After winning Rapid City event, Minnesota cowboy heads to NFR

• Minnesota cowboy

Brett Stall, of Detroit Lakes, Minn., has been riding bulls for years and is headed to Las Vegas later this week for the National Finals Rodeo. When he’s not riding bulls, Brett Stall works with his dad on their beef ranch just outside of Detroit Lakes, Minn. Here he is at the Hawley Rodeo this summer. (David Samson/Forum Communications Co.)

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DETROIT LAKES, Minn. — After Brett Stall won a bull-riding competition in Rapid City in January, he was pretty sure he’d be seeing the lights of Las Vegas in December. And he was right.

“I was really confident, especially coming off the first of the year, starting it out well in Rapid City. I was like No. 2 in the world right after that.”

Stall, 23, will be competing in his first National Finals Rodeo, Dec. 5-16 in Las Vegas.

“I knew if I stayed healthy and kept going, I could make it,” he added. Now, with only a few days until competition, the Detroit Lakes man said it hasn’t even sunk in yet that he’s going to the biggest competition of his career thus far.

“I can’t even put it into words really,” he said. The competition is 10 days long, and Stall will compete all 10 days — riding “the best bucking stock in the United States.” The potential money to be won at this competition is pretty steep, too.

“This could set me up for my ranch someday.”

Between the Rapid City rodeo in January and the competition in a few days, Stall has been traveling throughout the United States, competing in multiple bull rides — 110 this year actually. There is a cap of 125 rodeos he’s allowed to compete in a year. He said he and his traveling partner plan out their route, hit the higher payouts and fill in with the smaller rodeos along the way.

“Our Cowboy Christmas, we call it, is in July. Me and my traveling partner, we went to 12 rodeos in 10 days, or nine days or something.”

That means a couple rodeos a day.

“They’re close enough you just drive like heck to get there,” he added. “It gets exhausting, especially when you got beat up on your first one and then you know you’ve got a bad (bull) drawn that a lot of guys don’t like getting on because he’s hard.

“You really got to start thinking positive about things, you know. That’s what bull riding is about. You can’t be negative in the rodeo world, in anything really.”

Bull riding is all reaction, he said, so that’s not the thoughts going through his head when he’s sitting on the bull, waiting for the gate to open. Instead, he concentrates on good, positive thoughts to make it through his competition.

“I just pray to the good Lord upstairs — pray we make it through it and then give him the glory when we’re done.”

When he’s not traveling and competing, Stall runs a beef ranch with his dad just outside Detroit Lakes. They have several hundred beef cows and 30 horses, he said.

“I stay busy ranching, and I like to ice fish when I’m home in the winter.”

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