Northeastern Washington is home to Steve and Karlene Katich. Their ranch is on the Colville Indian Reservation and they run both bucking and commercial cattle along the fertile shores of the Columbia River. Along with Steve and Karlene, their sons Lex and Sorrell and daughters Nikki, Fawn and Brandy are all involved in the family business in one way or another.

“I rodeoed when I was younger,” commented Steve, “and then when my father-in-law retired, my wife and I wound up taking over his ranch in 1975.” Steve wanted to add some size to his commercial cows, so he bought some red Angus cows and a full blooded Brahma. He bred them and then used the F1s out of them to breed to his Charolais commercial cows. “So I had a three-way cross that put me from 500 pounds a calf to over 680, so that made quite a difference,” Steve explained.

“Ralph McLean (of McLean-Kelsey Rodeo Co.) was short some bulls for a bull riding so he asked to borrow some. I explained to him that they’d never been bucked before but he said that was OK—and it turned out that we bucked everybody off!” From there, Steve’s bucking bull program was born.

Whether programs are large, medium or small, it does sometimes feel like breeders beyond the borders of Texas and Oklahoma can be overlooked. Even though Katich bulls have been making a name for themselves for years, many people are unaware of just how many greats have come out of their breeding program. Unforgiven, Rapid Fire, Dr. Proctor and Dog Face are just four of the champions from their pens.

“We’ve been around for so many years,” said Red Knection’s business mgr., Lex. “A lot of people ask about our young bulls, but a lot of people don’t know about our World Champion bulls. We might be a newer name to PBR fans, but we’ve been supplying great bulls to pro rodeos since 1989.”

Steve added, “I sold a lot of bulls to other stock contractors before I started doing my own PBR thing.”