PUEBLO, Colo. – On July 2, stock contractor Julio Moreno got a call from a vet in Springer, Oklahoma.
“Bushwacker’s had enough,” he said.
Moreno, who lives in Merced, California, knew exactly what he meant.
The legendary three-time YETI World Champion Bull was 18 years old. He was lying underneath a tree when he stood up, walked to where he stayed, laid down again, and peacefully passed away.
While Moreno has never had a bull live past 17 years old and knew the end must be coming, that didn’t make it any easier.
“It’s been tough,” Moreno said. “It’s like losing your own kid. I lost a son to cancer when he was 17 years old, and I always told everybody that he was going to be my World Champion, and now Bushwacker’s my World Champion.”
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Moreno bred Bushwacker out of Reindeer Dippin’ and a heifer out of Diamond Ghost, and he always refused to sell his prized bovine – even when offered $1 million for him.
He had multiple partners on Bushwacker throughout his life, the last of whom was Dallas Schott. Bushwacker spent the last years of his life on Schott's ranch in Oklahoma.
“I moved back to California, and I know he didn’t want to – I think it’s a 28-30-hour drive,” Moreno said. “I said, ‘Eh, I’ll leave him here.’ So I left him there, and he had a beautiful place. Trees that he’d lay under, and mare stalls. It’s a beautiful place, and they have a beautiful cemetery for horses. He’ll be the first bull.”
Moreno saw the first inklings of a special bull when Bushwacker was 2 years old and bucking with a dummy in Futurities.
“He wasn’t that good,” Moreno said with a laugh. “He finished good. I think it’s a four-second whistle for them, so at five or six seconds, he would try to buck, but it was too late. I thought, ‘Man, this bull might be a good rider bull.’”
When Bushwacker was 3, Moreno took him to a friend’s arena to buck him with a rider for the first time. It was a right-hand delivery – Bushwacker was always a left-hand bull – but it made no difference.
“We took him there and bucked him twice,” Moreno said. “And right then, I knew he had what it took.”
Moreno then took Bushwacker to his first PBR event, a Touring Pro in Santa Barbara, California. He bucked in the short round, dispatching Chad Denton in 3.1 seconds for a bull score of 48 points.
“Man, he was good,” Moreno said. “I couldn’t believe how good he was. So then, I realized he’s going to make it. From there, I went to every PBR. He didn’t go to the PRCA rodeos or nothing. He went straight to the PBR, and he was always in the short round. Never was he in the long-go or nothing. Always in the short round, so he drew the best, hottest cowboys that weekend.”
As a 3-year-old, Bushwacker placed third at the ABBI World Finals as a Classic bull. The following year, when he was 4, he bucked off all 11 riders he faced on the premier series and 21 riders overall, winning the 2010 ABBI Classic Championship.
“If (then-PBR Director of Livestock) Cody Lambert had allowed me to go into the PBR side of it versus the Classic ABBI, he would’ve won (the world title) that year,” Moreno said. “I’m glad it didn’t happen because he won the world in the Classic in 2010, but I knew that he was going to come back, and sure enough, he did it in 2011.”
Indeed, Bushwacker won his first of three World Championships in 2011, finishing the season 14-0. At the 2011 PBR World Finals, he bucked off Cord McCoy in Round 3 for an astounding 48.5-point bull score.
Two months later, it was discovered that Bushwacker needed to have surgery to fix a fractured P1 bone in the fetlock of his back right leg. Dr. Gary Warner performed the surgery, and Moreno credits him with saving Bushwacker’s career.
“Dr. Warner is a vet from Texas, and he saved him that one time he chipped a bone in his ankle,” Moreno said. “They don’t do surgeries on bulls that way, but he did a surgery that they do on racehorses, and it’s not common for a bull to do good after that. He saved him, and I won two World Championships after he did it.”
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In 2012, Bushwacker fell just short of another world title to Asteroid but had another undefeated season at 9-0.
Heading into 2013, Bushwacker had only been ridden once in his premier series career – Thiago Paguioto converted for 89.75 points at the 2009 PBR World Finals.
He wouldn’t be ridden again until Aug. 16, 2013, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, when J.B. Mauney finally slayed the ultimate dragon. Bushwacker’s record buckoff streak of 42 in a row stood until the 2024 PBR World Finals when Cool Whip recorded consecutive buckoff No. 43.
Mauney was clear in his goal to make the 8-second whistle aboard Bushwacker, ultimately getting on him 10 times. That ride in Tulsa was his only successful trip, and it was good for 95.25 points.
In their four-year rivalry that spanned three world titles for Bushwacker and one for Mauney, Bushwacker never had a bull score lower than 45.25 points against Mauney.
“J.B. knows, and he has told me, the way they do it now with the replay and all that, he probably rode him for 7.7. He didn’t ride him for 8 seconds,” Moreno said with a laugh. “But I said, ‘But I’m glad you did,’ because I’ve gotten more ink off of J.B. riding him. But J.B. has done good. He made that bull famous as much as the bull made him famous.”
Mauney’s ride on Bushwacker is one of the most iconic in the history of the league, and it was the last ride Bushwacker would ever surrender. He would go on to win the 2013 World Champion Bull title with six of the Top 10 bull scores that year.
2014 would be Bushwacker’s last year of competition, and he went out on top, winning his third world title after another undefeated, 14-0 season. His last PBR out came at the 2014 World Finals, when he bucked off Mike Lee in 2.13 seconds for 46.5 points.
“He should’ve been a five-time World Champion,” Moreno said. “But I retired him early, thinking, ‘What else does he have to prove?’”
In a word: nothing.
Bushwacker ended his career with 64 buckoffs in 66 outs in six years on the premier series. Overall, he defeated 84 of his 87 opponents from 2009-2014.
According to ProBullStats.com, his 46.16-point average marking ranks third all-time – Dillinger’s 46.83 points in 49 outs and Bodacious’s 46.4 points in five outs are higher.
But to Moreno – and most others – Bushwacker is the greatest of all time.
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“I myself, because I owned him, say he’s the greatest bull ever,” Moreno said. “There’ll be some that win the championship and tie his records and all that, but they won’t be better. One time, Sean Gleason said, ‘Are you going to make any more Bushwackers? Are there any young calves coming on out of Bushwacker?’ I mean, there’s been bulls, Smooth Operator and all of them, but they just didn’t have what Bushwacker had.”
Bushwacker was, unequivocally, a star. During his career, he was featured in the Wall Street Journal, the body issue of ESPN The Magazine, USA Today, CBS This Morning, ESPN’s award-winning series E:60, and numerous other media features—making him the most famous bovine in history.
“He loved a crowd,” Moreno said. “He loved when people would take pictures, the flash of the camera. He knew that part, and he’d strut. I did an article one time where they compared him to Muhammad Ali, Michael Jordan, Ray Lewis – he was strutting. He knew he was good.”
Bushwacker made appearances with the PBR even after his retirement. He was on stage at the South Point Hotel Casino & Spa to accept the Brand of Honor in 2016, attended several premier series events – including a dirt carpet appearance in Los Angeles in 2019 – and was on hand at the 2022 PBR World Finals.
Bushwacker simply never stopped being a fan favorite.
“At the PBR Finals, they have a fan zone where they bring people out prior to the perf that day, and they walk around and go see the bulls,” Moreno said. “Well, they wanted to see Bushwacker. Bushwacker liked when they took pictures because he’d put his head right there where they could take a picture with him.”
However, when an older woman put her head into his pen to sneak a selfie, Bushwacker pushed her out, and she fell over.
A year later, she called Moreno at his home in Oakdale, California. She was in town for a family wedding and wanted to come apologize to Bushwacker.
“She asked me if she could have 30 minutes with him, and I said, ‘Yeah. Don’t go in the pen with him or stick your head in there,’” Moreno joked. “She goes, ‘No, I won’t.’ She took pictures and everything. She passed away a month later, that lady. But she came to see Bushwacker. And there’s people that way. They just love him. He was real special.”
Moreno and Bushwacker had their own special bond. Bushwacker knew Moreno’s voice and would come over when he heard him coming, and Moreno never had to use anything but a spoken word to get Bushwacker to move.
“That day I left (Oklahoma to move to California), I remember saying, ‘I’ll be back for you,’ or something,” Moreno said. “And he just hollered. I said, ‘God, is he a human or what?’ He knew. He knew what I was talking about. Bulls are a really smart animal, and he was one of them.”Moreno has a few Bushwacker siblings and kids that he hauls with him. But bull breeding is fickle, and he may never get a Bushwacker-caliber calf out of his breeding program. He'll be happy he gets a few solid bulls to carry on the legacy.
For now, Moreno is enjoying an outpouring of love and condolences following Bushwacker’s passing. He says his phone was ringing off the hook for four days after he passed, everyone mourning a bull that was truly one of a kind.
“I would love for people to say there’ll never be another bull like him,” Moreno said. “Might be bulls that’ll break his records and win the world more than him, but they just don’t have the personality and the showmanship that’s included in that bull. They’ll never be able to beat that, ever.”
Photo courtesy of Matt Breneman/Bull Stock Media
