2024 Black Hills Stock Show | Ranch Rodeo Traditions Celebrate Ranching Heritage

The ranch cowboys of the western world are celebrated each year at the Black Hills Stock Show’s Ranch Rodeo. 

Since it started in the mid 1980s, the Stock Show’s Ranch Rodeo has been the highlight for many ranch rodeo teams. 

And Gary Price and Jim Smeenk are ranch rodeo legends at the Black Hills Stock Show. 

With his team, Price, Maurine, South Dakota, has won the competition six times, and Smeenk, Newell, South Dakota, has competed at the event twenty consecutive years and won it as many times as Price.  

Smeenk was in it the first year it started, in the 1980s, and competed till the early 2000s. He was honored with a buckle for his two decades as a contestant.  

He remembers the cow riding being part of it in the early days.  

“They’d turn them out of the chute,” he said. “Then you’d have to snub them, then saddle and ride them. The riding wasn’t hard, it was getting the saddle on them. And they didn’t have the older, docile cows. It was the biddies, the handfuls,” he laughed.  

Eventually the cow riding was traded for the ranch bronc riding. 

Price remembers, in the early days, the events included the team sorting, team branding, double mugging, ranch doctoring, the wild horse ride and mutton busting.  

In his first year of competition in 1990, he was on the Uecker Yards team with Gary McCall, Wayne Chapman, and Dale Maier.    

Price also remembers the members of the 2000 team, KAT Country Radio: Dave Kennedy, Smeenk, Kirk Schuelke, and himself. They won second that year. 

Price and his son Brett were on the same team, along with Smeenk and Ora Taton, for several years: 2002 and 2004-07. Brett loved being on the same team as his dad. “It was awesome,” he said. “He’s been my hero my whole life.”  

Knowing your team members and having worked with them at each other’s ranches is an advantage, Price and Smeenk said.  

“One thing I think really helped our teams out,” Price said, “was that we all worked together, as far as trading help back and forth. We know what everybody else is going to do. You’re in your comfort zone when you do that, so you don’t have to worry about what the next guy’s going to do. He’ll be in his spot.”  

Smeenk reiterated Price’s thought. “We work cattle together, so you know how everybody works. Your team members have worked together.”  

The Ranch Rodeo represents everything the Stock Show stands for, said John Kaiser, assistant general manager.  

“It’s an event that celebrates the heritage of how things are done around here, and it celebrates the people attending the Stock Show. The ranchers are our demographic. That’s who this event is for.”  

The Ranch Rodeo is the biggest event the Stock Show produces, Kaiser said. It’s sold out every year.  

Between forty and fifty teams register to compete; prelims are held the morning of the event, this year January 30 at 10 am.  

Teams in the prelims are placed in four flights, with last year’s champion automatically qualifying for the finals in the evening.  

In the prelims, three teams at a time compete to complete three tasks as quickly as possible: with three steers, loading one into a half-top; range doctoring one, and stray gathering the last steer. All four members of the ranch rodeo team must head or heel at least one time.  

Eleven teams advance to the evening’s competition, with last year’s champs as the twelfth team. 

For the evening show, four events take place: trailer loading, with each team loading two steers as fast as possible; roping, mugging and tying a steer; heading, heeling and branding a steer, and the fourth event, the ranch bronc riding with a stock saddle.  

The event is sanctioned by the Western States Ranch Rodeo Association. Kaiser said last year, the payout was nearly $20,000, with the champion team winning saddles, Pendleton whiskey, and a traveling trophy.   

Two other awards are given out during the evening’s event: the Top Hand Award, given to the “rankest” cowboy, (he is not required to be on the winning team), and the Top Horse Award, given to the best horse.  

Price has not only won the Ranch Rodeo six times (1990, 96, 99, 2002, 2004-2005) but the Top Hand Award in 1999 and the Horse of the Year three times. The first time was with a horse he called Magnum in 1995; then next year he won it with a horse named Badger, and the third time was with a horse named Gator (1999). Son Brett won Top Hand in 2002. Smeenk won Top Hand in the 1990s.  

Both men loved the friendships and camaraderie that they found. Members from different teams got to know each other, no matter where they were from. “Even the teams from Wyoming or Montana or Kansas or Nebraska,” Smeenk said. “You got to know them, and you’d look for each other every year.”  

Both the Prices, Gary and Karen, and the Smeenks, Jim and Jean, made a day out of it, doing chores early so they could spend the day in Rapid City. “We’d leave at daylight, go for the day, and get home early the next morning,” Price said. The couples strolled through the vendors and watched cattle shows before the ranch rodeo that evening. 

Competing in Rapid City at the Stock Show is a big deal, Smeenk said. “It’s the big one of the year. We went to a number of small ones, but the Stock Show was the premier, the one you really wanted to win.”  

Kaiser said fans love watching the ranch rodeo and contestants like competing in front of a full crowd. 

The ranch rodeo is the representation of the ranching industry, he said.  

“You can see how handy these guys are,” he said. “They are true blue cowboys, the best there is. When it comes to handling a rope, a horse, or cattle, you’d be hard pressed to find horsemen who are better, in my opinion.” 

This year’s Ranch Rodeo will be held January 30th at 7 pm, with preliminaries at 10 am on the same day. Tickets can be purchased at the gate or online at BlackHillsStockShow.com.