ProRodeo Sports News - June 12, 2020

anywhere to go, we have been doing nothing but working. We service Louisiana, Texas and Arkansas.” Keithville Well Service is run by Jacob’s father, Jeff, his brother, Eric, 23, and Jacob, 29. “We have been staying really busy here lately, the last two weeks we have been working 12 hours a day,” Jacob said. “We leave at 5:30 in the morning and get home around 8 o’clock at night. This has always been the plan when I get done rodeoing to do this. Rodeo is something where I have been really blessed to have the success I have had. It is something I love to do, and I wasn’t going to give up chasing that dream. My primary focus right now is working, but I’m still practicing (steer wrestling) and I’m in the gym almost every day.” Jacob tied for fourth in Mesquite, Texas, June 6, and enteredWoodward Okla., and Coleman, Texas. Eric enjoys having Jacob back in the family business full time, even if it is temporary. “It’s awesome,” Eric said. “Usually he’s gone during the summer, so I don’t get to see him a whole lot. Having him around this year has been cool. Some people know he’s an NFR steer wrestler. There are a couple of guys we have been working with for a long time who used to rodeo, so they know Jacob steer wrestles. I’ve always wanted to be part of our family business. It’s neat to work with my dad and brother. Sometimes we fuss and bicker, but it is neat to get to work with them.”

Jacob agreed. “I have been involved in the family business since I was about 12, but actually working, I started when I was 18 and just graduated high school,” Jacob said. “They put me out there on a rig and started swapping me between different rigs and different avenues of our business just so I could learn a little bit of everything we do. I like hands-on working. Probably the coolest thing to me is drilling down and pulling something out of the ground that you can’t see. You don’t know where it is. You have to drill and watch how the rig runs, watch how the cuttings are that you bring up, and you kind of figure out where the water is. It is neat to me to go that far deep in the ground and figure out what’s down there and then pull water out.” This rodeo season was a bounce back for Jacob. On April 18, 2019, he tore his right pectoral muscle on his second steer at the Red Bluff (Calif.) Round-Up. He had surgery April 23 in Red Bluff. That put him out for 11 weeks and ruined his chance of making the NFR. He finished 50th in the 2019 PRCA | RAMWorld Standings with $32,515. Talley primarily rides Baby Doll, a horse owned by SamDixon. “It would be pretty cool if I could get back to Las Vegas,” Talley said. “I like having to grind it in the summer but doing it this way will be fun too. You get to make guaranteed money at home and then get a little bit of room to breathe and go to rodeos.”

James Phifer photos At left, Keithville Well Service, a business that has been in Jacob Talley’s family for almost 70 years, uses the trucks pictured. At right, Talley, in the long-sleeve green shirt, works on a job.

ProRodeo Sports News 6/12/2020

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