The gate swings open and a dusty yellow wave exploded into view. Two pounding leaps later, a cowboy hangs in midair as the 1,850-pound bull drops and spins away. It looks as if the cowboy may have to let go, listening to the voice in his belly whispering, "This bull can't be rode. This bull will hurt you."

The cowboy drew Bodacious, bull riding's living legend. Fact is, nobody rides Bo anymore - he was retired in 1995 for fear he'd kill someone.

But they still talk about him. in 1999, Bo was inducted into the ProRodeo Hall of Fame. He gets invited to fairs and grand openings. He has his own action video and a New York agent too!! He is the bull everyone knows, even if they don't know rodeo.

Bill McCann still laughs when he recalls the day that he sold for pennies on the pound, the calf that would become the most famous bull in rodeo history.

The Merrick Ranch is gone now, but in its day it was known for high-dollar Simbray (Simmental/Brahma cross) bulls and the hefty calves they produced. So when Bill, co-owner of the Geary Livestock Auction, got a call at steer-cutting time asking if he wanted to buy 300 head, he loaded up and drove to Oklahoma's Arbuckle Mountains.

Four days later, Bill culled 16 of the fattest Merrick bull calves to keep. his buyers wanted smaller animals that would'nt drop too much weight when they were castrated. He sort of like the look of them 'eye-catching gray-blues and creams. One was yellow.

When rancher Jess Kephart showed up at the auction looking for herd bulls, the "reject" pen of bigger calves suited him fine. He pastured the yellow calf in dusty mesquite and cactus land near Okeene, Oklahoma. The young bull got no extra feed in winter, and grew up ribby and rawboned.

Jess doesn't laugh about when he in turn sol the yellow bull that would be worth millions. Jess decided he didn't like the three-year-old for a herd bull; he just wasn't too much to look at. So, when rodeo stock contractor Phil Sumner came to see about a different bull, the rancher offered to toss in the yellow one.

Phil paid Jess the going rate, about 50 cents a pound. The yellow bull received the brand J-31. J stood for Jess, 3 for March, and 1 for 1991. Phil's vet estimated that the bull was two years old, an easy mistake since J-31 weighed only 1,200 pounds at the time.

At first J-31 seemed a poor rodeo prospect. He jumped high, but could not seem to figure our the point of what he was doing it for. The first three cowboys easily stayed aboard unti lthe eight-second bell.

Everything changed his next time out. When he bucked a young man off his back, the cowboy caught his riding hand in the rope that encircled the bull's chest. Frantic to escape the flopping man at his side, J-31 flung himself higher and higher. After that, he had a goal: airmail those cowboys!

Within a few months, riders at Phil's amateur rodeos were refusing to board J-31. Phil would watch the bull, now sleek and muscular, wander across his hillside pasture near Goltry, Pklahoma, and say, "Young man, do you have any idea how you intimidate the cowboy that draws you?"

Realizing that he had a big-league bull, Phil called his friend Sammy Andrews. Like Bill and Jess, Phil had no idea that the animal passing out of his hands would take the professional rodeo by storm.

Sammy named his new yellow bull Bodacious and took him to Houston, to one of the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association's biggest rodeos. And almost immediately, Bodacious knocked rodeo great Cody Lambert unconscious.

Soon after that, a stocky bull rider named Bubba Dunn drew the bull at Lufkin, Texas. He'd never heard of Bodacious, so he asked Sammy what to expect.

Sammy replied, "He's got a lot of down," which meant it would be hard not to bash heads with the bull. Bubba rembers that "down," remembers pushing so hard with his riding arm as the bull dropped that he was arched back, staring at the arena rafters. But the serious young cowboy made the bell becoming the first rider on the professional circuit to ride Bodacious, and one of the only six who ever did.

Two months later, Canadian Greg Schlosser drew Bodacious in San Antonio. He remembers Cody Lambert's warning: "I don't want to scare you or nothin,, but that bull is one of the baddest son of a guns I've ever been on."

Greg had flown clear from Calgary to ride, though. He made the bell and 82 points.

But Bodacious was still growing. He gained a bulging neck and several hundred extra pounds. And unlike other truly massive bulls, Bo never slowed into a more ponderous bucking style. Now when he threw himself skyward and then jerked riders onto his broad head, he did it with the full force of his 1,850 pound adult weight.

Rodeo announcers and riders began to comment that cowboys who drew the bull were letting themselves be bucked off. "You can see it in their eyes," bull-riding great Tuff Hedeman once said. "They're just looking for a place to get off."

In 1995, the cowboys say, Bo learned a new trick, a sort of stutter hop on his front legs, followed by a faster, more powerful lift with his head. That February, Bubba Dun rode Bo again, scoring 93 points. This time the bull's head creased the brim of Bubba's hat and bruised his cheek. The rider considered himself lucky.

"Bo was psychotic. He didn't like people," says Cody. "If you were on his back, he wanted to hurt you."

If that's true, Bo was becoming very good at what he wanted. A successfull ride on the bull, never easy, had become nearly impossible. In October of 1995, two seconds out of the gate, Tuff Hedeman crunched into Bo's rising head, shattering most of the bones in his face. At the National Finals Rodel that December, Scott Breding drew the bull and donned a face mask.

"I knew exactly what was gong to happen," Cody said. "It was the nith go-round, so I kinda suspected Socct'd try to ride him. If he did, that face mask wasn't going to help."

Bodacious fractured Scott's eye socket and cheekbone. The next night, uncertain that he was helping rodeo but pretty sur he was saving a life, Sammy Andrews retired the big yellow bull.

Some people have wondered whether Bodacious really was the best ever, or whether his reputation is a creation of magazine writers and T-shirt promoters. It probably is true that the bull scared cowboys into allowing themselves be slingshotted. Every bull rider's worst fear is being jerked down onto a bull's head, and cowboys who stayed on Bodacious beyond the first two jumps usually got hurt. And it is certainly true that, by nearly killing one of bull riding's best before TV cameras and thousands of fans, Bo made himself into a story writers don't seem to tire of.

If you ask top cowboys, though, the hype got hooked to a bull that did deserve it.

" don't have fond memories of him, but Bodacious was the best ever," says Cody Lambert. Tuff Hedeman, who tried the bull four times, riding him the third (scoring 95 points on him) and almost dying the fourth, (and he drew him again in December after almost getting killed, he refused to ride) says that Bodacious was one of the rankest bulls of all time, although "in the end he was basically a cheap-shot artist who would Sunday punch you."

Sammy says the bull's fame has to do with timing. Bodacious came along as TV was providing the sport with more coverage, he got tried by the best, and, let's face it, he was amazing to watch. Eighteen hundred and fifty pounds of beef just isn't suppose to move that fast, or jump that high!

"Lord only knows, rodeo needs heros," Sammy says. And the big yellow bull that intimidated even the best, it has apparently found a lasting one.

The aging Bo didn't become hamburger. He is still around and hasn't lost the habit of kicking at fences and the people behind them. He has over a hundred sons and daughters officially registered. Five, or more now, buck for Sammy at rodeos, all big, beefy, and yellow colored like their father. Bodacious was inducted into the Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame in 1999, the only livestock inductee. He also has his own video "Bodacious, The Master of Disaster" that shows his wild high moves.

(article found in Heartland USA)