Trevor Hale is sitting top 20 in the PRCA World Standings on a horse that never chased a calf out of a box until he was about 13.
Hale, from tiny Perryton at the tip-top of the Texas Panhandle, has nodded his head quite a bit this season on 14-year-old Hard Times, the horse he bought a year ago on which he won Sisters, Oregon, this summer.
But as he stares down the final five-week stretch of this season, he plans to get back on 18-year-old Sly Dun Enterprise, aka “Cornbread.”
The beginnings of Trevor Hale’s “Cornbread”
Hale was in high school when the family bought the dun gelding off a Texas ranch. He went to heading on him that first year. Then one night, he needed a calf horse. Keep in mind, according to Hale, it usually takes about a year to make a calf horse.
“I tied down calves on that horse two times, and went to a jackpot the third day and won a check on him,” Hale said. “He always scored and knew how to stop. He figured out how to work the rope fast. And he’s just a pleaser.”
Hale converted Cornbread from heading by breakaway roping off him, stepping off with this slack and asking him to start moving his feet. He taught the dun to stop when he felt pressure, but said he never even had to log the horse back. Cornbread was broke well and knew how to move his feet, so he took to it.
“He was really simple to train,” Hale said. “I’m not even going to take much of the credit; he trained himself.”
But credit is due anyway. This is a 22-year-old kid who grew up training reined cow horses, who was hand enough to be named the 2019 World’s Greatest Youth Horseman, who won AQHA world championships, and who was just a teenager when he got the call to head for a guy named Jade Corkill at the USTRC Finals.
He didn’t bother naming the dun for quite some time, until a friend dubbed him Cornbread for his color. The gelding loves to be loved on, Hale said, and will walk to the gate in a 10-acre pasture to be petted.
At the 2022 College National Finals Rodeo, Hale took it hard to calf-roping leader Kincade Henry of Panola College when the two both made the short round. Hale, for Cisco College, and Cornbread clocked an arena-record 7.1 seconds to pour on the heat, but Henry held on for the national championship. In the Northwest this fall, Henry and Hale are traveling partners.
Cornbreads’ 2024 record
This season, Hale and Cornbread earned roughly $13,000 at Ponoka, Alberta. Hale is plenty excited to tie some Corriente calves off his former head horse in the Northwest this month.
“He scores really good and is the same every time,” said Hale, who’s currently 17th in the world with almost $78,000 earned. “He’s no superstar, but I always know what he’s going to do. I’ve bought horses for a lot more money that I didn’t like as much.”
If the pair can win the Pendleton Round-Up like they did in 2022, it could push the underrated Cornbread and Hale all the way into Las Vegas’ Thomas and Mack Center.
