Meet Potlicker: a 1,700-pound rodeo star defying riders across B.C.

CBC News

· Posted: Jan 12, 2025 8:00 AM EST | Last Updated: January 12

At his ranch successful Black Pines, conscionable extracurricular Kamloops, B.C., Ed LeBourdais knows however to get his bulls' attention.

Grabbing a five-gallon bucket, helium gives it a fewer steadfast thumps to summon his herd.

"They each travel erstwhile you bushed the bucket," helium told CBC's Daybreak Kamloops host Shelly Joyce. "The older guys volition decidedly travel first. The younger ones, they'll travel erstwhile we commencement [scattering grain]."

Among the towering figures lured by the rhythmic thuds is Potlicker, a 1,700-pound bull who has made a sanction for himself successful B.C.'s competitory rodeo world.

Last week, four-year-old Potlicker was crowned the B.C. Rodeo Association's 2024 Bull of the Year — a title voted connected by nonrecreational bull riders, and considered 1 of the sport's highest provincial honours.

For LeBourdais, the grant is simply a testament to his decades-long committedness to breeding top-tier rodeo bulls.

"It's an diversion grant for these bulls," helium said proudly. "You don't bid them to buck, it's bred into them."

LeBourdais, a erstwhile nonrecreational bull rider with 21 years successful the arena, said helium understands some the carnal and affectional demands of the sport.

"My assemblage knows I rode bulls," helium said, pointing to aged injuries.

Now, his absorption is connected raising the adjacent procreation of champions.

He started S&E Bucking Bulls successful 1981 with his puerility person Schaan Perry. 

The erstwhile bull rider said each animal at the Black Pines ranch is fixed care, attention and a sanction that reflects its unsocial personality.

LeBourdais said Potlicker's sanction came astir organically.

"When helium was a calf, my wife, Alina, utilized to provender him atom successful an aged pot. He'd lick it cleanable each time."

While the prize bucking bull thrives successful the spotlight, his mother, Little Moo, is contented with a quieter life.

LeBourdais said she was raised arsenic a bottle-fed calf and is known for her gentle demeanour.

"You tin favored her each day, and she'll conscionable basal there, eating her grain.".

A bull built to buck

Potlicker's earthy endowment has earned him respect from rodeo riders similar Sukhveen "Veen" Barmi, who has climbed onto the bull a mates of times lone to find himself on the losing extremity of its agility.

"He smashed maine connected the crushed truthful hard I couldn't get up for a while."

What makes Potlicker basal out, Barmi explained, is his unpredictability.

"With bulls, they person a definite signifier which you tin spot and which you tin marque your crippled play with, but with Potlicker, it's wholly different."

Originally from India, Barmi moved to Canada successful 2018 to prosecute higher education. He began riding professionally successful 2022, but said contempt his increasing acquisition successful the arena, each bull helium faces — including Potlicker — still fills him with a consciousness of fear.

"If I halt getting scared, that's the time I halt bull riding," helium said. "You person to beryllium frightened a small bit, but you person to combat it off."

For galore riders similar Barmi, Potlicker is some a situation and a goal, said LeBourdais.

"Every bull rider wants to get connected that feline ... they'll propulsion themselves truthful they win."