Buckaroo John's Blog

Most women of the 1800's learned to ride out of necessity from helping on the ranch and practicing the skills of the range. From an early age, women could stay in the saddle, break a bronc and rope a steer. In the late 1800's, the younger horsewomen began competing against males in a yearly gathering of herds -which progressed into participating in rodeo's. The first rodeos began in the mid-1800 when thousands of cattle and horses were driven to town for the yearly round-up. The cowboys were eager for relaxation and would compete in tests of skills like roping, breaking horses,...

Chaps, short for chaparajos, were originally worn by cowboys as protective garments.  Chaps are now used for both decorative and practical reasons.  Chaps originated in the countries of Spain and Mexico. Riders wore them while working cattle, as they formed a protective shield over the rider’s legs and the horse's chest. While serving those purposes quite well, they were bulky and hard to work with; which is when today’s chaps were developed. There are several types of chaps.  Originally, the most common type of chaps were batwings. These consisted of an outer layer of leather, typically they had three clasps...

If you have fallen in love with the Vaquero style of tack and riding, you've most certainly seen rawhide. If you've never looked into the art of rawhide braiding, I strongly recommend doing so, as it is rumored to be a dying art form and will give you an immense amount of appreciation for the time and talent that goes into making pieces. Rawhide can be used as accents on bridles, reins and breast collars. It is used for bosals and even entire bridles and rein sets. They are treasures to see and to own, and one must care for...

This is the quality AMERICAN made western leather loping hackamore bridle you've heard about from cutters and anyone wanting a bitless bridle! This is a round caveson hackamore designed to fit low on your horse's nose and, because it is round, it works more like a sidepull than a hackamore, with a side to side action. It is generally used to lope cutting horses to keep their mouths soft. It has our working 3/4" harness leather double cheek adjustment headstall with a hand braided fiador (throat latch), which is adjustable to hold the fine quality braided rawhide noseband-caveson in position....

The reata (or riata) was a long braided rawhide rope used by the early Mexican Vaqueros and was no doubt first introduced into Mexico by the Spanish conquerors. Reata is from the Spanish word "reatar," meaning "to retie," or "to rope," which ties one animal to another. Though the word reata is often used to refer to any rope, the genuine Vaquero reata was and is a special item. It was usually 40 to 80 feet long and made from twisted strands of rawhide. The finest riatas used rawhide strands, cut by experts, from the primest part of several young heifer...