ST. PAUL – Rodeo Week in St. Paul got off to a wild and western start on Sunday with the Ranch Rodeo at the Clancy Richard Arena, as 10 teams from across the Lakeland competed in a series of five events involving riding, roping and wrestling cattle ranging from frisky calves to yearling heifers to mother cows with attitudes.
Trailer loading is a familiar task for ranch families, and Sunday’s first contest saw teams of four horseback riders seek out a yearling with the appropriate ear tag number from a good sized herd, convince it to go through a trail of panels and into a large stock trailer, then load all four of their horses in the trailer and jump into the truck.
Ruth’s Wranglers, a team consisting of Ruth Isley, Floyd Isley, Ryley Wozniak and Jeff Hallwachs took the afternoon’s first win, with a rapid time of one minute, 32 seconds.
Then it was time for sorting cattle, with teams required to cut a cow and calf pair out of a herd and move them the length of the arena to a pen, a job that the Merry Band of Idiots team, made up of Devon Bailey, Kevin Drobot, Jeremy Heraid and Paul Wanchuk, got done in a rapid 35 seconds - just one second faster than a rival team from La Corey.
The doctoring competition had each team find and rope a numbered yearling’s head and hind feet, wrestle it down and mark it with what in daily ranch life would be medication, and then repeat the process with a second animal, the fast time of four minutes, 42 seconds going to the Underdogs team of Derrick Griffith, Matt Knudsen, Curtis Tretnow and Justin Carey.
A break halfway though the doctoring competition saw the teams seek out a numbered calf, rope its head and hind legs and tie it securely enough to stay tied for six seconds, which was a second win for the Merry Band who stopped the clock in one minute, 34 seconds.
The afternoon wound up with a Breakfast Race, following the rest of the doctoring, with two teams at a time required to unsaddle one of two horses and lead it to the far end of the arena, and at the sound of the horn, fetch and saddle that horse, rope a cow and milk it, the win going to the Wolf Lake team of Andrew and Leanne Grayson, Tyler Davis and Bruce Etherington, with a time of 1:54 edging out their competitors on the James Purdy team.
