Suzanne Williams didn’t go find the breakaway horse she’s rodeoed on all year—she raised Ima Tee Jay Tucker, “Ducker,” out of four generations her family has owned, ridden and stood at stud.
Ducker’s great-grandfather was a cutting horse the family bought off Williams’ aunt as a backup stallion. He became the ranch stud, and they have kept a son out of him ever since. Gay Bar King and Jackie Bee sit behind all of it.
“They’re just that old, good using horse, really, is what they are, but they can run, and that’s where they shine.”
Bloodlines
Ducker was never supposed to happen; his sire stayed a stallion after an accident forced their hand. The family was weighing whether to cut the colt when the ranch called to say the good stud had passed away, so Only Boy Named Sue stayed intact. He turned into her husband Dan’s head horse and that horse’s full brother was the first really good breakaway horse Williams ever had.
The mare that became Ducker’s dam was given to Williams because nobody could get her bred. She carried Doc Tom Tucker and Zan Parr Bar, the blood Dan grew up on, and she was 23. Williams flushed her and got two colts, and Ducker was the first. The name was the plan talking—Dan’s good head horse was Tucker, and he wanted another one.
Nobody Scores Him Right the First Time
Williams did not start him. They were moving and taking the rodeo coaching job at Lassen Community College, so Ducker went out for 30 days as a 2-year-old. She told the trainer she would like a calf horse but figured he would end up a head horse. He pushed back.
“He told me, ‘I don’t know about that, but I have to hobble this horse to keep him from backing away from me. He’s not scared. He’s not spooky. He just always wants to back up.’”
She was pregnant while he was coming 3 and 4, so Dan roped on him out of the box first, four months before she ever did.
He sits so still in the corner he does not feel like a horse that intends to leave.
“He feels like he’s completely still. But you can get his feet right, say the word whoa, and he’s going to square up and put his ears forward and wait for your cue.”
He is 15 hands and he is flat. His head does not come up and his front feet do not leave the ground, so a calf peeling left never disappears behind his ears. Her calf in the last round at Walla Walla had been checking off the neck rope harder every time he ran, and he pulled hard left. Ducker scored, blew across the line and shortened his stride to read him.
“He’ll shorten his stride down, but he’ll keep crawling forward until I throw. He’s going to read you and he’s going to feel you in your delivery, but if you squeeze him forward, he’s going to keep moving till it comes out of your hand, which is a rare find.”
At Calgary her second calf outran the field and she never wondered whether she would get to it.
“It’s handy to have one that can let you throw, but you also know that you can catch anything they run at you. That is a pretty good peace of mind.”
Soft Ground and a Hillside at Puyallup
MJA Flo Along—“Flo”—rode beside him for two years, the mare Williams won a round on at the NFBR and the one who stepped up when the whole outfit had hauled all night. Flo broke a leg at Lovington. Ducker has gone down the road alone since.
“You don’t think that could ever happen to you, and then when it happens to you and you’re stuck and you have just one, it’s an eye-opening experience.”
So she is careful with him in ways that have nothing to do with roping. The hardest thing on these horses, she says, is hauling them somewhere and parking them on a slab, so she hunts up the softest ground she can find.
He hates a box stall, and if he has to be in one he has to have enough shavings to waller in. At Puyallup the best she could do was a hillside steep enough that she and Dan are sleeping with their heads downhill.
At home he is a different animal. Her son Landon, 7, walks up under his chest and wraps both arms around him, and Ducker waits for it, then curls his head around and takes hold of the seat of the boy’s pants. Every single time. Landon spent weeks telling his mother the horse was biting him before she caught it.
The horse Williams measures him against is his own uncle.
“In some scenarios he’s the best horse I’ve ever rode, and in others he’s the second best. His uncle was probably more athletic than he was, and faster, but he didn’t score as good.”
Similar reads: Right on Time: Suzanne Williams’ $16K Week Moves Her to No. 9 in the World | Suzanne Williams Dominates California Circuit, Caps Fairytale 2025
