It doesn’t take long to figure out Dale Lyons is the kind of person who tells it like it is. There is never any sugar coating or gray area with him.

Just to let you know how “old school” Lyons is, he has lived on the same ranch for 58 years in Southwest Oklahoma.

“My Dad was a peanut farmer his whole life,” recalled  Lyons, “and we all grew up doing the same. I always said as soon as I was old enough I was going to head out and leave this farming behind me. Well, when my dad passed away, he left my brother and me all his farming equipment and the first thing my brother did was sell me his share—and I was still a farmer. It’s funny how things work out.”

When he was a child, “Our house burned to the ground and we kids were left standing in the yard in our underwear, no house, money or future. I guess I did have a future, but it was naked. This is where living in a great community comes in; the neighbors took up collections and donated many things to us to get us up and running once again. My father went out and found a house and moved to the farm. It was old and rundown, but it was a place to live.”

Lyons started in the rodeo business in 1993. “I had worked at a tire plant for 20 years and left that for the rodeo business. We put on 10 or so rodeos each year, and my whole family works them. I have never enjoyed anything more, except being a cowboy.”

All he ever wanted to be in life was a cowboy. “I team-roped for some 25 years along with working as a pickup man,” said Lyons. “Today, it’s still my favorite job at the rodeos. I got started in the livestock business with a set of bucking horses but it just didn’t work out for me. I later bought seven young bulls from Ronnie Roach and it was along this time I purchased CP 100. I used to work at the Junior Chamber of Commerce event in Ardmore, Okla. (The Okie 100) and at the time it was the largest bull riding going. All the top bull riders and contractors were there, and Charlie Plummer was one of them. They presented the top contractor a big trophy for the top bull and Plummer always won that award. I was a fan of Plummer and his bulls long before I ever owned any. I liked the way his bulls bucked, and when he finished bucking, whether he was ridden or not, I wanted him to run everybody out of the pen with lots of turn back and snappy with plenty of action—that was just my kind of bull.”

After Lyons’ first crop of CP 100 bulls started bucking, he thought to himself, “This is going to be easy. I had 301 Sports Machine, 34 Palace Station Express, 26 Macarena, 300 Buck A Roo and Buckwheat. The whole set that year bucked. My bulls went straight to the PBR and I was on easy street. My first two years were great, but it didn’t take long to figure out every year is not like that. When I look back at Sports Machine and Palace Station in the short go round of the PBR Finals, it amazes me.”

Sports Machine produced 12 calves his first crop and had four of those in the PBR finals: Scream Machine, Lyons King, Blood Sport and Slick 60.

“The first year Sports Machine went to the finals during the second round (the rank pen), my son Curt (a PBR contestant) drew him, and at the time Curt was fourth in the rankings and the PBR made a big deal about him drawing a bull we had raised. It was sure special for us. Buying CP100 was the best decision I could have made, looking back, and my worst one was not collecting him. Curt was still in high school and came to me about collecting him. I told him to ‘find something to do and forget all that.’ Looking back, that was one time I should have listened. We just didn’t think about collecting bulls back then. To us it was just about what was going on now, and not spending extra money on semen and storing it. I guess I can say my best and worst decisions in the bull business were made in the same year.”

Lyons has strong opinions about his likes and dislikes of his buckers. “I want them to buck, whether they ride the bull or not. If they are good I am tickled—it makes me just as mad as the bull rider to draw one of my bulls and not be any good on him. I truly enjoy watching each year’s calf crop buck and watching them mature and I don’t care how pretty they are—if they don’t buck, they are not any good.”

Lyons does not buck his heifers. “My theory is: if their bull bucks, why buck them? I’d bet my best-producing cow couldn’t buck a lick and has had four bulls make it to the PBR.”
Looking ahead, Lyons sees the ABBI’s future in two ways: “I think in one aspect it is going to get better, and one aspect it gets worse. The good bulls are going to be worth twice as much as five or six years ago, and mediocre bulls will be worth half as much. I’m not in the business of raising mediocre bulls; I want to raise good ones.”

He has had second thoughts recently about those strict Plummer bloodlines. “I have been breeding since 1992 to get my females as close to what Charlie Plummer had, but you can only go so far with one thought. I bought half interest in the bull Rain Wolf, and the reason was he had the best of two programs; Plummer and Naccarato breeding. I also will use the bull West Coast Charlie of Swinging C Cattle Co. for the A6 bloodline. I sure hope these outcrosses will help our program, but you don’t know until you open the gate and see what you have.”

By way of example, Lyons mentioned, “I bred to Sports Machine for nine years. I had a name brand bull and kept the Plummer thing going, and Plummer never used anything from outside his program to breed with. Looking back, maybe I should have brought in some different bloodlines.”

“Quality over quantity,” stressed Lyons when asked what advice he’d give to a newcomer, “and breed to something that has produced. Just being a grandson is not good enough anymore. Pick a strong cow and she will help any bull produce a bucker. I really think it’s a 50/50 thing with cow and bull. Ronnie Roach had the best set of cows around and produced buckers. He even had neighbors’ bulls get with these cows and produced buckers. CP100 was 75% of the equation—he produced buckers. It’s the genetics of the animal: CP100 was 10 times the breeder Sports Machine was, and I sure wish I had collected him.”

In 2009, the Lyons family will go in two directions. “I might try doing some Classic events. Curt likes the Futurities, so I guess he will enter some of these. I didn’t like the odds of a 2-year-old making it into the Classics, but today, many are making sure they don’t buck like before, and we see more graduating now.”