Cowboy up! Utahns win big purses in Las Vegas

PAYSON — While growing up, competing in rodeos wasn't a way for Jess Davis and Wesley Silcox to set themselves apart from their siblings.

To them, it was a family pastime.

The "cowboy lifestyle" has been ingrained in 22-year-old world champion bull rider Silcox since he was a little kid. His dad Brad Silcox used to ride bulls and Wes' older brother Shawn also was a cowboy, Silcox's mom Julie said.

"(Wes has) had a rope in his hand since he was 3," she said.

Silcox started his rodeo career in the team roping and tie-down roping events — events in which horse-riding cowboys toss lassos around a bolting calf's neck.

But when he was a junior in high school, he followed in his dad's footsteps and started riding bulls. He won the state championship his senior year and placed high at the National High School Rodeo Finals.

As for Jess Davis, his older brother and sisters participated in the local rodeo circuit in high school. Davis, 26, joined the action when he was in junior high.

While his siblings have made the transition from competitor to spectator, he's still riding strong.

"I just took it a little farther than the rest," Davis says, humbly.

If Davis hadn't just finished second and earned $81,500 in the bareback competition at this month's 2007 Wrangler National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas — the Super Bowl of rodeos — that last comment might not seem like such an understatement.

It was at that same rodeo that Silcox straddled spinning, bucking bulls and rode his way to a world championship and a $118,000 paycheck.

It was also the same rodeo where five other Utah rodeo stars — Anthony Bello, Oakley; Cody Wright, Milford; Rusty Allen, Lehi; Jake Hannum, Ogden; and Vickie Solmonsen, Riverton — represented their state "quite well," said Lewis Feild, the former five-time world champion cowboy from Elk Ridge.

Feild, who's been to every national rodeo since 1981 either as a competitor or spectator, said hundreds of thousands stampede to the 10-day event where this year $5.5 million was given out to the best cowpokes in such events as bull riding, saddlebronc riding, bareback riding, tie-down roping and steer wrestling. Women compete in barrel racing.

"It's extremely exciting, very entertaining," said Feild. "That's why you can't get a ticket to it."

And it's not for the faint-of-heart urban cowboy.

"In the rodeo world, (the national rodeo is) what it's all about," he said. "It takes a tough, tough cowboy to get there."