LAS VEGAS (October 25, 2010) - Bones missed six months of competition for various reasons throughout the 2010 season. But when it counted most, he was at his best.
On Sunday, the star of Tom Teague Bucking Bulls won his second PBR World Champion Bull competition during the short-go of the Built Ford Tough World Finals. The judges marked him 47.25 points for a two-out total of 92.5, a point higher than the stellar Bushwacker and Major Payne.
“Everything fell into place because Bones has been bucking that good,” said PBR Livestock Director Cody Lambert, who selects the bulls for Built Ford Tough Series events.
Bones was bucked 12 times this season – all at Cup Series contests – and two men covered him: Shane Proctor for 91.25 points in New York andValdiron de Oliveira for 89.5 at the Iron Cowboy Invitational in Arlington, Texas, in February. He didn’t buck again until August.
Teague said he held Bones out of competition for three reasons: breeding, an injury he sustained to his right hind leg, and Teague's philosophy on how often a bull should buck.
“We took him to Louisiana and when we got him down there, Phil Trivette noticed that he wasn’t walking properly,” Teague recalled on the Thomas & Mack Center stage. “So we didn’t buck him and we brought him back and they put kind of a cast on his leg, and we had to leave it on there for a good month. And we had him breeding some, too. So between being hurt and that, that was the deal.
“But, you know, it’s just like a basketball team or anything else, you want them to come together when you get them to an event like this. I don’t kill my bulls; I want to take care of ’em. This joke about taking them to every event in the world and wearing ’em out, they can talk all they want to about that and they can say, ‘Well that’s the way you tell a good bull,’ but not in my view.
“I want to take them to as many as the PBR wants me to, but on the other side of the coin, I’m not going to abuse my animals.”
Since returning to competition in Nashville, Tenn., Bones bucked twice in August, twice in September, and twice at the PBR Finals. Lambert said he thinks the increased activity benefitted the North Carolina-born and bred 7-year-old.
“He was getting in great bucking shape,” he said. “You can exercise them doing different things, but to really use all of the muscles that they use bucking, they need to be bucked a little more. And that’s the thing. They hauled him a little more at the end of the year and he’s in great shape.”
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