Susan Nance, pro­fessor of US his­tory at the Uni­ver­sity of Guelph, presen­ted a fas­cin­at­ing paperbodacious.jpg “A Star is Born to Buck: On the Devel­op­ment of Rodeo Bulls in the 1990s” at the Rural His­tory Roundtable today. Although Nance’s past work has touched on top­ics such as tour­ism under the Otto­man Empire and reli­gious parades in inter­war Chicago, her more recent work has focussed on account­ing for the absence of animal’s stor­ies in his­tor­ical schol­ar­ship. The sub­ject of her talk today is a transna­tional study of rodeo’s and per­form­ance with an emphasis on the con­tri­bu­tion of the animal — most spe­cific­ally ‘Boda­cious’, the ‘World’s Most Dan­ger­ous Bull.


Nance explores the story of Boda­cious and asks some prob­ing ques­tions of the nature of the role of the bull in the rodeo cir­cuit.
Briefly, Boda­cious was born in 1988. Although he didn’t demon­strate an imme­di­ate tend­ency to buck (we learn that buck­ing is a far from uni­ver­sal tend­ency amongst bulls — only 1 in ten will buck if rid­den) after three years on the range he joined the pro­fes­sional cir­cuit. He quickly gained the moniker ‘the Yel­low Rail’ and a repu­ta­tion for par­tic­u­larly fierce beha­vior. In rodeo par­lance, he may have star­ted as a ‘sweet’ bull, he became ‘rank’ and finally became an elim­in­ator. Nance emphas­izes that Boda­cious was always referred to as a he and not an it, was seen as an ath­lete in the ring and was sub­ject to a code of beha­viour between the rider and the bull.
The ride is an equit­able arrange­ment where each par­ti­cipant receives and indi­vidual score and has an oppor­tun­ity to demon­strate dom­in­ance — the rider when moun­ted and the bull once he has thrown the cow­boy. Boda­cious was a tough ride early on, throw­ing riders with reg­u­lar­ity, only eight times in his career were rider able to remain on his back for the full eight seconds neces­sary to gain points them­selves. Nance focusses on notice of beha­viour and whether the animal seems cap­able of mak­ing choices in this pro­cess. Its seems clear from Boda­cious’ per­form­ance that he did change his beha­vior over time and in dop­ing so viol­ated this unwrit­ten code. Boda­cious was noted for his instinct to spring right out of the chute and to with a cer­tain grace pitch from side to oppos­ite side sens­ing the shift in the cowboy’s bal­ance. How­ever, within a few years, Boda­cious also demon­strated a new move: a seem­ingly delib­er­ate per­form­ance where he would sense the rider being tossed for­ward, and imme­di­ately throw his massive head back to col­lide with the rider. He did this on mul­tiple occa­sions find­ing the rider’s face — crush­ing it hor­ribly. When three-time world cham­pion Tuff Hede­man refused to ride Boda­cious after he hav­ing fin­ished Hede­man in this way the pre­vi­ous year, the bull’s career quickly ended. When Boda­cious died in 2001 at the Andrew’s Texas ranch, the event was covered widely in the world press. The bull was a star ath­lete and a com­mer­cial suc­cess. Incid­ently, I note that Boda­cious’ notori­ety has also sparked interest from those point­ing to rodeo rid­ing as animal abuse.
For Nance, the story of Boda­cious touches on many fas­cin­at­ing aspects: How has animal beha­viour shaped cap­it­al­ism and per­form­ance? What is the nature of the nego­ti­ation between cor­por­ate spon­sor­ship and tra­di­tional per­form­ance? How much of the notori­ety was in fact a part of the animal’s beha­viour and how much pro­mo­tional myth­o­logy and mar­ket­ing?
I was quite taken with Nance’s present­a­tion and her abil­ity to truly bring a Boda­cious to life and to cap­ture the sense of the animal hav­ing a career and devel­op­ing as part of a per­ceived role. What a fas­cin­at­ing area of investigation.