High Plains Bucking in Colorado!

The Big Time Bucking Horse Futurity lit up the high plains August 4^th and 5^th at their United Bucking Horse Association Futurity. Check out this thrilling out by Wagon Boss, the Bucking Horse Breeder’s Association registered 3-year-old stallion by Bad Company Rodeo’s Crazy Heart, conditioned and campaigned by Charlie Thompson.
Thompson was born in Lubbock, Texas. The city boy fell in love with bucking horses at a rodeo and one thing led to another. He entered up, bought a practice horse, then another and another. Pretty soon, he needed to figure out how to get those feed bills paid. Stocking rodeos, first locally then subcontracting on a national level worked fine.
“I found out I was a better stock contractor than rider,” Charlie said.
In the late 70’s, a talented dark mare that Thompson was hauling caught Harry Vold’s eye. Vold bought, campaigned her, and the bucking horse legend known as Angel Sings found her fame.
In 1980, Vold offered Thompson the AQHA registered bucking stallion, Brown Bomber, having decided to outcross his mare band onto the heavier, warmblood Custer. Later, Beutler & Son first leased, then sold Thompson Big Ben, a horse with a high concentration of Tooke genetics.
Thompson has vision and the drive to follow it. He was instrumental in incepting the United Bucking Horse Association and has always worked to start young riders and build cowboys under the commandments of the Cowboy Code.
Even the best people walking this world suffer hard times. Charlie Thompson’s hard times came with the West Texas drought that devastated so many area ranchers. His absolute sale was just that. All of his livestock, equipment and working gear left under the crack of the auctioneer’s gavel for pennies on the dollar.
“My banker would have stayed with me until the end of time, but I couldn’t let him do it. The sale didn’t cover the debt, but I continued to make tall payments until he was paid,” said Thompson.
The odd thing about stories is they never really end. We put ‘periods’ after them, but those are formalities. The bucking horse community is tight and true. When the burdens of the drought lifted, C-T horses started coming home to Lubbock … carried by the men and women who honor Charlie as one of the greats. Many of those Thompson horses that went to Bad Company have come back to Thompson, several generations later and stronger than ever under the management of Mack Altizer.
Welcome home, Charlie Thompson. You like irony? After over 50 years as a bucking horse man, in the relatively new UBHA organization, Thompson is the front runner for rookie of the year.