A recent article published by the Team Roping Journal about ropers claiming ProRodeo circuits they don’t live in has reignited a debate across calf roping, primarily in the Wilderness Circuit, where most of the calf ropers on track for the circuit finals live hundreds of miles from Idaho, Utah and Nevada.

CalfRoping.com talked with both Shane Hanchey, the tie-down event director who claims the Wilderness Circuit despite living in Texas, and Jake Hannum, a Wilderness Circuit veteran who lives in the circuit and has competed in it his entire career.

The rule at the center of it

Every PRCA member designates one of 13 circuits, and the top 12 in each circuit’s standings make that circuit’s finals. From there, a calf roper qualifies for the NFR Open—the rebranded National Circuit Finals—by winning his circuit’s year-end title, or by winning the circuit finals.

The NFR Open paid out roughly $680,000 across all events in 2026, $85,300 of it in the tie-down, with Haven Meged’s win worth $13,000 in the final round alone. A calf roper can claim a circuit by preference rather than by home address, but the rulebook states to make a circuit finals, a resident and a non-resident each have to “official,” or count, a minimum number of that circuit’s rodeos—and the non-resident number is higher. In 2026 in the Wilderness Circuit, a resident counts 15; a non-resident has to count 24, half of the circuit’s 48 approved rodeos. Those numbers vary by circuit. The Turquoise Circuit asks non-residents for 15, while Texas and the Southeastern Circuits require 33.

That combination has pointed a lot of rodeos top athletes at the Wilderness Circuit, home to some of the richest summer rodeos in the country. As of Aug. 15, nine of the twelve tie-down ropers inside the Wilderness Circuit top 12 listed home addresses outside Idaho, Utah and Nevada—the three states the circuit covers—with only Utah’s Ladd King and Chase Webster and Idaho’s Spencer Moulton designating the circuit they live in.

Deeper than one circuit

The Wilderness is the sharpest example, not the only one. Of the current top 15 in the calf roping world standings, nine designate a circuit other than the one they live in. Five of them—Webb, Hanchey, Zack Jongbloed, Quade Hiatt and Bryce Derrer—claim the Wilderness. Three Texans from San Angelo and Perryton, Joel Harris, Ty Harris and Trevor Hale, claim the Columbia River Circuit up in the Pacific Northwest and New Mexico’s Kyan Wilhite claims the Texas Circuit. Across all 13 circuits, more than 30 of the 156 calf ropers in the top 12 of their designated circuit belong to a roper designating from outside—but a quarter of those sit in the Wilderness alone, and one circuit, the Southeastern, has none.

Hanchey’s take

Shane Hanchey sits fifth in the world and serves as the calf roping event director, and he designates the Wilderness Circuit himself—the exact setup the Team Roping Journal piece put a spotlight on. He doesn’t dispute the origin of the system.

“The PRCA designed the circuit system for the weekend warriors to drive membership and to keep guys wanting to come back year after year to compete at a finals of their own that was coveted,” Hanchey said. “Unfortunately, and obviously, it’s gotten out of hand.”

Hanchey has summered in Spanish Fork, Utah, staying at Clint Robinson’s place, since 2012, and said he’s a year from being grandfathered into the circuit. From where he sits, the pull of the Wilderness is simple.

“The Wilderness Circuit, by far and always, has the best rodeos all summer,” Hanchey said. “I bet 10 to 15 rodeos add over $15,000. So how can you blame guys for coming? When we have to make decisions based on making a living, how can we not choose the highest-paying rodeos?”

To Hanchey, the choice comes down to making a living.

“We get paid based on our performance, and part of that means putting yourself in the best position possible to make the most amount of money,” Hanchey said. “Most of us are aware, and trust me, we know the circuit guys aren’t in favor of us coming to their circuit. But the out-of-circuit count for the Wilderness is 24 rodeos, so I have to get my count in and go to smaller rodeos for that and guys don’t like that either. It’s a tough deal.”

Hanchey also put the driver on the money itself.

“These committees—whether it’s the NFR Open or a small rodeo somewhere in Utah—want the big names to sell tickets,” Hanchey said. “Do I agree with that? No. But they have the sponsor money, and that’s how they want to do it. At the end of the day, the circuit system is designed for circuit cowboys.”

Hannum’s take

Jake Hannum, 2007 NFR qualifier and Wilderness Circuit champion, has spent his career living and winning in Utah, he also served as an event director within the circuit. His father, the late Jack Hannum, was a five-time NFR qualifier and a PRCA Hall of Famer who ran the PRCA’s rodeo administration for more than 25 years as Administrator, Circuit Coordinator and Chief of Officials—so Jake grew up inside both the competition and the machinery of the organization.

“You still had tough ropers, and the competition was tough, but it was all local in the area, so that kind of was the offset,” Hannum said, naming a generation of Wilderness Circuit calf ropers like Clint Robinson, Rhen Richard and Matt Shiozawa who all made the NFR while still driving home for circuit rodeos. “We all stayed around the house, and it meant something to all of us to make the circuit finals and actually win the circuit and even go on to the Dodge finals. I think these guys now go to the circuit finals just to get a shot at a bonus at the NFR Open, instead of it being more like an NFR for the circuit guys.”

The rebrand, to Hannum, is the hinge.

“It used to mean something to everybody in the circuit to make the Dodge finals and win it, when it was in Pocatello and all those other places,” Hannum said. “When it turned into the NFR Open, I felt like it turned into a tour finale for the guys going through the circuit system. The NFR Open is not a circuit finals. That’s just another rodeo that wants to have NFR guys entered in it. It is not actually set for what it was meant for.”

Asked what his father would make of the circuit system today, Hannum didn’t hesitate.

“It’s defeated,” Hannum said. “The circuit system was set up for people that couldn’t make it to the NFR or rodeo year-round. That’s what it was designed for. It wasn’t designed to have the guys making the NFR at it. It doesn’t mean anything to the guy who’s making our circuit finals and when you take the meaning out of it, you have guys coming that don’t care, and you have a bunch of people that live in the area whose goal that year is to make the circuit finals. There’s no stepping stone for a circuit guy now. They’ve killed it.”

The math on making the Wilderness finals

Where the two men line up most cleanly is on how much harder the cut has gotten and why.

“I think two, three years ago, maybe my last year that I rodeoed, I won $16,000 to make our circuit finals,” Hannum said. “Before COVID, I think you made our circuit finals every year at $5,000. That’s where it’s changed. The rodeos have added more. You have to produce big wins now, not just consistent winning. A circuit guy could place more and win checks to add up to making the finals and now you have to win big checks at big rodeos just to make it.”

He traces the escalation to television and the money that came with it.

“I do think a lot has to do with TV. That’s where it’s evolved, and it’s made the rodeos bigger,” Hannum said. “And when you get bigger rodeos, you bring bigger guys in.”

That, he argued, runs into the association’s own business model—a membership organization that needs the circuit cowboy to keep buying a card.

“If there’s nowhere for young people to learn how to win, and to travel around and go to some rodeos where they can win—because that’s how you learn—that’s the part that’s hard, because that’s everybody that buys a card, and that’s your membership,” Hannum said. “So if you cut your membership down with your circuit guys, it hurts the business side of the PRCA. Your older guys aren’t going to buy a card and go up against the top 15 in the world at 25 rodeos. They’d rather just go to the amateurs. The young guys want to, but a lot of rodeos now aren’t letting permits in.”

Where they split: the rodeo count

Hanchey’s headline fix is a specific one. Because out-of-circuit calf ropers have to count 24 Wilderness rodeos—nine more than the 15 a resident counts—he argues, the requirement itself is what drags the top guys into the small ones.

“Right now, out-of-circuit guys in the Wilderness Circuit have to go to 24 first-approved circuit rodeos to be eligible for the finals,” Hanchey said. “If that number was dropped to 15, you wouldn’t have to rope against Riley Webb at New Plymouth. We have to go to the smaller rodeos to get our count in. I’m not speaking for Riley, but for myself—if I didn’t have to go to the smaller ones for my count, I wouldn’t even bother.”

Hannum, standing in exactly the spot Hanchey is describing, doesn’t buy that it would change much.

“It’s not going to matter, because if you count up the tour rodeos in our area, there’s 15 or 17 tour rodeos alone—so it’s still going to take that large amount to make the finals,” Hannum said. “Riley Webb going to New Plymouth isn’t going to make or break another guy from making the circuit finals. A circuit guy still has to win at the big rodeos with how big our rodeos are. If you don’t win at the big rodeos, you’re not making our circuit finals.”

To Hannum, the reason the travelers land on the Wilderness in the first place is baked into the geography.

“They all claim our circuit because we have so many good rodeos and they can count them—we have 18 tour rodeos and they have to go to 24,” Hannum said. “It’s the easiest circuit to get their counts in, with the most money in it. So that’s why they’re all here.”

His own standard is residency, not a ban. He was cool on the “tier” proposal Hanchey and two-time world champion Kaleb Driggers took to the PRCA board—barring the top-15 in the world standings from competing in their circuit finals—because it would punish the star who actually lives there.

“I don’t know that I love that either, because who doesn’t want to watch a guy who lives there rope at his own circuit finals? That’s his circuit. He deserves to go to that, too,” Hannum said. “That’s like saying I could be a better football player if I lived in Louisiana just because LSU’s right there. If Shane wants to make the Southeastern circuit finals and qualify for the NFR Open that way, because that’s where he lives, I think that’s the right route and he deserves that. It’s the guy who jumps to a circuit just to get the rodeo count that’s the different deal.”

Hanchey, for his part, said he isn’t opposed to the tier idea and floated two other levers—letting a roper’s money count toward a circuit without officialing every rodeo, or raising the out-of-circuit count so high it isn’t feasible—while conceding both are “just putting a band-aid on it,” because the top guys would still be roping against the circuit’s own.

The one they agree on: the NFR Open

Both Hanchey and Hannum end up in nearly the same place on the NFR Open.

“The NFR Open, to me, should be the weekend warrior’s NFR,” Hanchey said. “So my opinion is it should not count toward the NFR. But the people adding the million dollars or so want it to count. So it’s a tricky deal.”

When asked whether keeping NFR Open money from counting toward the world standings would fix any of it, Hannum went further.

“Solve the whole thing. Completely solve your problem,” Hannum said. “Because now it goes back to the circuit guys, and that’s their NFR. It means a lot again.”

He left one door open—for the young roper, not the veteran.

“If the NFR Open is a stepping stone for a young guy to get into the winter rodeos off a win like that, I think that’s huge,” Hannum said. “But past that, the money should never count toward anything in the year-end.”

For now, Hannum said, the competition is the only constant, no matter which way the rules break.

“It doesn’t matter if you’re roping against the guys that live in your area or the guys that live outside, you have to rope good, and you’re going to rope against good ropers,” Hannum said. “The competition’s tough no matter where you go.”