TWIN FALLS, Idaho — Bill Clark and his team have been hard at work preparing for the highly anticipated Bull Bash this Saturday night at the CSI Expo Center. Clark's goal is simple: "We hope [to] have some great rides and some cool wrecks and the whole deal."
It's not a full rodeo. The event is strictly bulls, with 40 riders getting a ride, and the Top-6 getting another go. The event will showcase young bull riders, including high school students and seasoned competitors.
"It'll be good bull riding, with kids from high school [to those just] starting out and getting going," Clark said. "We've got one young man that went to the National Finals Rodeo (NFR) two years ago."
With 35 years under his belt, Clark boasts a deep connection to the Magic Valley rodeo scene.
"I thought that I was a bull rider in high school, " Clark said. "Found out pretty quick that I wasn't."
Since then he's stayed close to rodeo and become a stock contractor, providing animals for rodeos throughout the Mountain West. Most of his work with bucking stock is for events in Idaho, Utah, Colorado, and Montana.
I asked high-schooler Tucker Taylor, from Jerome, what it was about riding bulls he found so exciting.
"You know, it's just fun. It's an adrenaline rush like no other," Taylor said.
Taylor was there to help Clark get the bulls into the pens. His season's been paused due to injury, and he won't ride on Saturday night, but he'll be on hand for the big show.
Taylor, like a lot of young cowboys in the area, goes back a ways with Clark and said the camaraderie in the rodeo community was a big part of what holds the whole thing together.
"Everybody's good, you know— they'll help you out with whatever," Taylor said.
And Clark has been in the Magic Valley rodeo scene long enough to see people progress to the top level of the sport.
"My main deal is probably the high school and amateur levels," Clark said. "As they go on and get to be PRCA Cowboys and go to the NFR and all that, it's pretty cool to be able to watch them. And they remember you from when they were little."
