Bausch coming home as rodeo entertainer
This weekend’s Jackson County Fair Rodeo will be a homecoming for featured entertainer Brian Bausch, a native of rural Mayetta, who now travels the world performing his cowboy show.
Bausch is the son of Richard and Helen Bausch, who operate a cow-calf operation in the southern part of the county.
“My dad had a ranch horse, and I grew up riding that and I would ride my brother’s pony,” Bausch said.
Bausch got his first horse when he was seven years old.
“I went and worked with Gordon Kern who helped me start that horse under saddle,” he said.
Bausch said that even at a young age, he was experimenting with trick riding on a horse.
“My brother and I would throw sticks and sunflower stumps at each other trying to knock each other off our dad’s single horse,” he said. “We weren’t very good at sharing so I started getting pretty good at hanging off the side of my horse, which, in the professional world, is called the Apache Hideaway. I also would stand up in the saddle to avoid my brother jabbing me with a pitchfork.”
Bausch took his first horse on long, hard rides and to calm him down before they arrived home, Bausch would stand up on him so he’d quit prancing and walk quietly.
“Soon I was standing on his back more than a mile away from the ranch,” he said.
Bausch graduated from Royal Valley in 1992 and then from Kansas State University.
“Right after my last exam, I began working at a dude ranch in Michigan,” he said. “I oversaw 100 head of horses, and it was a great learning experience for me.”
The dude ranch hosted 400 guests a week, and Bausch said part of his job was instructing the guests how to ride horses safety and demonstrating different riding techniques.
“From there, I would exaggerate things and tell the guests that they could control their horse easy standing up in the saddle or riding backwards,” he said. “My role soon turned more and more into an entertainer and less of an educator.”
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