CUTTINGHORSECENTRAL
Chad Bushaw on Bittersweet
It’s a beautiful, early spring morning on Chad Bushaw’s Crown Ranch in Weatherford. The sun is shining, the cows are lowing, and Bushaw and his sons are out working their cutting horses. With the National Cutting Horse Association (NCHA) Super Stakes just around the corner — one of the sport’s biggest horse shows — there’s much work to be done in preparation.
Practice makes perfect, after all, and training his horses is one of Bushaw’s favorite pursuits. He’s been an avid fan of cutting horses since he was a little kid, so much so that he followed his passion to Fort Worth in 1991 and never left. Now approaching $4 million in rider earnings through the NCHA, some days he still has to pinch himself to make sure this isn’t some Brothers Grimm’s fairy tale he is dreaming in his deepest sleep.
Bushaw, a 1995 TCU graduate, is an investments consultant, most recently senior vice president of investments at Wells Fargo. He has made a career as a financial professional, making investment recommendations or conducting security analyses. He has also taken on a second career as a developer, purchasing another ranch near to his heart and developing it into a subdivision complete with street names honoring cutting horse mentors he holds dear.
However, when he’s not doing all that, he’s almost certainly on the back of a horse, or some other aspect of breeding or training a cutting horse, on some part of his 4,000 acres of ranchland.
He competes as a non-pro, and as a breeder, he has produced horses competing at the uppermost levels of the sport. He was inducted into the NCHA Non-Pro Hall of Fame and is a two-time NCHA Futurity Non-Pro Champion. He campaigned one of his Futurity winners, Bittersweet, to NCHA Non-Pro Horse of the Year.
Cutting has a long history with Fort Worth. The first recorded arena cutting was held at the 1919 Southwestern Exposition and Fat Stock Show, and the city has held cutting’s three biggest “Triple Crown” events at the Will Rogers Memorial Center for years. The NCHA, which governs the sport, is based in Fort Worth, and many trainers reside around the area, particularly in Weatherford.
Cutting, in fact, is what drew Bushaw to the city 30 years ago. Having grown up in the tiny town of Long Creek in eastern Oregon, Bushaw was always enamored with the idea of ranching. His parents, Grant and Michelle, were schoolteachers, but a fateful third-grade class field trip cemented his desire to pursue the Western lifestyle.
The trip took Bushaw and his classmates to the Oxbow Ranch, 20 miles away in Prairie City. Owned at the time by Dan Lufkin, a founding partner of the Wall Street firm of Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, Oxbow Ranch was one of the most famous cutting horse ranches in the country.
Perhaps none of the children were as enchanted by the experience as Bushaw, who watched, mesmerized, as shiny, athletic quarter horses swooped back and forth in front of cattle, their shoulders rolling and ears pricked forward.
“I think that was probably the pivotal moment that I really just fell in love with it,” Bushaw says. “It was a pretty special class field trip that sort of shaped my life.”
Afterward, Bushaw was itching to go to Texas. When it came time to pick a college, Bushaw — motivated by Lufkin to pursue a career in investments — picked TCU for his studies.
The land of Horned Frogs had a big advantage as far as Bushaw was concerned: Will Rogers Coliseum was nearby.
“It was more of a geographical decision,” Bushaw admits. “They also had a great business school, and it was a fabulous school in general.”
Bushaw was suddenly 2,000 miles from home with only his old Ford truck, a two-horse trailer, a couple horses and several possessions in tow. The first thing he did was pull into the driveway of the Bar H Ranche.
A few friends Bushaw had met through cutting helped facilitate his arrival. They vouched for Bushaw and asked Bar H Ranche’s owner Bobby Pidgeon, as well as Pidgeon’s recently hired trainers, Paul and Winston Hansma, to “take a chance on helping a young guy out with a place to stay.”
“It’s silly to talk about it now because Paul and Winston are two of the most legendary people in our sport, and probably the two finest human beings I know. At the time, I had not heard of either of them as they had both just moved to the Bar H that year,” Bushaw says. “I didn’t know how good I had it.”
Being around the Hansmas was life-changing, Bushaw says. The horse skills and life lessons they taught helped shape him.
Bushaw has no doubt passed on a lot of those things to his own children. Charles Russell, 17, and Will, 15, both compete in cutting horses. Charles Russell is an NCHA Futurity Amateur Champion, and Will boasts a Youth World Champion title.
Bushaw’s youngest son, Wesley, 10, is more into football and basketball than horseback riding, but all three boys help Bushaw and his wife, Amie, on the ranch by cutting hay, taking care of fences, and doing all the chores such a life requires.
“I’ve tried to really instill those values in them. I think it’s kind of a lost art, even in our sport, because people don’t quite understand the nature of how cutting even started,” Bushaw says. “My boys have learned so much as far as work ethic, responsibility, interacting with people, being a humble winner and a gracious loser. The family environment that cutting has is just second to none.”
The kid who once dreamed of owning a ranch now has land totaling around 4,000 acres, a brand decorating some of the top people and horses in the industry, and 1,000 head of mother cows. He bought the Bar H Ranche, which he developed into a subdivision complete with street names like “Hansma Way” and “Pidgeon Lane,” in honor of two of the guys he most admires.
Sometimes, everyday life can feel a little surreal.
“It’s crazy to look back and think about that random chance occurrence, where you take this field trip, and then later you have a couple of friends that introduce you to two really good guys [the Hansmas]. God’s timing was amazing,” Bushaw says. “I’m proud that I’ve been able to establish a brand and a program that’s not only important to me, but to other people as well.”