PECOS, Texas – The last time she performed, MGM Deuces Night helped rising star J.R. Vezain to the bareback riding victory in Guymon, Okla.
The two athletes worked together quite well in the Oklahoma Panhandle community, posting an 89-point ride and sending another statement in the already rich resume of the 7-year-old bay/paint mare. Each of the last two years, she’s been selected as one of the top bucking horses in the business, chosen to work the most elite pen at the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo.
Of the four times she’s bucked at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas, she’s helped cowboys to three go-round victories and one runner-up finish. Some experts might say she just likes that arena. Well, that can be said for just about any rodeo pen.
“She’s been pretty electric just about anywhere we’ve taken her,” said Pete Carr, the man who owns MGM Deuces Night and Carr Pro Rodeo, the primary stock contractor at the West of the Pecos Rodeo, set for 8 p.m. Wednesday, June 27-Saturday, June 30, at Buck Jackson Arena.
You see, the 2010 edition of the Pecos rodeo is where MGM Deuces Night broke out, leading Chris Harris of Itasca, Texas, to the bareback riding victory and showing off for all the greatest cowboys in the world to see. She repeated that feat again last year, so, yeah, odds are in her favor to do it again in 2012.
“That’s just a unique horse, and she gets real high in the air,” said Kaycee Feild, the reigning world champion who rode her for the 10th-round win during the 2011 NFR. “That horse tries really hard to buck really good. She gets high in the air and gives you a lot of time to set your feet and crank your toes out. You’ve got to have quick feet and set them high in the neck. With that horse, it seems easy to set them high in the neck.
“She’s that way every time I’ve been on her. She’s a pretty cool horse.”
Feild has seen her a bunch. He won the NFR’s 10th round on MGM Deuces Night in 2010, too, then scored 90 points to share the final-round win in April 2011 at the Ram National Circuit Finals Rodeo in Oklahoma City. This past march, the two great athletes set a new standard during the $50,000 round at RodeoHouston – the result was an arena-record 93-point ride inside Reliant Stadium.
Of course, Feild isn’t the only cowboy to have success on the young mare.
“When I heard callbacks for this rodeo, I was screaming out loud and running around like a little girl,” Vezain said of their match-up in Guymon. “I had my highest marked ride on that horse last year with an 87 at San Antonio, and I was going for the record this year.
“I was going for 90; I knew it was going to be good.”
MGM Deuces Night has been one of the best bucking horses in the business since she started bucking in Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association events. The cowboys who see her and have a chance to match moves with her know it better than anyone, and that’s why they have selected her to be part of the most elite pen of bucking horses at the NFR – the showiest horses in the game are part of the TV pen, a term that dates back to the days when only the final round of the NFR was showcased on television.
Those animals buck during the fifth and 10th rounds of ProRodeo’s championship event. Not bad for a horse that was raised by bareback rider Wes Stevenson.
“I knew she’d have a really good shot to come to the finals,” said Stevenson, a seven-time NFR qualifier. “I knew she was that good, so part of the reason I sold her to Pete is that I knew she’d have a good shot to go to the finals. I bought her from Jim Zinser as a brood mare, but she bucked so good, I didn’t want to waste her sitting at my house. I wanted her to have a chance.
“She has a lot of heart. I was the first one to get on her with a rigging, and from the first time we ever bucked her, I knew that little filly has a lot of heart. She’s a very electric horse.”