When you rodeo and team rope for a living and your horse is the greatest asset to your game, fitting the bridle to your horse and training him so you’ve got control and consistency, and your horse operates comfortably, is of the utmost importance. I left home when I was 16 and started team roping for a living. I left with two bridles that my stepdad let me take. At first, I didn’t really realize how big a deal the right bit, proper horsemanship and training were. I just put it in my horse’s mouth. Both horses I had at that time were cold-jawed and hard-mouthed. I didn’t really pay any attention to the importance of bridles and bits and training, and I didn’t have much horsemanship knowledge until I started getting other horses and realizing that there’s actually something to the relationship between the bit and a horse’s mouth. Today I use a variety of bits, including Paul Petska and Tom Balding bits.

I jackpotted and amateur rodeoed for about four years before I got my PRCA card. It really wasn’t until I started rodeoing that I started realizing that my horsemanship and riding position were so much more critical. That’s when I started experimenting with my bridles and bits, and looking around at what the other guys were using. That’s when I started gaining a little knowledge in that area.

That’s about the time I started acquiring more bits. I tried some I saw other guys use, and as I had more success, bit-makers gave me bits to test and try. All I had used previous to that was just a one-piece mouthpiece with a port and shank. I hadn’t ever tried a chain bit, hinged port, shank snaffle or gag bit of any kind. That’s when I started experimenting.

At first, my hands were so heavy. As I started to work on the refinement of my left hand, I realized that certain horses worked better in certain bits. I found out that because I was so heavy-handed I was starting to get along a lot better with my horses using softer bits, like chain bits, shank snaffles and lower ported bridles.

Instead of the solid-sided shanks that I grew up riding, I started liking the loose-sided shanks that would swivel and move, so I could pick up the inside rein and get just the inside corner of my horse’s mouth.

When Jake and I won our first championship, everybody wanted me to use their bit. I started getting bits from all over. In the mid- to late-80s, I probably had 30-40 bits in my tack room. I still have most of them, plus other bits I’ve acquired over the last 20 years.

All horses are different, and you have to figure out what’s going to work on each individual. I have about as diverse an inventory of bridles as you could have just being a team roper. There are probably five or six bridles that I use on a consistent basis that fit my feel and the amount of pressure that I ride with against the bridle.

There are some differences in the stopping power with each bit. Ike, the horse I’ve ridden for 13 years (he’s 22 now), is generally pretty strong in the bridle. He can seem pretty broke and easy to stop just loping him around and warming him up. But he’s always been the kind of horse that when you back him in the box will take the bridle and really run. I’ve always had to use a bridle with some pretty good stopping power on him.

What I’ve used the most in the last few years is the Paul Petska, shorter-shanked chain bit. It has a lot of stopping power, and it fits the pressure that I ride Ike with. He respects it, and doesn’t run through it when he leaves the box and is running down the pen. It has a lot of flex to it, where you can pull one side of it and get his head.

I try to match a horse with just the right amount of stopping power with my bit. I don’t want him to be afraid of my bridle. I like to ride a horse with a little pressure on his mouth to hold his body in position when I pick him up, so I like one to think he can take ahold of that bridle a little bit and be comfortable doing that. But when I pick one up a little more, I want him to respond. I want him to respect a bit without being afraid of it. It’s hard to gather a horse up if he’s afraid of a bridle. I want my horse to center his head where he’s comfortable running and moving, and let me hold him and put his body into position with that bridle.

One bridle a couple different guys make is a hinge port with a medium to long shank that hinges on both sides at the top of the port. The bridle’s pretty soft, yet it has some stopping power to it if you set it up with the curb right. It has some flexibility to it, because you can pick up one side of a horse’s mouth without pinching him. Tom Balding and Gordy Alderson make the bits I have like this, and I like them both.

For the most part, the shanks are loose-sided on the bits I ride and like the most. I like an s-curve that rolls back to me in the shank.

I like to have my bit set in the horse’s mouth, as a general rule, right at the top of the corner of his mouth with one wrinkle. Then I set my curb to where there’s a little relief there and it’ll take ahold at about an inch to an inch and a half of movement, as the shank comes back to me, before the curb takes ahold. On a horse that has a little tougher mouth, where I need a little more, I’ll set my curb to where it takes ahold immediately. STW