LAS VEGAS – The firms of Carr Pro Rodeo and Pete Carr’s Classic Pro Rodeo feature some of the greatest bucking animals in the game.
That’s why the cowboys that ride them selected 27 horses and bulls from the Carr companies to perform at the 2013 Wrangler National Finals Rodeo. It also is why Pete Carr was nominated for stock contractor of the year in the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association. Those animals paid great dividends to the cowboys who rode them over the course of the 10-day championship that took place Dec. 5-14 in Las Vegas
In fact, the top players in the sport earned a combined $156,000 on the backs of Carr animals. There were three go-round victories, from Wise Guy leading Caleb Bennett to the bareback riding title on opening night to Medicine Show and eventual world champion J.W. Harris scoring big in Round 4 to Scarlett’s Web and bareback rider Casey Colletti taking the top score in the final night of the season.
“Whenever I seen the draw last night, I was pretty excited and couldn’t sleep,” Harris said Sunday, Dec. 8, shortly after posting an 88.5-point ride on Medicine Show. “That’s a bull everybody wants to get on. He’s an old bull. He’s going to do the same thing every time, and you just have to keep up with him.
“I thought I had the bull on (the rest of the field). The bull was going to go out there and do his thing, and all I had to do was go out there and do what I’m supposed to do and stay on.”
Harris wasn’t the only one to ride Medicine Show at the NFR. Utah cowboy Steve Woolsey scored 82 points to finish third in Round 9. Between the two rides, the two bull riders earned a combined $29,748 on the bull’s back; he wasn’t the only Carr animal to help contestants to the pay window twice.
Bareback horses Kattle Katie, Dirty Jacket and Scarlett’s Web had cowboys place in both rounds in which those broncs bucked, led by Scarlett’s Web, a 12-year-old bay mare led Bennett to an 86 in Round 5 and Colletti to the Round 10 victory with an 86.5.
“I knew I had a pretty good chance to win the round,” said Colletti, who won the fifth round on the same horse in 2012. “She’s just a big bucking horse that’s stout. She has so much heart and try in her, and you can just feel her; she just gets excited in the bucking chute. She just rolls out of there and jumps, and she has a little move out of there that with a hurt knee is a little tough. Then she just leaps high in the air and kicks over her head every jump.
“If I could get on a bareback horse every day, it would be Scarlett’s Web.”
The highlight reel, though, might have come on the NFR’s opening night, when Bennett posted an 85.5-point ride on Wise Guy, a 23-year-old bay gelding that bucked at ProRodeo’s grand finale for the 16th and last time. Wise Guy was retired at the NFR later in the week and walked into the Thomas & Mack for the final time before a crowd of more than 17,000 fans.
“I was hoping they’d retire him tonight and I’d be the last one to get on him,” Bennett told the PRCA. “He’s been a great horse.
“He is actually one of the horses to have in this round based off everybody else’s talk. I knew if I did my part, he’d dang sure take me to the pay window.”