The 18-year-old retired bucking bull named Bushwacker was lying underneath a tree when he stood up, walked to his favorite spot, laid down again, and peacefully passed away in an Oklahoma pasture in early July.
The three-time YETI World Champion is hailed as one of the most storied bulls of all time, becoming a fan favorite who bucked off 42 consecutive cowboys, a record that was not beaten until the 2024 PBR World Finals. Altogether, during his six-year-long bucking career that began in 2009, he defeated 84 out of 87 riders.
“It’s been tough,” Julio Moreno, a California stock contractor and one of Bushwacker’s partners, told PBR.com. “It’s like losing your own kid. I lost a son to cancer when he was 17 years old, and I always told everybody that he was going to be my World Champion, and now Bushwacker’s my World Champion.”
Famous bull rider J.B. Mauney made a historic ride on Bushwacker with a 95.25 score in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 2013 — Mauney’s ninth time attempting to ride Bushwacker.
Throughout his career, the bull was featured in The Wall Street Journal, the body issue of ESPN The Magazine, USA Today, and CBS This Morning, and was even depicted in the locker room of the Kansa City Chiefs.
“That bull is everything,” nine-time world champion and PBR co-founder Ty Murray told PBR.com in 2011. “He’s like Michael Jordan. If you go down the list of attributes that a bull should have, you have to give him an A for all of them. He’s big, He’s strong. He’s fast. He’s quick. He’s smart. He feels for the rider. He has huge jumps and huge kicks. He’s really powerful.
But it didn’t all start that way. Julio Moreno and his ex-wife, Kindra Pierce, selected Reindeer Dippin’ for the heifer Diamond Ghost, a cross that would produce the unassuming red bull calf.
A lot of training goes into young bulls, after they are weaned, bulls start learning the ropes, and walking through the working facilities and chutes becomes routine for them as part of their conditioning process.
Young bulls often start their career as weanlings or yearlings with a bucking dummy, a 15- to 16-pound tool that takes the place of a rider and only puts weight on the animal’s back.
Moreno and Pierce started bucking Bushwacker as a yearling.
“He wasn’t very good with the dummy,” Pierce told AGDAILY. “But he still qualified for finals, a lower caliber for bulls back then. If he were a futurity animal today, he probably wouldn’t have been considered competing with him beyond testing him with a dummy.”
In fact, many breeders would have probably culled Bushwacker. He would buck, but he would buck too late. But, “he was explosive, so we didn’t lose hope,” Pierce explained. “But, you can’t make a bull buck. They’re bred to do it, and they’re either going to do it or not.”
In his 2-year-old year, though, things didn’t get better, and Bushwacker failed to place in competitions. So, he came home to grow up until June of his third year.
“We took Bushwacker to a practice pen in Reno, Nevada, where he bucked for the first time with a rider,” Pierce reminisced. “We bucked him on a right-hand delivery. The only time he’s been bucked on a right-hand delivery. And, we realized he really wanted to play the part.”
From that point, history speaks for itself. Buchwaker attended his first PBR event in Santa Barbara, California, bucking Chad Denton off in the short round in 3.1 seconds. As a 3-year-old, he placed third at the ABBI World Finals as a Classic bull.
After a few months off, as a 4-year-old, he bucked off 11 riders on the premier series and 21 riders overall, winning the 2010 ABBI Classic Championship in Las Vegas and earning several hundreds of thousands of dollars as a competition bull.
“Then, Bushwacker went on to win the PBR Finals as a world champion bull,” Pierce said. “He won three more world championships throughout his career, including two reserve PBR world champions, three world champions in the PBR, and the World Champion ABBI bull.”
Along the way, some of Bushwacker’s owners and handlers developed a special kind of respect for the 1,700-pound bull.
“He was very mean as a calf,” Pierce quipped. “I can’t tell you how many times he tried to hook us horseback because it was … excessive.”
After going to work as a 3-year-old again, he eventually calmed down.
“Eventually, I was the first person to be able to scratch him. He knew my voice, and he’d walk right up to the pen,” Pierce said. “These bulls are very smart.”
Once he was in the bucking chute, Bushwacker was all business.
“It was almost an intimidation factor for riders. He’d stand there and not move at all,” Pierce said. “But, once you opened the chute gate, it was a whole different story.”
Throughout their careers, bulls are maintained with conditioning and nutrition programs, just like any athlete. But, much like their human counterparts, sports injuries also happen during bullriding.
In 2011, two months after bucking off Cord McCoy at the PBR World Finals, Bushwacker had surgery to fix a fractured bone in the fetlock of his right leg. Dr. Gary Warner performed surgery on the bull and saved him.
“He went on to win two world championships afterward,” said Pierce. He retired at 8 years old at the 2014 World Finals in Las Vegas.
Eighteen years is a long life for a bull. Although bulls can live 10 to 12 years, most commercial bulls are culled from the herd after four or five years when structural, fertility, or temperament issues come into play, or they’re injured.
One of Bushwacker’s traveling partners, Mr. Bull, also lived to be 18 years old.
“Mr. Bull was my buddy,” Pierce said. “But, some of these special bucking bulls receive such special care, they live a long time, being taken care of as if they were still going down the road. You see the setbacks, trials, and tribulations they go through as an athlete, and then to see them do well, get to the NRF, the PBR finals … I don’t know if I can put it into words, it’s a pretty good feeling knowing what they’ve gone on to do.”
It’s not uncommon for revered bulls to find their way to retirement pastures where they remain cared for. Mauney owns Arctic Assassin, who in 2023, he broke his neck on after being thrown.
@ryan_osborne J.B. Mauney broke his neck on Arctic Assassin, but there’s no hard feelings #jbmauney #bullriding #pbr #rodeo @ryan_osborne ♬ original sound – ryan_osborne
Bushwacker’s progeny aren’t competing — he has sons and daughters producing and helping to carry on his legacy. In total, he sired 152 registered offspring with the ABBI.
Pierce and her fiance, Lon Danley, are raising bulls, horses, and beef cattle in La Luz, New Mexico.
“I’m not sure if we’ll ever get close to the accolades Bushwacker accomplished,” Pierce said, but we’re driven to get there.”
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Heidi Crnkovic, is the Associate Editor for AGDAILY. She is a New Mexico native with deep-seated roots in the Southwest and a passion for all things agriculture.
