Ranch rodeo offers realistic competition

ARLINGTON -- Members of the Washington County Fair Board wanted to do something new this year.

For Jeremy Helzer of Arlington it was almost like any other day on the farm.

Helzer was a member of one of the six teams that competed Sunday in the first Washington County Fair ranch rodeo. Helzer competed with Tom Adams and Gene Anderson.

“We do a lot of these things every day,” Helzer said about some of the events in the ranch rodeo.

Washington County Fair Board member Matt Nielsen described the ranch rodeo as a competition designed for the working rancher or farmer who also has cattle.

“These events are based on things a lot of them do all the time,” Nielsen said. “It’s more realistic for them than some of the traditional rodeo events.”

The ranch rodeo featured four events, Nielsen said.

n Sorting, where the teams must remove steers from a group in numerical order. The steers have numbers attached to their backs.

n Branding, where teams must touch a steer with a branding iron. The branding iron is covered in baby powder so that it can be plainly seen that the team “branded” the steer.

n Mugging, where teams must rope, throw down and tie three of the steer’s legs together. The steer must stay down for six seconds for it to count.

n Loading, where teams must load the steers onto a trailer.

All of the events are timed.

“All of these events are based on something they would actually do on the farm or ranch,” Nielsen said.

For Helzer, Adams and Anderson, this is just part of life.

“This is what we do every day anyway,” Helzer said. “This is more real life.”

Nielsen said that was the attraction of having the event as part of the fair this year.

“A lot of fairs around have this event,” he said. “It’s getting to be more and more popular. This is a team event, but these are all local guys.”

Even though this is the first ranch rodeo at the Washington County Fair, Helzer said it isn’t the first one for this group.

“We’ve been doing these types of competitions for about four years now,” he said. “We do a lot of these. It’s fun. It’s just something different.”

“It’s wild,” said Adams. “We enjoy doing these. We have a good time.”