The breakaway roping community lost 22-year-old gelding “Alf” in the early morning hours of Jan. 25, when Brighton Bauman and her boyfriend Cade Fedor’s rig hit a patch of black ice just over the Alabama/Florida state line and turned over.
The pair were headed from Texas to the sunshine state for a handful of ProRodeos, their stock combo trailer loaded with five horses including Fedor’s bulldogging horse. Alf was in the last hole.
“It was about 1 a.m. in the morning and we hit a bad patch of black ice,” Bauman said. “Cade was driving and when we hit the ice, he didn’t hit the brakes, but the exhaust brake kicked on. Our trailer passed us on the left, spinning us 180 degrees. We hit a pothole and the trailer turned onto its side on the shoulder. It jerked the bed off the truck.”
While Bauman and Fedor were shaken, the truck remained upright. A check on their precious cargo revealed that the force of the collision had sent Alf’s right hind leg through the trailer, where it was pinned and crushed in the crash.
“Cade had his pistol and… I mean, I couldn’t do it,” Bauman said.
With Alf no longer in pain, the two set about trying to unload the rest of the horses. Eventually, with the help of emergency personnel, they cut the top off the trailer and were able to extract the four remaining horses with only bumps and scrapes.
Now, more than a month later, Bauman and Fedor are still picking up the pieces. Both the truck and trailer were totaled in the crash and Bauman was left without her main rodeo mount. She hadn’t carried insurance on Alf due to his age and the fact that he was grade.
But even in the hard times, people pull through. Kaylee Traylor lent Bauman her gelding “Tarzan” to ride in the Fort Worth Stock Show & Rodeo. While Jason Hanchey, who’s like a father figure to Bauman, immediately went to work finding her another horse to rodeo on.
Now, Bauman’s riding Hanchey’s gelding “Weed Eater” and is slated for Rodeo Austin.
Remembering Alf
Alf carried Bauman from Junior rodeos to the Pros, thriving in short setups that saw her stop the clock in as fast as 1.4 seconds.
“He was just so solid,” Bauman recalled. “He would get tight and take a shot away from you for sure, but he scored so well, broke to the pin every time and was so low headed. He was easy to be fast on. And as he got older he had lost his step a little, but he was a winner. He was so tough. It didn’t matter how tired he was, he gave his all every time.”
Alf’s greatest wins:
– National High School Finals Breakaway Champion, 2017
– Florida State High School Finals Breakaway Champion, 2019, 2020
– Open Patriot Breakaway Champion, 2019
– Hugo Pro Rodeo Champion, Hugo, Oklahoma, 2021, 2024
– Snake River Stampede Champion, Nampa, Idaho, 2022
Alf’s story with the Bauman family began in Florida, where her Uncle Clint Boney was a pickup man at a rodeo in Davie. Alf, who was 4 or 5 years old, was tied at a trailer, gotten loose and was running down the road. According to Boney, he was so athletic and hard to catch that he ended up trading the man another horse for Alf, thinking he’d be a good pickup horse.
Well, Alf never grew as big as Boney hoped. Standing around 14.3 hands, Alf was given to Bauman’s cousin to rope on.
“They didn’t get along,” Bauman recalled. “Alf was terrible in the box for him. So they gave him to me when I was 8 or 9. We used him for everything. I tied goats off him. I roped terrible when I was a kid, and he was so fast and strong. And he never did have this real big, pretty stop. So it was a struggle for a long time… I was 13 before we really got to winning.”
But when they started clicking, it was game on. Alf was a short setup king and Bauman grew into a gunslinger to match.
“If had to rope anything past the 2.5 point you probably weren’t going to win anything,” Bauman said. “But anything across the line in that 1.7 to 2.3 range, he was perfect. The fastest I remember ever going on him was a 1.4 at a Junior NFR Qualifier in Okeechobee, and 1.5 at the Clay Logan in 2021. I was also 1.6 on him several times at Northside.”
Alf gave his all. Bauman remembers him as an easy-hauling horse that loved people and made her the roper she is today.
“But I was definitely his person,” Bauman said.
