The Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth will have a Fort Frances feel to it for the second-straight year.
Fort Frances natives Dean McLean and his son, Peter, will be back in Cowtown this week taking part in the wild horse racing and wild cow milking competitions at the Calgary Stampede.
The McLeans will join forces with former Canadian champ Todd Munro of Bassano, Alta. in the wild horse racing event, while Peter will team with Bassano’s Ron Manyheads in the wild cow milking.
“Three years ago, I took my boys to the Stampede,” recalled Dean, who doesn’t call any one place home these days after becoming a truck driver upon the loss of his cattle ranch here in Rainy River District several years ago.
“When we saw the wild horse racing and the wild cow milking, I said, ‘Now, that’s an event we could do.’ Now, instead of just watching the Stampede, we’re actually in it,” he remarked.
McLean got the break he was looking for while in the rodeo outfitting store of good friend Bob Bowers in Brooks, Alta., the father of professional bull rider Robert Bowers and bareback rider Kyle Bowers.
“Todd [Munro] was in the store, too” recalled McLean. “He had had a heart attack two years before and had lost his [wild horse racing] team because of his health.
“He needed a new team and asked me if I was interested.
“At first, I declined,” McLean continued. “Then I thought, how many people from here ever get to compete in the Calgary Stampede?”
Wild horse racing involves a shank man, an ear man, and a jockey trying to gain control of as many of the 20 horses available to be rounded up as possible against 19 other three-person teams.
Munro’s job on the team is to grab the shank—a long strap attached to the bridle which normally is used for walking horses—to pull the horse’s head down to the point where the ear man (McLean’s role) can keep the head still.
Then it’s up to McLean’s son as jockey to put the saddle on the horse and ride it across a pre-determined finish line. The team that guides the most horses over the finish line is the winner.
“Everything’s got to happen right, or it’s just not going to happen,” said McLean. “It was a rush when I had to do it the first time.”
That surge of emotion often is important to counteract the enormous physical punishment team members can sustain at the hands—er, hooves—of the excitable animals.
“On the second horse out at the Cloverdale rodeo last year, I broke my ribs,” noted McLean. “Peter got injured during the horse racing last year and I had to sub in for him in the wild cow milking for one day.
“It’s a blast, but it’s rough on the body,” he added. “The horses tend to kick and bite. And both the wild horse and wild cow events you’re doing over the entire 10 days of the Stampede.”
The McLeans and Munro finished eighth at the Stampede last year—earning a spot at the Canadian championships in Strathmore. McLean was blunt in evaluating the team’s performance there.
“We didn’t do anything in Strathmore,” he said. “We want to get back and try again.”
The top eight finishers at the Stampede are eligible to go to Strathmore, with the top two from there advancing to the “national” finals in South Dakota later this year.
Meanwhile, the milking mayhem involves a two-man team required to first rope a cow around the horns in a legal fashion (which means the rope cannot go around either only one horn or the animal’s head to force it to lift one foot up).
One team member—known as a “mudder”—must reach up and hold the cow’s horns while his teammate milks the four-legged beast. They then must outrace their opponents across a finish line with their bucket of milk, with points awarded based on both time and quantity of milk.
It’s a dangerous undertaking, but one McLean is confident his son can handle.
“Pete’s been around cattle all his life,” said McLean. “He’s not afraid to do it.”
Fort Frances Times
Local News from Across the Rainy River District
