MEDIA CONTACTS: Perse Hooper, perse.hooper@gmail.com, 858-337-6404
Donna Hoyt, donna_infr@hotmail.com, 406-338-7684
www.infr.org
2014 INFR READY-FOR-RELEASE #2
FULL OF BULL: Rodeo Stock Contractor Charmaine Brannan
As the only female stock provider for Indian National Finals Rodeo, Charmaine ‘Bull Girl’ Brannan stands tall despite her 5’4” stature that gets lost in the shadow of the 2,000-pound bulls she raises for rodeo.
“I’m the busiest woman in this business and the only one bringing bulls to INFR competition,” she says. Speaking from her Montana home where she was completely snowed in and trying to keep livestock fed in dangerous below-zero temperatures, she acknowledged, “I’m insanely busy and barely find the time to sleep, but anything I can do to help promote the sport and benefit stock contractors, I’ll find the time for.”
Raised in the tiny California gold mining town of Coarse Gold, the member of the Chukchansi tribe grew up in a 1902 cabin where her logging family was no stranger to hard work. “My Mom was an old cowhand who raised cattle. My stepdad was a bronc rider. It was natural I’d grow up interested in animals and rodeo.”
While working for the U.S. Department of Agriculture on the mad cow program in Montana, she began involvement in Indian rodeo about 10 years ago on the Crow reservation, about the same time she bought her first bull and a handful of cows and decided to buck the good old boy system to become a feisty female in a traditionally male stock contractor world. “I don’t opt out for the easy path,” she admits.
Her two working cowboy sons, Grayson and Nathan, help when they can, but the bulk of the workload –breeding, calving, feeding, watering, loading, transporting, etc. – falls on her shoulders. “It makes for long days when you have to truck the hay, fix the fences, and wrangle stock contracts by yourself.”
Despite the difficulties, she’s been an invited INFR stock provider since 2005 when she arrived with a single two-year-old bull, Back in Black. “My numbers have grown and now I take 3 or 4 every year to INFR as well as provide stock for a lot of junior rodeos in Montana. I usually run about 50 head and keep about 15-20 that I carry to the Indian rodeos. I get hired because my bulls are well trained.”
In addition to dedication, devotion, and a lot of hard work, her secrets to stock success start with good genetics. “Confirmation is important,” she says. “A bull, like a horse, has to have a good basis --- a good set of feet and legs. That allows you to choose the ones that are readily superior to the average bulls. I don’t know if we raise better bulls in Montana, but there’s some good ones here that need to get some miles on them by being exposed to larger arenas.”
In her spare time (and when would that be?), Brannan runs her own boutique, the profits of which go into feed for her stock. “It’s a hard-scrabble existence,” she admits. “You don’t make a lot of money off providing stock and you’re always in the hole because you’ve got a lot of mouths to feed. But we do what we love. I’ve raised all my own animals. From my initial 3-bull, 5-cow herd in 2000, I’ve got two old girls left that are still making babies. Everything under my Bull Girl Bucking Bulls label is of my creation and will live out their lives with me. They become pets and part of my family.”
Look for Bull Girl and some of her family members at this year’s INFR Rodeo in Las Vegas from November 4-8, 2014 at the South Point Hotel and Casino. She’ll be loading chutes before watching her pets perform.
Charmaine “Bull girl” Brannan feeding her bulls in Montana
One of the bulls from Bull Girl Bucking Bulls
