This past week I’ve been in Nebraska at the Pitzer ranch spring sale. I have a long history with Pitzer ranch horses, so while I was up there I wrote several articles about the Pitzer ranch and my experiences with their horses. This story starts about thirty years ago at the Heavener rodeo arena.
About thirty years ago when I was fifteen or sixteen years old I bought my first Two Eyed Jack horse. His pedigree went back to the Pitzer ranch, and oh what a story it became.
My dad worked on the railroad with a man named Ron Oldaker. Ron had a sorrel gelding with a big bald face and four white socks up to his knees. Ron liked to team rope. He called this horse Bunny. Ron would run thirty or forty steers some times on that horse. Bunny never got mad and worked every time, and at that time he was a five year old.
Two Eyed Jack was owned by the Pitzer ranch in Nebraska. Two Eyed Jack is in the Hall of Fame now. He’s one of the greatest quarter horses of all time.
Bunny was a grandson of Two Eyed Jack. He stood maybe fourteen three and weighed about eleven hundred. A man from Howe, Oklahoma named Ed Covey raised Bunny. Ron bought him from Ed. I bought him as a six year old from Ron. I gave $600 for him.
I wanted to rope calves on him so I sent him to Richard Stowers in Tishomingo, Oklahoma. Richard was one of the best calf horse trainers there was back then. Richard was also a reserve World Champion calf roper, he knew calf roping and how to make good calf horses. When I got my horse back I took him to a junior rodeo near Tulsa and won the tie down, ribbon roping and breakaway on him. He scored perfect in the box and could run unlike any other horse I’ve ever owned.
I kept him for a couple of years and finally decided to sell him. Don W Smith told several of the IPRA guys I had a nice horse for sale. One day I got a call from a man in Michigan. His name was Mike Rodriguez. I sent him some videos of the horse and he wired me $1800. I thought tripling my money was a good deal, not to mention I’d won a good bit on him. I could have never known how much I undervalued the horse.
Eighteen hundred was also the amount I needed to finish building the horse barn at my mom and dads house. So I dropped Bunny off at JP Wickett’s house in Sallisaw. I thought I made a smart decision.
Mike had a brother named Raul. They both rode Bunny at the IPRA rodeos. Mike was the reserve World Champion at least once that I know of. They rode Bunny several times at the International Finals Rodeo. I’ve often wondered how much they won on that horse, it had to be over a hundred thousand and that was in the early nineties.
Years later I got another descendant of Two Eyed Jack. This horse was a bay gelding from the Watch Joe Jack lineage. He was as pretty a bay horse that ever walked. I bought him as a two year old and kept him a couple of years. He rode out fine and we ended up selling him as a rope horse prospect. The people that bought him made him into a heeling horse and they won a lot at team roping on him at the USTRC ropings. They kept him until he died.
I’ve bred, raised and bought quite a few colts in my life. Over the years I’ve figured out the Two Eyed Jack colts from the Pitzer ranch have an above average chance of becoming a good using horse. None of them have tried to kill me and they’ve all been exceptionally athletic.
The older I get the more I value spending my time and money on a horse that’s more likely to make something to be proud of.
Life’s too short to mess around with a counterfeit horse. The horses I’ve owned from the Pitzer ranch have all been exceptional. That’s why I keep going back.
James Lockhart lives near the Kiamichi mountains in southeast Oklahoma. He writes cowboy stories and fools with cows and horses.
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