Ep. 109 - NFR Steer Wrestler Stetson Jorgensen of Idaho
Heading towards his fourth National Finals Rodeo, Idaho’s own Stetson Jorgensen is getting ready to jump into the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas, Nevada. Changing up his preparation a little bit, he’s been running steers at a variety of places to get ready for the NFR, as well as getting in resistance band strength training with Doug Champion with Champion Living.
Beginning of Rodeo Career
Fellow Idahoan and former TWL guest, Garrett Smith had an unprecedented three-time Idaho High School All Around championship and while Garrett is also a multi-time NFR competitor in the bull riding, Stetson beat Garrett in the bull riding in high school.
“Have you cut your bull rope?” We had to ask with a laugh and while Stetson has them out of the room and out of the house and in the hands of his nephews. The last time he got on a bull it was a mechanical bull and he pulled his groin on it so Stetson plans to stay with the bulldogging.
In high school, Stetson worked both ends of the team roping, rode saddle bronc, roped calves, bulldogged, and rode bulls. In his sophomore year of high school, he broke his femur bulldogging and the first steer back he broke his wrist. He told his parents that he didn’t want to do it anymore because he kept getting hurt and it was getting int he way of his bull riding.
Stetson didn’t get back into steer wrestling until his freshman year of college and after re-learning techniques and getting on a good horse, he won four or five in a row. He didn’t look back from that.
Steer Wrestling Injuries
Your shoulders, chest, and knees take a lot of force in bulldogging so you have to be careful. “It’s pretty much controlled chaos,” says Stetson, explaining how you can take a horn to the face whether it be the eye or the teeth.
“Before I started doing resistant training… I would get body sore,” says Stetson. That comes from both the actual event of steer wrestling, but also the hours spent in the truck driving from event to event. In the timed events, you’ll run two-head go’s more often than not, meaning that you are running about 120-150 head. The steers are a minimum of 400 pounds which is lighter than they used too.
Patrionic Dash aka “Mable”
Going to college in Torrington, Wyoming, Stetson met Garrett Henry on the road and got to travel with him and Troy a couple different times. Garrett owns Mable and Troy is the one that trained her off of the racetrack. Living with his friend Payton who was an hour south of Garrett, Garrett offered Stetson a place to live there, ranch, and bulldog.
“I took all the advantage of that that I could,” says Stetson who traded work for a place to stay which was all he wanted. He got to get on Mable then and went off in 2019.
Mable is an undefeated racehorse in four starts which is an amazing record. Garrett got her at the heritage sale in Oklahoma which is where he likes to go get prospects to put into his breeding string with his studs. While all race bred, she doesn’t look like it at all and looks more cow bred.
“When he bought her off the track and still sitting in the stall, he was offered $10,000 more than what he bought her for,” says Stetson. Garrett explained that he was going to rope on her and then transfer her over to bulldogging and the guy told Garrett that he had to be “plum crazy” to think he could jump off of that horse fast enough. Garrett said, “Challenge accepted.”
First Down Dash line bred, Game Patriot, Chicks Beduino, Special Effort and more. Despite the powerhouse horse breeding, Mable’s roughly only 15 hands. Stetson’s fiancé, Kellie Collier, is a 2016 National Finals Rodeo Barrel Racing qualifier and we had to ask if Kellie had tried to take her on the barrels and while Kellie will joke about it, they never have.
Horse of the Year
The number three steer wrestling horse of the year, Mable is in a class of geldings at the top of the steer wrestling class. Prior to doing embryo transfers on her, you would have never known that she was a mare. Since then though, the embryos hav made her more hormonal so they moved to having her on a Regimen shot so that she wouldn’t cycle during the season.
Her first set of embryos are twins by PG Dryfire, a stallion now owned by Dr. Jared Sharp and his wife Whitley who have been on the podcast before. Dryfire now stands at stud in Idaho. The last few years they’ve been trying a couple different things but, despite being 12 years old, her cervix is considered “old” and it’s hard to get embryos out of her. After the NFR this year, they are going to ICSI on her and will have to stay tuned on what studs they are going to do.
The ICSI science is pretty fascinating and it’s cool to see what it’s been doing for the horse world. It provides us opportunities that we haven’t had in the past. Now we are making direct bulldogging horses instead of just taking extra barrel racing horses or race horses and giving them a new career.
How To Train A Steer Wrestling Horse
“I’m starting one that is five years old right now but you probably won’t see him until he’s seven or eight years old,” says Stetson. That first 60 feet out of the box is really hard on them and you want to take it nice and slow. You might run one, but then you’ll need to score the next dozen or so.
Mable started right out of the gate, but that just proves she’s a unicorn! Most often it takes a lot of patience and staying calm to get one trained.
Mable’s Game Plan At Rodeos
“I try not to mount a lot of people throughout the year because she isn’t mine,” says Stetson. “I’ve had that conversation with Garrett, that owns her, that we aren’t in the mounting business.”
Usually just one other guy will maybe also ride Mable for the season and Stetson does make sure to take care of guys that need to be taken care of throughout the year.
Hazing Horses
Mable actually started as a haze horse because Garrett bought two horses out of the Heritage sale and he thought the other horse was going to be faster but it wasn’t so they switched them on sides. Mable mothers up and runs with other horses pretty well.
Up until Caldwell, Idaho, this year, Stetson hauled his younger bay roan horse but switched out for a more veteran horse from the Hannum’s. They matched together and they don’t outrun each other on the run to stay together.
Arena Sizing
During the Pendleton year, you either have the finals made so you either don’t go to the wild grass of Pendleton or if you have to go, Stetson will take a different horse. Horses are smart and these horses know their jobs so they know to run their straight line, to stop and not run laps at the end. In the bigger arenas the pick up men help out in getting them caught and slowed down.
Rodeo Strategy for 2022 to Make the NFR
Starting in the winter, Stetson will only go to the big indoor rodeos like Denver, Fort Worth, San Antonio, etc. He’ll only have six rodeos or so before he goes to the California rodeos in April and that’s because the Wilderness Circuit is set up for Stetson to win $40,000 if he does what he needs to do.
“I’ll stay in that circuit for forever,” says Stetson with a laugh about the Wilderness Circuit in regards to the NFR Open monies counting towards the next year’s world standings. While he’ll most likely make the circuit finals next year, Stetson is going to try to make the Canadian Finals Rodeo this next year and that’s his new goal. He won’t be on the hunt necessarily for the NFR Open.
We saw this strategy by 2022 Resistol Rookie Barrel Racer Bayleigh Choate who stayed in Canada during the 4th of July weekend. With her dominant performance she made her first NFR and won that elusive and iconic Rookie title.
The Poanoka Rodeo in Canada is the largest 4th of July rodeo in North America and after attending it this year, Stetson was familiar with the alley score they use for the timed events that is similar to Pendleton or Prineville. You can gauge the steer going down the lane but something else they do that is unique is that you get to chute dog your steer prior to the performance so you can have some familiarization with the animal before you go live in the performance. Steers are drawn that morning and they run them through the chutes and they go down the line. It was a great moment for Stetson to make sure the steer knew how they should fall.
Sometime at the bigger slacks they’ll have a big ground throwing of them all and maybe throw a few bad ones out, but nothing like Ponoka. A bad steer would be a steer that “bows up,” “puts their head down,” or just hauls ass down the arena. “He’s really good if you can get him caught” is usually the famous words when you have one that will throw its head and hit the brakes on you after starting hard.
Bulldogging Terminology
“Throwing Beef”
“A steer that’s going to come off”
“Swing like a gate”
Steer Wrestling Jackpots
“There’s not enough,” says Stetson about stand alone jackpots. While you may see team roping jackpots, Xtreme Bulls and Broncs as well, there’s not a lot of jackpots in steer wrestlers. Rowdy Parrott puts on a big jackpot in Louisiana, Riley Duvall has one in Oklahoma and Stetson & Kellie put one on in Hereford, Texas as well.
NFR 2022 Preparation
Finishing up his rodeo season in Puyallup, Stetson took some time off by going fishing, hanging out, working on his property to get ready for his wedding in May and took a moment to relax. Kellie and Stetson met on the rodeo trail and, with her accomplished rodeo competitor mentality, it’s easy for him to talk to her about rodeo, strategy and more. But it also has resulted in the jokes that she’s dating multiple steer wrestlers because they all would go together on their dates which Stetson still laughs about.
NFR Hazer
Jace Melvin who hauled with Stetson all year is going to haze on Olin Hannum’s horse Pax. The amount of money that the hazers make is usually case-by-case, but they do get incentives for the cowboys placing.
RULE CHANGE
THE KNOCKDOWN RULE IS A VERY SIGNIFICANT RULE THAT THE JUDGE HAS TO MAKE IN A SPLIT SECOND REAL-TIME. THE KNOCK DOWN RULE IS WHEN YOU GET OFF OF YOUR HORSE ON THE STEER, IT’S WHEN THE STEERS FRONT FEET ARE ALREADY ON THE GROUND WHEN IT GOES BY YOU. HAVING A REPLAY REAL-TIME TO WATCH THOSE CALLS WOULD BE HELPFUL.
In order to get a re-run, there are a variety of options that can happen but most of them deal with the chutes, the neck rope, and an issue with the animal.