For Cassidy Cairns, Canadian Western Agribition provided him with many opportunities.
Cairns is 21 and was born and raised near Maryfield, Sask. Now he lives in Oxbow, Sask., and works on a ranch.
When he’s not working, though, he’s pursuing two of his passions: bullfighting and ranch rodeo.
While these two things may seem chaotic and dangerous to the average viewer, for Cairns, they’re all he wants to do.
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“I rode bulls in college a little bit. I liked it, but not enough. And so I got started fighting bulls, and I just fell in love with it instantly,” Cairns said.
He performed in the freestyle bullfighting event Nov. 26 at the Agribition rodeo, where contenders face off against Spanish bulls.
Cairns said the event didn’t go the way he wanted, with the bull knocking him over. All that did, though, was light a fire under him.
“Definitely this winter, going to hopefully try to get down south and try to get to some schools and stuff and try to just better myself and hopefully come back next year strong,” he said.
Cairns also competed in the ranch rodeo with his team, SSSS Ranches.
Ranch rodeo consists of a variety of events, such as the wild horse race, stray gathering, doctoring, sorting, branding, wild cow milking and the ranch horse competition. The point of this competition is to demonstrate everyday skills required on a ranch and for competitors to showcase their horsemanship skills.
Ranch rodeo has the potential to be dangerous as well, but Cairns revels in that.
“I like the chaos part. I mean, it’s no different than a bullfight. The crazier, the better. So it’s always thrilling for me,” he said.
His team was newly put together in 2024 and also features Eric Buyer, Kaylee Buyer and Hayden Bigney. Despite how green their team is, SSSS Ranches made it into the top eight out of 18 teams and finished in second place overall.
“We went down south this summer a bunch, and we ran through it all down there. And then this is our first year at Agribition. So it’s good,” Cairns said.
This was the first year the ranch rodeo took place over two days, partly because of its growing popularity with the public and also due to the increase in demand for more slots from ranch rodeo teams.
This year, the event reached capacity just minutes after it opened for entry.
Duce Ranch finished first in this year’s competition.
