Bruce Davidson: Should've Been A Cowboy?
Thanks to Morag O'Hanlon for the photos, video, and write-up!
Ocala in the Winter really does feel like the horse capital of the world. There is something horsey going on every day if you know where to look. The highlight of my one and only weekend in Ocala was watching Bruce Wayne, er, I mean....Davidson, riding the range. Bruce Davidson and Chuck Waters were splendidly mounted on two of Chuck's beautiful Western horses. Bruce had gone over to 'Waterworks' for a sneaky practice or two and on Sunday, he and Chuck were having a great time doing 'Ranch Sorting.'
It consists of two big roundpens with a gateway between them. 10 little cows come in, all wearing numbers on their backs from 0 - 9. The trick is to get the little cows through the gateway in the right order. One of the two man team parks his horse in the gateway and spins it right or left to either make a gate or a passageway depending on whether or not the right little critter is galloping toward them. This person also has to do a great deal of 'Ya Ya' with sufficient volume to turn the wrong little critters back! Meanwhile the second member of the team is cutting his calf out of the herd and chasing it's ass to the gateway and through. When you see a practiced team working together it's very fast and done against the clock. Wrong number goes through - you lose.
Originally I was meant to be flying back home on the Sunday but there was nothing going to make me miss seeing Bruce Davidson done up in his best Western duds and cutting cattle.
Bruce and Chuck did three 'sets'. The first one was OK, the second one was AMAZING and the third one had a few recalcitrant cows in the herd.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment