DIVISION: LEGENDS ONLY / EARNINGS: $6,260
Dineen
When Bob Dineen moved to Weld County, Colorado in 1983 he had never competed in team roping before. He noticed right away that nearly everyone in the area roped and he picked up the habit shortly thereafter.
Dineen owns and operates Rocky Mountain Natural Meats, a company he started in 1986. He was managing a ranch in Longmont, Colo., where the owner had 250 head of buffalo in addition to cattle. As soon as he was introduced to the buffalo market, Dineen saw a future in the business.
“I knew cattle better than I knew buffalo going in to that job, but I quickly realized there was a demand for bison meat and I went on to start my business from there.”
There are currently about 400,000 bison in North America and many of the bison purchased by Rocky Mountain Natural Meats come from Canada.
“We buy from producers then process and distribute to a wide variety of grocery stores across the nation,” Dineen explained. “We also export to the European Union.”
From Dineen’s original vision of expanding an industry, Rocky Mountain Natural Meats has grown large enough to process about 500 head of buffalo a week and staff 170 employees.
At home, Dineen raises a small Corriente herd and goes to team ropings as often as possible.
“My daughter, Michaela, works for us at the plant, and does a good job of keeping an eye on everything so we can get away,” said Dineen who was able to spend some time in Arizona this winter with his wife, Laurie. “We also have a son, Owen, and when he left for college, Laurie switched from heading to heeling, so she ropes at a lot 0f the NTR events with me as well.”
Nelson
Half of the year Blake Nelson ropes in Arizona, attending as many team roping events as possible. The other six months of the year he produces events at his own, "Blake Nelson’s Arena" in Longmont, Colo.
Nelson has been hosting and producing team roping events for over 35 years. It all
started when he built a practice arena at his family’s farm—a place that has been in his family for five generations.
“I decided to invite a few guys over to rope to help pay the bills on the cattle,” Nelson said.
“It was a wet rainy year, next thing you know my arena was the only one with ground good enough to rope in. Ropers started showing up by leaps and bounds and I had to get more cattle. After that, I was hosting jackpots and I was producing team ropings year-round.”
Nelson enjoys every aspect of producing events, but says the business is especially gratifying when kids start out at his events and he gets to watch as they develop their skills and go on to be excellent ropers. He also enjoys when people who don’t win money come and tell him they enjoyed the roping.
Nelson will be producing several NTR events at his arena this summer. The first date is June 10 and 11 and his philosophy as a producer is one the NTR can get behind.
“When people are happy they came to the roping, even though they didn’t win, I know I have done a good job,” Nelson said. “I enjoy putting on a roping that everyone has fun at, no matter how big the turn out or the added money. I just like to see people have fun roping.”
