The Cowboy Chicken Curse

If you're planning to ride a bull or bust a bronc in the next few days, you'd be wise not to eat any chicken. It's the Cowboy Chicken Curse, as described by Meghan Waters in the Calgary Herald in this Stampede Week story.

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Poultry enemy No. 1 on rodeo day

Superstitious cowboys pluck
chicken off the menu

 MEGHAN WATERS
CALGARY HERALD 

Walk under a ladder, cross paths with a black cat and open an umbrella
indoors. Just don’t eat any chicken. Roasted, broiled, fried or shaked
and baked, the popular poultry is enemy No. 1 on rodeo day.

You are what you eat, after all.

And with Day 8 of the rodeo falling on Friday the 13th, the competitors
don’t want to risk getting bucked off because of a poor meal choice.

Adam Gilchrist, a saddle bronc rider from Maple Creek, Sask., once made
the mistake of eating roast chicken on the day of the competition.

“I didn’t think it was true,” he said.

Gilchrist had four rerides that day and has shied away from chicken ever since.

“A touring partner of mine did it once, ate chicken,” said Rod Hay, a saddle bronc rider from Wildwood, Alta.

“What are you doing, are you crazy?” Hay asked him.

The guy was pretty confident because he had drawn one of the best
horses, and he figured a little chicken wouldn’t hurt nobody, Hay said.

“He fell off in a hurry,” said Hay.

He also needed 50 stitches on his chin.

“He never did it again,” said Hay, adding he once bit into a chicken
taco after he was handed the problematic poultry by accident.

He spat it out quickly and it didn’t affect his performance.

“I was mad. I was gonna go back and whip that something.”

Most of the cowboys competing at the Calgary Stampede admit to avoiding the bird on competition days.

“I’m not a superstitious guy, I don’t eat chicken because I’ve had food
poisoning twice,” said Jess Martin, a saddle bronc rider from Montana.

“But there are some guys that dang sure are.”


None of the tough-as-nails cowboys would cop to any superstitious
behaviour, but they sure were willing to volunteer information about
other nervous cowboys.

There’s the guy who won’t wear the same shirt again if he doesn’t win.
And one cowboy who always rubs his toes a certain way. There’s the
barrel racer who wears stickers from her daughter on her hands, and the
guy who always puts his boots on a certain way.

Fred Boettcher, a bull rider from Wisconsin, has a routine with his
rope when he starts his ride. “I’ve done it since I was little,” he
said.

The routine keeps him focused he said — but it’s not a superstition.
“My game’s dangerous enough to be worried about crap like that,” he
said.

Tyler Seutter, 20, from a small town south of Leduc, competes in the
novice saddle bronc and said he wears the same pants for an entire
season, something he's done since he started rodeoing in 1999. “The
only time they get washed is in the rain,” he said.

He retires each pair of jeans at the end of the season and displays them in his basement.

“They hang by a belt loop in order,” he said.

Scott Byrne, a professional bull fighter from Wainwright, said he
doesn’t believe in superstitions. “But I’m never the first one in the
arena. I always let (the other bullfighter) go first.”

The other bullfighter, David Sandilands, from Swan River Man., said he tries to avoid superstitions.

He’s broken an arm and been kicked in the head by a bull before —
something most people would call unlucky — but Sandilands said that’s
just his job.

“I’m lucky if I’m the guy who’s taking the hit and the bullrider’s not,” he said.

Frank Keller, the owner of The Art of Tarot, which has two booths on the Stampede grounds, said you make your own luck.

“It’s no different than any other day, unless you’re superstitious and
get all freaked out and create your own bad luck,” he said. “It’s a
self-fulfilling prophecy.”

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