Unlikely Champion
2008's top bull started out skinny and skittish
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PUEBLO, Colo. (November 19, 2008) - Looks can be deceiving.
There’s a reason Lee Holt gave Bones, the newly crowned 2008 World Champion Bull, the name he did. When he first arrived in Graham, N.C., which is about 30 minutes east of Greensboro, the 10-month old was nothing more than a “little bag of bones,” said Holt.
“Oh, he was pitiful,” he said. “He was the poorest little thing. That’s the reason I call him Bones. That’s all he was.”
At the time, Bones wouldn’t eat and his hip bone actually stuck out from him about 12 inches on either side. In fact, he was so scrawny that Tom Teague had Holt separated him from the other bulls because he wouldn’t defend himself when the others picked at him.
However, Bones, who was born March 21, 2003, would always hang near the barn, and gradually he started to gain more weight.
Eventually, with each passing year, Bones began to fill out, and although at 1,550 pounds the now 5-year-old doesn’t look like a dominating bucking bull, he has quickly established himself as one of the more athletic bovines used by PBR livestock director Cody Lambert.
“He’s the total package,” said Lambert, who noted that Bones excels in all five categories judges look for when scoring a bull – buck, kick, direction change, intensity and degree of difficulty. “He jumps higher than most bulls…and then when he kicks in the back end, it drives his front end into the ground, so he when he drops it makes him stronger.”
And that’s exactly what happened when Justin McBride got on him in Round 4 of the 2008 PBR World Finals.
As with his first attempt in Columbus, Ohio, the two-time World Champion was sitting right in the middle and thought he had Bones figured out, but McBride “could see nothing but the ground right in front of his hand,” Lambert said. “That’s how much drop he has.”
“He’s more or less an athlete,” Holt added. “He doesn’t look like a bucking bull.”
Teague, who’s purchased World Champions like Big Bucks, Mossy Oak Mudslinger and the famous Little Yellow Jacket, hasn’t been raising bulls for long, so to have this much success with one of his own this early – less than 10 years into his breeding program – is all the more special.
“Oh, man, it’s great,” Teague said. “Everybody told me that it would be different. They were right. It’s totally different.”
Teague was born and raised in Graham, where he founded and operates Salem NationaLease Truck Leasing, and first got involved in the PBR as a board member shortly after the original PBR founders hired Randy Bernard as its CEO.
His ranch is co-managed by his brother Randy Teague and Holt, while Boyce Knox transports and handles Teague’s livestock at PBR events.
“I guess what I like about (Bones) is that bull was born and raised on a Teague ranch,” said Knox, who like Holt never thought Bones would become a World-Champion-caliber bull. “He wasn’t a bull that (Tom) went out and bought and paid a bunch of money for. That makes it real special—to raise one, it takes more than money to do that.”
Once they got the gaunt looking bovine to fill out and put on weight, Holt and Knox had yet another problem to overcome—Bones didn’t seem to like traveling away from his familiar pasture.
Every Tuesday morning, Knox would load Bones onto a trailer and haul him along with several other bulls to a small bull riding event just across the North Carolina border into Virginia.
But he would oftentimes go an entire trip without eating, and sometimes he wouldn’t even drink.
“You take a bull and they’ll do real good at home,” Knox explained, “but if you put ‘em on a truck and haul ‘em somewhere else, their environment changes. You have to get ‘em to eat no matter where they’re at.”
For Knox, it was less about putting a dummy on the back of the then 2-year-old and more about recreating the routine of what it was like going to an event.
What he came up with was driving to Teague’s ranch in Graham, loading Bones onto a trailer and then hauling him two hours west to his ranch Statesville for the weekend.
“It got to where if you took him somewhere on the weekend he was liable to lose 100 pounds,” Knox recalled. “He got so nervous and tore up when I would take him somewhere. Now he’s calm and he stands up in the chute.”
A late bloomer (or as Teague said, “He was just late to mature,”) it was no surprise that it took a little more than half of the 2008 season for him to prove his potential.
He had a less than stellar outing in Kansas City, but still managed to buck off Clayton Williams. He followed that up with a much better outing in Orlando, where he sent Ednei Caminhas to the dirt. But it was in Tulsa that he caught everyone’s attention.
In Round 2 he made quick work of Brian Canter and was slated to face Guilherme Marchi in Round 3.
“Tom called me that day,” Knox said, “and he said, ‘Oh my goodness we got Guilherme. Are you nervous?’ … I said, ‘One good thing about it is that we’re going to find out today what he’s made of and not really be guessing anymore.’”
“When he bucked Marchi off I asked him, ‘What did you think of the bull?’” Teague recalled. “And he said, ‘The bull is very smart and he is very strong.’ … That was the first indication that we really thought he was something pretty darn special.”
Bones was special all right.
After his stellar showing in Tulsa, Lambert decided to try using him in the short go (a decision he would not regret).
Bones met up with McKennon Wimberly, Caminhas for a second time, and McBride, in Nashville, Jacksonville and Columbus. All three times he not only did his job by bucking off the best, he also came away from each respective event as the high-marked bull.
So it was no surprise, especially after taking down McBride in Columbus, that the Top 45 riders would vote Bones as one of the Top 5 finalists of the year.
At the Finals he bucked off McBride for a second time this season in Round 2 (47), then in Round 4 he took care of business with Zack Brown (46.50) and clinched the world title in Round 8 when he sent Guilherme Marchi (who up to that point had covered all seven bulls) to the dirt for a high-marked out of 47.25.
“He’s a mess, but he’s a good bull,” said Holt, who said the bovine responds to his name much like a canine would. “I told Mr. Teague one day that Bones has a good shot at getting bull of the year and he said, ‘Oh, no he doesn’t.’ I said, ‘You just watch.’ I always believed in him.”
“Truthfully, I didn’t think he was going to be special,” Teague said. “And, to be honest with you, I would have never thought the bull would have made anything. He was just kind of a raw-boned bull and he didn’t look like anything that he’s turned out to be.”
Bone Collector
Known for his jumping, Bone Collector, who is the father of Bones, may well have passed down to his offspring – Bones and Red Bull – an ability to jump and kick that is superior to their competitors.
The following is a story recalled by Tom Teague after purchasing the bovine from Robbie Harrington.
“(Bone Collector) was a good bull and he was a big jumper, so that’s where I think Bones gets a lot of his jumping ability from. Cody (Lambert) told me, ‘I should have told you not to buy (Bone Collector). That bull jumps from one pasture to the other.’
“I had a neighbor down at my ranch in Texas and we had about five miles of fence that we needed to put up – I wanted to high-fence my place – so I called my neighbor and I asked him, ‘Would you be interested in paying for half of the fence to high fence it so deer or cattle wouldn’t get between the two of us?’ And he said he’s not interested.
“Robbie Harrington had (Bone Collector) and J.W. Hart bought him for me at an auction at Robbie’s, and I think I paid $6,000 for him. Well, when the guy turned me down on the fence it was at about $10,000 a mile to put that fence up like we were talking about and would have been $50,000 on the deal. I didn’t put the fence up, but anyhow I had Bone Collector there and after he bred all of my cows – my neighbor had pure bred Santa Gratuitas – he jumps over and goes there and breeds a bunch of his, so when they started calving the guy calls me up and said, ‘I’m ready to pay for half of that fence.’ So that bull, right then, made me about $20,000. It was a good investment for me.
“Another good one J.W. Hart told me. I walked into a room one night and he was in there putting rosin on his rope and he said, ‘Come here Tom, I’m going to cut your throat.’ He said, ‘It’ll be easy. My knife’s sharp.’ I said, ‘What are you talking about?’ He said, ‘That (darn) bull that I bought for you jumped out and made love to every cow, and all my neighbors hate me know.’ He said, ‘He’s cost me a fortune jumping out of everything.’ I think that’s where (Bones) gets a lot of his jumping ability.”
—by Keith Ryan Cartwright
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