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The Beutler family had just concluded a brutal stretch of rodeos, bringing their prized stock all across the country to buck off the best bronc and bareback riders in the country.

Rhett Beutler, son of legendary rodeo man Bennie Beutler, grandson of Jiggs, great-grandson of Elra, could’ve used the break. An avid deer hunter and hunting guide, Beutler spends most of his time alongside his father — and business partner — breeding, training and preparing championship stock.

We’re talking some of the leanest, meanest, snarliest bucking broncos, bulls and steer you’ve ever seen. Just a few years ago, Beutler and Sons won the Triple Crown of rodeo stock contracting at the prestigious National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas, the Super Bowl of rodeos, spread across 10 whiskey-filled nights. Other contractors said it was the first time they could remember that happening. Smoke Stack was named bull of the year; Killer Bee took home top saddle bronc horse of the event; and Ghost Town, a beautiful 6-year-old mare whose genetic lineage dates back more than five decades with the family, won best bareback horse for the second straight year.

Perhaps the success shouldn’t be a surprise: The Beutler family helped organize and put on the very first NFR back in 1959.

But now it was the summer of 2024, the thick of it, rodeo season, with cowboy competitions held all over and Beutler and Son stocking up many of them. It was an unseasonably hot day in the middle of August on the ranch outside Elk City, Okla. A Wednesday. Almost hitting triple digits. Time to recharge.

Rhett, 48 years old and the future of the family business, was looking forward to putting out some deer cameras, hoping to gauge the inventory for the fall. All the animals had been fed, and after putting up some cameras, Rhett returned to the pasture around noon.

“I can just kind of tell something is off,� he told the Star. “It’s 98 degrees, no wind. They looked distraught. Not relaxed and normal. It’s just a miserable day. About 45 minutes go by and I come back and pull my truck up to Rage and she’s laying there. I honk the horn. She don’t get up. Nudge her a little bit, dead as a doornail. Holy shit. About 50 yards away, there’s Buttercup. She collapses. I was just like what the hell is going on. Five minutes later, I’m standing there trying to figure out what’s happening, and Wicked Witch, our big 5-year-old, a potential world champion, she just falls over dead 5 yards from me. I’m like holy shit, trying to get dad on the phone, calling for help.�

When all was said and done, more than 70 prized horses and a handful of other animals were dead, courtesy of tainted feed.

Forget the money. Forget the time. Forget the sweat equity.

In the span of a day, generations of genetics disappeared. Familiar friends.

Tornadoes are more kind.

Past, present and future

A tornado you can count. One second. Two seconds. Three seconds. Four.

And tornadoes you can count on, too. Elk City, where the Beutler family is darn near royalty, has had almost two dozen tornadoes since 1944. Some years, it’s like clockwork. That’s why they build steep basements in Oklahoma.

But tainted feed? You can’t ever expect tainted feed. There are supposed to be guardrails against that. Layers of protection.

Beutler and Son received a shipment from Livestock Nutrition Center that contained ample amounts of monensin, an antibiotic for cattle and poultry. Sold under the brand name Rumensin, less than one half a gram is considered potentially fatal to horses. In a statement shortly after the beginning of the tragedy, LNC president Ronnie Castlebury attributed the mistake to “a combination of a failed cleanout procedure and a sensor malfunction.�

It was altogether devastating.

Some of the strongest animals you’ll ever encounter, toppling over. Mares that have been bred over generations, their data collected on mountains of spreadsheets, some tracking back more than 50 years. Champions who came from champions, who would then foal champions themselves.

And that was the adults.

For weeks after the initial feeding, colts and fillies who’d nursed from affected horses were coming down sick. The Beutlers didn’t just watch their present and their past crumble before their eyes, but their future.

It was non-stop carnage.

“The one pasture that was fed, that’s where we keep a lot of our hauling mares, you’re ‘A-Team’ pasture,� Rhett said. “Out of those, I think 42 head of horses, 35 died. That’s all your mares you haven’t bred yet — they’re your Greeley (Rodeo), your Tucson, Austin, your superstars. As they’re falling over, I’m sitting there thinking, ‘Oh, my God.’ This is what my family has done since the 1950s. We’ve got it dialed in. We know what’s working and not working. It makes you scratch your head about what the future is going to be.

“You just have to keep going.�

So that’s what they did. They picked themselves up by the bootstraps. Dusted off their jeans. Lived another day.

The cowboy way.

The road to 100

For a while there, every morning felt like revisiting the worst day of their lives.

“You get up to go to the ranch, is anything going to be dead today?� Rhett said. “Hell, I had a bull die right there at Thanksgiving. It strung on all the way through the end of November. The cattle, it took longer because this stuff is made for cattle. But it was made so strong it killed calves and bucking bulls, too.

“For the first three weeks, it was non-stop. Then it was like, the crying and mourning is over. We did that the first week. Gotta move and put your pieces back together. It’d be like, ‘Man we’re having a good day, nothing died today.’�

Less than a week in, the Beutler family sat around the family dinner table and wondered what was next. Connie Beutler, the family matriarch and Bennie’s wife of more than five decades, wondered if it was time for ol’ Bennie to hang up his boots. He thought about it for a bit. Then he remembered that his family has been rodeoing in Oklahoma and all around since 1929.

And the hometown rodeo, in Elk City? It was the very next weekend.

“It runs you nuts trying to solve stuff, and there wasn’t anything to solve,� Bennie said. “I said, ‘We’re going to have to start over.’ We still had 150 or so bucking horses. We wasn’t down and out.�

He called in some favors. They pressed on. After all, Bennie wants to get to that century mark, the same one La Fiesta de los Vaqueros Tucson Rodeo is celebrating this year.

And speaking of the Tucson Rodeo, for its organizers, there was never a doubt that Bennie and his boy would be in the Old Pueblo come mid-February.

Because sitting around that dining room table, Beutler and Son made a plan. They’d lost about a quarter of their horses, but many of their best. Ghost Town, yes, but also Wound Up and Bewitched and so many more. Champions. Friends.

First order of business, after the brutal act of burying their beloved: Acquire six horses as a foundation from which to build. Bennie and Rhett started making phone calls until their voices gave out, texted until their fingers bled. You can’t just go buy prized bucking horses off the street. Those who have them don’t often look kindly on selling them. But everybody has a price.

And their rodeo family rallied around them, too, offering reasonable prices and some well-trained animals. Some even pitched in to gift the Beutlers a promising mare.

“Our ties go way back,� said Sammy Andrews, another legendary rodeo stock contractor and one of Bennie’s best friends for almost eight decades. “My dad was in the rodeo business, and he sold to Bennie’s dad in 1955. I know Bennie all my life, he knows me all his life. The Andrews and Beutlers always been big buds.

“This is a tragedy. Generations of breeding Bennie lost. When we all heard about it, we all wanted to pitch in. By George, people stepped up. Bennie needed horses and he got good ones. He’s got a hell of a nice set of horses again.�

Some of the best have come to Tucson this week to put on a show. Never for one second did the committee question the Beutlers.

That’s not charity. It’s trust.

“They’ve been with us since 1952,� Tucson Rodeo vice chairman Mark Baird said. “They’ve never done us wrong. Without ever a drop in step. Our faith in them goes beyond what we can convey in words.�

That means a lot to Beutler, and to Son, these rodeos sticking with them.

“Odessa was our first rodeo in January, and I wasn’t relieved until we got to Odessa,� Rhett said. “They all bucked. They were good. It was like, ‘Ah, yes, we’ll be OK.’ Until I had them and bucked them myself and had them under ownership — you haven’t raised them from the time they’re a colt. You don’t know everything about them.�

Rhett sounds wistful. Some of those horses, he grew up with their great-grandmothers.

Bennie, well he just sounds hopeful.

“I want to have a hundred-year celebration for the company,� Bennie said. “Just like they’re having in Tucson.�