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If the smooth pattern of action is broken, man, horse, steer—or all three —can be crippled or killed. To rodeo men, the poorest form of all is called the "houlihan," when a bulldogger illegally knocks the steer down as he jumps from his horse and the dazed animal somersaults on top of him. In a "dog fall," the steer collapses with its legs tucked under its body, then has to be raised and thrown again. The "rubberneck steer" can let its head be twisted 180° or more, so that it is almost impossible to throw. Some steers veer under the steer wrestler's horse; others, tough-necked, will not stop at all until they bang the horn-hanging cowboy against the ring wall.
Jim Bynum knows all these dangers (he has suffered a broken leg, a broken wrist, and "a few horns in the gut"), but he carefully balances caution against the daring needed to win. "I know they're always going to have a rodeo next week," he smiles. "I'm not going to do anything to get myself hurt." Alabama-born, Big Jim has been bull-dogging almost 20 years, now grows cotton on a farm near Dallas. He tends it carefully in good years and leaves it readily when the sun-withered crop is poor. "They say they can tell how bad my cotton crop is by how much I win," he grins. But his career winnings—about $150,000 to date—are not the whole fascination. Bynum has never seen a corrida, but he reckons there is a moment of truth in steer wrestling too: "It's that one instant of balance when you've got that steer turning back and he's just teetering on one foot. I really enjoy it."
*Bulldogging remains the popular layman's term, but modern rodeo cowboys prefer to call it steer wrestling; it is one of five standard events of the professional rodeo. Others: calf roping, bull riding, bareback riding, and saddle bronc riding.