What Exactly is a Cow Catch?
If you're a fan of team penning, sorting and/or cutting, it might be just the thing for you
By Lisa Broadwater

A year ago, the so-called Cow Catch was little more than a figment of promoter Joe T. Barnett's imagination. Now the Cow Catch — which involves a little sorting, cutting and roping with various other classic cowboy skills thrown in the mix — is an up-and-coming event that may some day be a rodeo staple.
Here's how a Cow Catch works: Two team members must sort one calf from a herd of five in a sorting pen. The sorting pen gate must be worked while mounted; the calf is then controlled through a figure-eight, wrap-around pattern and then herded through an exit gate.
If the calf is roped, dally style with a breakaway honda, anywhere within the pattern, a credit is given to the time (most producers use a 90-second time limit and give a four-second roping credit). If an attempt to rope misses, two seconds are added to the time. If the calf goes the wrong way around the obstacles or goes across the line and then doubles back, you're disqualified. Credits can also be awarded for controlling two head through the pattern. Sort more than two head, and you're disqualied.
Barnett, who's been promoting team penning and other events for many years, dreamed up the event because the ever-increasing cost of producing rodeo events has led to their demise at many smaller arenas.
"It had gotten to where in so many of our events, such as team penning, the entry fees were so high due to the cost of production because it takes so many cattle to have the event," Barnett says. "But this uses less than a third of the cattle for the same amount of entries [team penning uses three cows per run]. Plus, the cattle are used less often, and they have much more rest time between run times, so you're able to get a lot of mileage out of your cattle. Thus, you can produce a show more cost-effectively.
"This allows us to get into a family-oriented budget — families can participate and pay $10 to $20 entry fees," he adds. "It's pretty hard for a family to go and pay $50 to $100."
Raised on a working ranch in Mississippi, Barnett spent time calf-roping and bulldogging before he began training horses and became a farrier. After producing a number of rodeos in Mississippi, he went on to produce team pennings in several states and introduced "no-trash team penning" ("Where you don't allow any wrong cattle across the line," he explains, "which cuts out a lot of the rough-housing and protects the cattle and the horse"). For the past 12 years, he's produced the Dixie National team penning event.
Barnett produced the first Cow Catch — for the Chickasaw County Team Penning Association in Houston, Miss. — last November. Basically, it was a trial run to see if the idea would work. It did: the Chickasaw group has converted to Cow Catching. Meanwhile, the event has already spread to five states (it's most popular in Mississippi and Tennessee — with several events near Memphis — but there are also strong groups in Michigan and Colorado).
By the arrival of the Cow Catch Finals on Jan. 27 (which will replace the team penning event at the Dixie Nationals), more than 60 shows will have been produced across the country; most of them average about 120 entries each, Barnett says.
Barnett has designed the event to appeal to a broad range of devotees.
"We have a Youth class and an Open class for everybody who thinks they're real good — and we have some real good ones," he says. "We have a $1,000 Novice class for people who haven't won $1,000 in any horse event. Then we have $3,500 with the same criteria. And we have Pro-am, which is an open riding with any of those people who qualified for the Novice class.
"That gives everybody plenty of rides and an area to ride in. And you can enter five times with a different partner each time in each class you're qualified for."
As for the awards given, "So far, it's just been jackpots," Barnett says, "but at the Finals we're going to have added money and awards and quite a lot of stuff to make it exciting. I don't know exactly what the purse will be, but the added monies and awards will be between $10,000 and $15,000."
Asked whether he could see the Cow Catch replacing team penning, Barnett demurs.
"Well, I don't know; for me, it will. For other people... I think it's coming along at the right time. We're not trying to be in competition with anybody. We hope that what we do will educate the general public that's interested in equine events, and hopefully it'll spur some of them to become cutters, ropers, team penners or whatever — just get them interested. It's a good sport, and it keeps a lot of kids out of trouble."
To learn more about producing a Cow Catch Event, contact Joe T. Barnett at (662) 890-6310 or visit www.cowcatchevent.com. Rules, patterns, videos and producer information are available by request.