DAM TENDER DONNIE MAY ROPES STEERS FOR FUN, PROFIT AND ‘BIG BELT BUCKLES’

Dam tender Donnie May, right, atop Jackpot, and his partner Robert Gonzalez show their prize-winning form in a team roping event in February at Laughlin, Nev. -- Photo © by Brenda Allen

As soon as his horns pass an electronic-eye barrier 12 feet out in the arena, two mounted cowboys charge after him. Both cradle nylon ropes in their gloved hands, and neither rope is tied to the saddle horn. The cowboys have got to work together as tightly as Stockton and Malone, as quickly as Davey Lopes to Bill Russell. They’ve got to do it while riding and guiding a galloping horse. And they’ve got to do it with a seriously bad-tempered bovine.

One man’s a header, the other a heeler. The header must throw his rope over the steer’s horns, then “dally,” or wrap it, around his saddle horn and turn the steer leftward. The heeler, trailing, must throw his rope around the steer’s hind feet, then dally his own rope. As soon as header faces heeler, the event is over and they get their time. It’s always a matter of a few seconds: six to nine will win a prize, double-digits probably won’t. If they leave the chute before the steer crosses the electronic beam, 10 seconds are added to their time; if they only get one foot, it’s five more seconds.

Welcome to team roping--a staple of cow-camps in frontier days, a feature at pro and amateur rodeos for decades, now entering a new phase of family participation. It probably started “when a couple of cowhands challenged they could stretch a steer for branding faster than their buddies; another checked with his watch and the sport was born,” says the U.S. Team Roping Championship (USTRC) Web site.

Which brings us to Donnie May, L.A. District dam tender at the Painted Rock Dam in Arizona. He’s practicing to compete in the national championships at Oklahoma City in late October. He, his partner Robert Gonzales and their horses—Mays’ is the aptly named “Jackpot”—will load up their truck and trailer and head east for the roundup. The team qualified by finishing second in their class at the Arizona championships in February. Competing against more than 300 other entries, May and Gonzalez won $7,128 out of a purse of nearly $56,000. “And a big belt buckle too,” May drawls. “Oklahoma City will pay like a slot machine.”

Oklahoma City is also the largest equestrian event in the world. Ropers from all over North America will compete for cash and prizes totaling nearly $4 million. Until 1990 amateurs and beginners had to wrangle with professionals, but now USTRC puts people of like expertise together and they compete on a fair footing with one another. “”Everybody has a little bit of cowboy in them,” says Kirk Bray, president of the association. “A team roper just has to have a horse, a rope and a love for the sport.”

May has all three. The 24-year Corps veteran is one of those real-deal Westerners who uses “cowboy” and “rodeo” as verbs. He learned to cowboy “when I was big enough to get on a horse” at a west Texas ranch and started “drawin’ wages” for it when he was 13. After a tour with the Marines, he entered his first team-roping event in 1967 while living in Santa Ana, Calif. “I just kinda learned in California,” he recalls.

He moved to Arizona in 1976 and joined the Corps three years later. Not long afterwards, he became a dam tender at Painted Rock Dam. Built in 1959 as a major flood control project in the Gila River Drainage Basin, the earthfill dam demands close attention. It has a drainage area of nearly 51,000 square miles, its crest reaches more than 700 feet and it’s 500 feet shy of a mile long. Less than a mile away is the Painted Rock Petroglyph Site, popular with tourists and scientists alike.

May dropped out of team roping for 20 years, after he got married and because he had trouble with crippled horses. “Then they came up with this new association deal (the USTRC), and there was a lot of money out there,” he explains. No bull. Last year USTRC delivered nearly $19.5 million in cash and prizes to its members, with the national finals topping $3.9 million in cash and prizes. The outfit classifies almost 19,000 team ropers, according to their handicaps, across North America. A “1,” for example, signifies a beginner; “9” is a world champ. May, the header, is a “2,” and his partner Gonzales, the heeler, is a “3.”

To get a feel for what happens on horseback, here’s what roper Speed Williams wrote to Ropers Sports News: “We’d been roping aggressively and when I roped the steer, he slowed up and the slack hit him in the left side, then bounced up and hickeyed the left horn. Sometimes you can throw your slack up and it will pull it off the left horn. As it happened, I’d dallied and started left and I came back and tried to pop it off, but the steer had little ‘cow horns’ and I couldn’t get it off.” Speed and his partner had no beef about that one—they lost.

A roper’s horse can spell the difference between paydirt and plain ol’ dirt. Jackpot is an 11-year-old quarter horse, and although he and May have been together nine years, they’ve roped together only the past three. “A horse makes a lot of difference,” says Burl Stewart, co-owner of the North American Team Roping Assn. “His speed, his ability to handle cattle, to turn ‘em and control ‘em.”

May, his wife Myrna and Jackpot all live at the Painted Rock Dam. When he resumed team roping, he built a small arena nearby and sometimes practiced there. Right now no steers are on site, but May plans to bring some out soon to work with. No matter how much he practices, however, May says: “There’s a lotta luck in this. You got two men, two horses and a steer. If you draw a bad steer, you can’t win. One guy may get a steer that don’t run, and yours is running all over. It puts you behind.

“There’s a lotta luck involved,” he repeats. “Just like playing poker.”

But with Gonzalez and his quarter horse in Oklahoma City, May just might hit the Jackpot.