the PRCA announced its 2023 Polaris Remuda Awards. The best pen of bucking horses brought to PRCA rodeos is Burch Rodeo Company and the committee recognized for assembling the best pen of bucking horses is the Douglas County Fair & Rodeo in Castle Rock, Colo.
The annual Remuda Awards go to the stock contracting firm and rodeo committee that provide the best, most consistent pen of bucking horses, creating the best opportunities for contestants to score well.
This is the first time Burch Rodeo Company and the Douglas County Fair & Rodeo have won Remuda Awards.
“We’re tickled pink,” Chad Burch said. “It is very surprising. We didn’t have any thought about the award, let alone winning it. I have known about the award since they started doing it (in 2004), but I didn’t think we ever had a chance of winning it. It was very surprising and very cool to win this award. That’s a lot of bragging rights.”
The Burch family, Max, his wife, George Ann, and their sons, Chad and Matt run the rodeo company based in Gillette, Wyo.
The Burch Rodeo Company has been sanctioned in the PRCA since 1999 and the company will have bareback and saddle bronc horses and bulls competing at the 2023 Wrangler National Finals Rodeo, Dec. 7-16 at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas.
“My dad liked racehorses and he wanted to run a bunch of racehorses,” Chad said. “Well, the horses he was raising kept bucking the jockeys off, so he decided to try bucking horses out and that was in the late 1980s. My dad has had pretty good luck with raising horses that will buck and we raise a lot of them.”
John Adams, the chairman of the Douglas County Fair & Rodeo committee, was thrilled about the honor.
“To receive an award like this is payoff for what I would say is over 100 years of work,” Adams said. “Our first rodeo was in 1918 and it has been a fun journey for an awful lot of people, and it is really neat to be recognized at this point and time.
“I think what got us to this point was the support of the fair board, all the rodeo committee members, the commissioners, and the county staff. They helped us make some changes, we went with Summit Pro Rodeo eight or nine years ago and the year before last we had up to $10,000 in added money and we needed additional stock and Summit brought in Kirsten Vold to help out. This year was our first year in the ProRodeo Series and again we increased our added money and brought Kirsten back in. The two pens of horses mesh very nicely.”
The 2023 Polaris Remuda Award winners will be honored at the PRCA Awards Banquet at the South Point Hotel in Las Vegas at 6 p.m. (PT), Dec. 6, the eve of the Wrangler NFR.
“I’m so excited about this honor and we plan on bringing a bunch of people out to Las Vegas,” Adams said.
