gentle,” he said. “They are high-strung. It’s bred into them. But they are not mean.”
He calls them “rodeo cows,” because they are defined more by their purpose than their look or lineage. They all have the Brahma blood that gives them the long, droopy ears and hump. But then it might be Longhorn, and/or Hereford, and/or Angus, and who knows what else.
“I really have no idea,” Warne said. “If you could do a DNA test on them, I don’t even know what would turn out. It’s hybrid vigor, I guess.”
Warne provides most of the bulls contracted through Korkow Rodeo nearby, using their license.
He doesn’t sell his bulls to other rodeo people much.
“They are not for sale,” he said “I raise ’em to watch ’em buck.”
Many of the top stock contractors buy their bulls. Not Warne.
“Every bull I buck, I raise.”
But he winnows his herd, based on performance.
His late bull, Black Velvet, bucked at the 2011 NFR, winning - with “his” cowboy - the eighth go-round, buckle.
“His feet got bad, I sold him,” he said.
He was ready Wednesday to load up seven or eight bulls that aren’t cutting it anymore as buckers and haul them to Mobridge to be sold for slaughter.
“I took a few of these bulls to the state 4-H rodeo finals in Fort Pierre over the weekend,” he said. “My attitude is if a 4-H kid can ride a bucking bull, I don’t want him.”
Like Black Velvet, the bulls he sells in Mobridge Thursday will end up filling hot dogs and topping pizzas.
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Warne is a fourth-generation rancher and farmer here.
Warne’s great-grandfather came from New York to homestead here.
“My son is 44, he’s the fifth generation.”
Warne’s father, Lee, came back from serving with the Army in Europe in World War II.
“He raised cattle and horses. He got the brand,” Warne said of the V over an O burned into the flanks of his cattle and painted on his equipment. “He drank Seagram’s VO whiskey.”
Warne himself is a former rodeo cowboy.
“I rode bulls for years,” he said.
Until two years ago, Warne, his wife, Nora, and their family fed 1,500 steers on the place.
But now he’s turned what was a hobby years ago into a devotion to breeding and raising rodeo bulls from his 60 rodeo cows.
“We used to handle a lot of cattle,” Warne said. “But I wanted to slow down and mess with these bulls.”
Many of the big pens and corrals on his place stand empty.
“Right now I have 94 bulls on the place,” he said. “I’m kind of retired.”
Every morning Warne feeds cracked corn to his team of bucking bulls who are working rodeos this summer to supplement their grass diet.
“Each one gets 13 and a half pounds of grain,” he said. “It’s like race horses. You don’t get a Kentucky Derby winner by feeding him ditch hay.”
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Size does matter with bucking bulls, he said.
“I like big bulls,” Warne said.
Bad Habit weighs 1,700 to 1,800 pounds, some 100 pounds more than the average rodeo bull and a good 250 pounds more than his dad, Bad Action, he said.
But bucking talent can be like racing talent in horses, he said.
“It’s in their blood, they either will or they won’t.”
To find out early, he has a big indoor arena with chutes and pens, where he mounts “dummies” on two-year-old bulls. Using the electric trunk latch from cars as part of an electronic torso for the dummies allows him to release the dummy after four or six seconds of bucking.
“They either can or they can’t,” he said.
The young rookies that show no promise as buckers get shipped off to become meat.
One year, Warne tried artificial insemination to bring in “outside’ genes, doing breeding like so many do.
“I never got anything to buck,” he said of his AI progeny.
So he went back to the natural, pastoral way.
Bad Habit hasn’t complained so far.
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Information from: Pierre Capital Journal, https://www.capjournal.com
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