“It takes a dang good bull” to keep up in the bull-raising business anymore. With the advent of ever-developing bull-riding organizations like Professional Bull Riders and Championship Bull Riding, a lot has changed since Derrel Hargis started in the business in 1972.
Hargis started riding bulls at the age of fifteen and he has been interested in bucking bulls ever since. “All we ever did was rodeo,” recalled Hargis, “and so we had a lot of bulls out there at the house, and we started leasing them out to various rodeos.” By the time Hargis graduated from high school, he was so busy hauling bulls to and from rodeos, and leasing them out that he had little time for bull-riding. However, the interest sparked by his love of bull-riding eventually led him to sell his first bucking bull at the age of eighteen.
“That first one was just a stroke of luck,” said Hargis modestly; a stroke of luck that eventually led to a career of success and accomplishment. Since then, Hargis has built a business with about 60 cows and anywhere between 100 to 120 bulls at one time. He has also raised several superior bulls including Grasshopper who won Bucking Bull of the Year in the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association, Neon Nights who was a PBR finalist, Strawberry Wine who was Bull of the Finals in PBR, and Blueberry Wine who was a runner-up Bull of the Finals in PBR twice. While there is an element of luck to raising quality bucking bulls, for the most part it takes a lot of hard work and dedication to raise bulls of this caliber.
“You have to work really hard to keep your breeding program right up there at the top,” said Hargis. “You have to raise about two to three superstars per year to keep yourself in business. The PBR keeps getting bigger and you have to stay with it to raise really good bulls. If you stub your toe one year and raise some sorry ones, it’s not long until you’re out of business because the buyers stop calling you in a hurry.” It also takes a lot of work to insure that absolutely no bad traits are passed on to the next generation of bulls. “You have to be really careful so that you don’t breed faults,” explains Hargis, because it is such a genetic process. “One bull would jump out to the left every time it came out of the gate,” Hargis recalled explaining how much genetics plays a role in breeding. “We bred seventeen bull calves out of him and every single one of them jumped out to the left,” just like their father. This is why it so crucial to find “a perfect bull… No matter how much you may like one, if it has a fault, you can’t breed him.”
All of this dedication and precision eventually pays off when your bull actually does well, but when asked what his greatest achievement in the business was, Hargis simply replied, “All of the good bulls I count as achievements. There have been some highlights, but it is more about getting your name out there than anything. For example, even though Blueberry Wine never got bull of the year, he got runner-up two times and more people probably know him more than any of the ones that won bull of the year. Bulls like Blueberry Wine are your bread and butter because they keep your name out in front of everybody.”
Now with his “name out in front of everybody,” Hargis’s plans for the future are simple: “Keep trying to raise another good one,” and if the past is any indication of the future, he is sure to raise quite a few good ones in the years to come.
By Josh Forrester
