Just up the hill from Rod Chumley's ranch, North Wenas Road is virtually devoid of traffic, except for the steady line of pickup trucks turning onto Chumley's property.
In those trucks are tough young men here for one thing only: to climb onto bucking bulls, for nothing more than a few bucks in gas money, an adrenaline charge unlike any other and a few hard-earned seconds of training experience in their chosen sport.
"They get a practice out of it, and at the same time, I'm training bulls," says Chumley, who has been hosting bull-riding nights like this off and on, for some winter stretches on a weekly basis, for about five years. "They get to work on some skills, and I get some bulls bucked."
The arena itself was originally built for Chumley to train horses, but now it's ground central for his burgeoning business of training bulls to be good enough for the Professional Bull Riders circuits and the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association.
"Now instead of getting bucked off in there," Chumley says with a grin, "I'm watching other people getting bucked off."
On any night the riders may range from seasoned pros to wide-eyed kids still finding their way. It's just a word-of-mouth thing, but every bull rider within a six-hour drive is fully aware of what's going on in Chumley's arena.
"It keeps you tuned up," says Allen Helmuth, a 26-year-old from Ellensburg who's been riding bulls for six years, and won the 2009 PRCA Columbia River Circuit finals.
"Today we'll be getting on calves, 21/2-year-olds that are still figuring out what they're doin'. It's good for practice and good for confidence building -- number one, you should stay on, plus it helps you with your moves. It's like dancing: You've got to have a counter-move for every move the bull does."
Some of the riders at Chumley's Wednesday bucking series have plenty of moves. PBR stars Cody Ford and Cody Campbell have been regulars, and Campbell is here again tonight -- even though this arena hasn't always been kind to him.
In early October, just a couple of weeks before he took off to ride in the Professional Bull Riders finals in Las Vegas, Campbell was riding in one of Chumley's Wednesday night buckings when a bull's horn smashed into his face, knocking out a couple of teeth and costing him 40-some stitches.
After tonight's bucking is done, Campbell plans to spend a little time looking for those teeth. They're still somewhere out in that arena dirt.
The surroundings feel like home to Levi Yonaka, a local rider who rode his first bull -- or tried to -- at Chumley's arena a few years ago and later went on to reach the college national finals rodeo twice while representing Perry Technical Institute. He doesn't mind a bit that tonight's bulls aren't proven buckers.
"A lot of times they're more fun," Yonaka says of the young bulls, "because you don't know what they'll do."
What they do more often than not on this night is act up.
Most of the bulls in the back pen tonight have been ridden only by "dummy riders." These are metal contraptions strapped onto the young bull, which instinctively tries to get it off. When the bull does what Chumley and his business partner, Gary Long, want it to learn to do -- buck and spin -- they press a button that releases the contraption and it falls off.
Some bulls figure out pretty quickly: Hey, that bucking and spinning sure gets rid of that irritating thing on my back. After Chumley and Long put each young bull through a couple of test rides with the dummy, they put a real rider on it in Wednesday night events just like this one.
If the bull tries the same violent bucking, kicking and spinning to dislodge the rider, it might be on the road to a career in the PBR or pro rodeo. If it doesn't, it may soon be on the road to a slaughterhouse in Toppenish and a future atop a hamburger bun.
And the bull rider might be on the way to the hospital, if he spends too much time on the back of an inexperienced bull while it's still in the chute. The bull is scared and angry, pouting about having this rope strapped around its torso and a stranger climbing on its back.
"Young bulls, they got no patience -- not them babies," says Long. "You're sitting on a time bomb."
That bomb explodes upon a young rider named Andy Elliott, when his bull -- after five minutes of thrashing around in the chute -- never quite leaves it when the gate is opened. Instead, the bull begins bucking and bashing into and against the gate and the chute, slamming Elliott into the gate before he was pulled to safety by two other riders standing above the chute.
"That'll knock the flu off," grimaces Elliott, who has been sick all week.
Elliott is Yonaka's housemate these days, having moved to Selah from Arlington, Wash., primarily for access to Chumley's training arena and the opportunity to get on a lot of bulls.
"There's nothing like this where I was living," Elliott says. "I'd have had to drive an hour and a half for something like this."
Some of the others riding on this night came farther than that. Several riders drove down from North Central Washington, others up from Oregon, still others from Boise, Idaho. Campbell, who's from a little town near La Grande, Ore., came hoping to get on a spirited young bull Chumley and Long years ago took to calling "Vegas" because even as a young calf, they could tell he was special.
The bull demonstrates that with a rousing, twisting, bucking ride with Campbell aboard, but the PBR star stays on for at least a full eight-second ride, though there's no official time buzzer to announce it. Chumley, who grades each bull's effort -- using the old grading scale from school -- gives "Vegas" an A for the ride. There are a lot of A's given out on this night, plus a couple of D's.
Getting one D doesn't necessarily mean the bull won't make it. A second low grade, though, would be the bull's last.
"They get two chances," Long says. "We want an 1,800-pound bull with kick and spin. We want an athlete. These (bull-riding) kids are too good now."
After a particularly desultory effort by one bull, Long shakes his head. "He'll get one more try because he had a B the first time. After another D comes a T -- he's going to Toppenish."
"Vegas" isn't the most impressive bull of the night by a long shot. Another young bucker, son of an award-winning bull, tosses his rider in three powerful, spinning leaps, sending the two bullfighters racing in to distract the bull and keep it from injuring the dazed rider.
Colby Reilly, a young rider from the wheat lands of northern Grant County, turns to a couple of journalists watching the goings-on.
"Y'all want to know what a good bucking bull looks like? That," Reilly says and points at the bull, still snorting and bounding around the arena. "That right
