Eight seconds. That’s the goal. If the rider can stay astride the bucking bull for that long, he might earn a high score from the rodeo judges. A shrill whistle signals the end of one of the most exciting and dangerous eight seconds in the world. In a single, deft twist of his gloved hand, the rider drops his grip on the rope and jumps from the animal’s back.

The grounded cowboy is now easy prey for the revenge-seeking bull that lunges toward him, hooking right and left with its horns. Suddenly a rapid movement near the bull’s head distracts the angry animal from the cowboy, and he dives toward his new nemesis instead.

The baggy pants of a darting bull- fighter has caught the bull’s eye. Throughout the ride this brightly clad figure in clown’s makeup and athletic shoes has hovered nearby. Now, crouching low, he zigzags tauntingly in front of the bull, luring its gaze from the rider who can run to safety.

Rodeo bullfighters, working in teams of two, are the bull riders’ silent, life-saving partners immediately after those grueling eight-second rides. While their clown’s makeup may add crowd-pleasing color to the rodeo arena, they are professional bull- fighters, not to be confused with rodeo clowns, who provide entertainment during intermissions.

Loyd Ketchum would.

Given his quiet, unassuming manner, Ketchum, from Miles City, Montana, finds it more stressful to tell a joke than face an angry bull. And though he admits he works on adrenaline when fighting bucking bulls at rodeos, he’s energized by the work rather than drained. It has kept him working rodeos for more than 20 years, “with no end in sight.”

Explaining how he has worked successfully at such a dangerous career for so many years, he said, “It’s all a game of reaction. You have to have an understanding of what bulls are capable of doing.”

But besides understanding bulls, Ketchum trusts simple laws of physics to keep from getting trampled. Basic physics tells him his 5’ 5”, 150-pound, two-legged body can outmaneuver the hulking, 1,800-pound body of a four-legged critter, no matter how angry the bull is.

Ketchum works hard to keep his body in shape, too, so he doesn’t get winded and his legs will move like a cat’s when a bull is on his heels. He bikes every day when he’s not traveling or working a rodeo, and he doesn’t skip the biking even on days when he works hard fencing, haying, and feeding cattle on his ranch along the rough, bare breaks of the Powder River, 40 miles south of Miles City.

 It’s a daring rescue that literally invites injury to the bullfighter. “I’ve ‘unhung’ a lot of guys over the years,” said Ketchum. “You just go in there accepting the fact that you might take a hit saving a cowboy. It’s all part of the game.”

Ketchum has been injured seriously a number of times, but his ability to heal and get back to work has astounded doctors. Once, a dislocated and broken hip kept him out of the rodeo arena for an entire month. But when a bull rammed him in the side, breaking ribs and puncturing a lung, he had to stay off work for only two weeks. In reality, his body was still healing when he went back to fighting bulls.

“I take pain better than a lot of people,” he said. “Pain is only pain if you think about it. If a person is in great shape, it’s amazing how quickly he can get back into action.”

When he’s not working a rodeo, Ketchum is back home caring for 130 head of commercial beef cows on the 6,400-acre ranch his bullfighting wages have helped him buy. “It’s my getaway vacation place,” he said. His wife, Ashlee, looks after the cattle when he’s away.

Eventually, when he finally packs up his bullfighting shoes, he’ll “retire” to become a full-time rancher, and his life will have come full circle.

He grew up on a family cattle outfit near Plevna, Montana, not far from his own spread. He learned about bulls at an early age while helping to care for his family’s cattle. He learned about rodeo, too. His uncle was a bull rider, and his mother competed at rodeos in the women’s barrel-racing event, where riders race their horses in a timed cloverleaf pattern around three barrels.

Today, working in the prestigious ranks of the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA) rodeo circuit, he drives or flies to major cities all over the United States to fight bulls at PRCA-sanctioned rodeos. At the peak of his career, throughout the 1990s, he took to the road 300 days of the year to work 200 rodeo performances.

During that time he fought bulls for eight years at the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo held each December. It’s an honor to be chosen to fight at the NFR, because the qualifying bull riders themselves choose the bullfighters who will work the event. They vote for the fighters who they think will provide the greatest degree of safety.

Besides consistently earning the trust of the country’s top bull riders, Ketchum’s skill also earned him the title of World Champion BullFighter in 1991. Each year in conjunction with the Wrangler NFR, the Wrangler clothing company also sponsored the world champion bullfighting contest, which has since been discontinued. Only the top six money-earning bullfighters from around the country were eligible to compete. For nine years Ketchum earned enough money to qualify for the event.

His schedule has slowed from its frenetic pace of the 1990s. He now attends fewer rodeos, 75 to 100 a year, so he can devote more time to his growing ranch and cow herd.

But Ketchum is a long way from retiring from the rodeo arena, even at age 42, an age some might consider “old” for such a strenuous job. “Age is just a number,” he said. “As long as I stay fit and keep cowboys from getting hurt, I’ll go on fighting bulls. This work makes life exciting. I get an adrenaline high from outmaneuvering bulls and keeping cowboys healthy. I want to do it for as long as I can.”