The cowboy life

Former professional bull rider Jimmy Duggan always knew he would be a cowboy. With 18 years of bull-riding experience, having placed ninth in the Professional Bull Riders 12th in the world, and sustaining several major injuries, Duggan is not ready to throw in the ropes.

Today, Duggan has aspirations to excel in the cutting horse competition.

“My dream,” says the 45-year-old, “is to take the championship buckle and be the oldest cowboy who’s done that.”

Duggan always wanted to be a cowboy.

“I went to many rodeos and started working on the Flying J Ranch in Montana, where I got to ride horses and they taught me how to work cows,” he says. “My dad’s friend, Casey, was a bronc and bull rider who got me involved in the rodeo.”

He rode his first bull at the age 16.

“Everyone told me being a rodeo cowboy I would end up having broken bones and have no home, much like the Garth Brooks song, ‘Rodeo.’ ” But Duggan explains, “I did not want to be a logger, work in a mill, or be a farmer driving that old pickup. None of that was for me.”

Duggan joined the National Guard at 17 and enlisted in the Army at 18 but still kept riding bulls. While overseas, he competed in a rodeo in Italy.

“It was really different,” he says. “It was more of a chicken on a hot plate show,” meaning the bulls were like dairy cows and the horses were like wagon pullers, very tame in comparison. “It was good entertainment, and we liked it.”

In 1983 Duggan got out of the Army, moved to Texas and started competing in rodeos on the East Coast. To cut down on expenses, he ate a lot of ramen, hot dogs and peanut-butter sandwiches and traveled with five other buddies, leaving Thursday nights to get to rodeos in states like North and South Carolina and Mississippi.

While on the road, Duggan met many interesting and famous people, including Chris Le Doux, at a rodeo in Cheyenne, Wyo. Le Doux was a world champion bronc rider before he turned singer.

“He did not need to sing to earn a living,” Duggan says.

Duggan also competed against Tuff Heidman and Lane Frost, whom many know from the movie “8 Seconds.” Duggan was competing against Frost the day he died. Frost scored a 93 and was first in the first round; Duggan scored an 88 and took second that day.

“I learned a lot from Lane Frost,” said Duggan, “He told me you never rode for yourself; you ride for the people.”

Injuries are part of a bull rider’s life. Danger is the draw on the bull-riding circuit. And Duggan is no exception.

A ride on a bull named Bulldacious in Texas, a bull that only seven cowboys had ever ridden the full eight seconds, put Duggan in the hospital for a year.

“Bulldacious, a creamy tan bull with brown spots – 1,800 pounds of fury – was famous for dashboarding,” says Duggan. Dashboarding is when the bull comes out of the chute kicking his hind legs up so hard that the rider’s body is forced forward onto the hump and toward its head as the bull rams his horns backward. The horn got Duggan’s spleen, and his hand caught in the rope, and he could not get free. When the ride was over, “I had a ruptured spleen, a broken collarbone and broken ribs.”

Although Bulldacious gave him his biggest injury, Duggan was hospitalized two other times.

Cowboys are a tough breed physically and emotionally, but Duggan has a soft spot for kids. Today, Duggan and his wife, Rhonda, teach youngsters how to ride, to rope and just how to be a cowboy or cowgirl.

Wearing his black Stetson hat, long-sleeve shirt and sporting several different ropes, Duggan teaches young and old alike how to rope a hay bail just three feet in front of them.

“He would like to start a rodeo school on his 32-acre ranch outside of Harrison, but until then he volunteers and teaches when he can.

Duggan practices and trains to compete in cutting horse competition, where horse and rider separate a a cow from the herd and control it in the arena.

Riders steer their horse with their feet, not their hands or their knees. The better the horse can track the cow and keep it separated from the herd, the better the score.

“A lot depends on your horse,” says Duggan. “It feels strange to work so hard and to be the best of my craft and then watch other cowboys not so good as me to kick my butt because of their horses.”

That’s why he is putting a lot of time and money – more than $20,000 so far – into training his horse.

Although the horse, Turbo, a paint and quarter horse, is pregnant, Duggan plans to make her his next million-dollar ride.

And, he says, “I just want to enjoy myself.”