Thumbs up for local bullfighter
By Laurence Heinen Times Contributor
Veronica Dean Heinen Photo
Although the veteran bullfighter fractured his hand in several spots six weeks earlier in Medicine Hat, that didn’t stop him from working at his favourite rodeo.
“It’s awesome,” said Prescott of keeping bull riders safe every year in Strathmore. “It’s pretty cool. I’m on the road lots in the summer, so being able to come back home and see all my friends and family and people I don’t get to see all summer, people I went to school with and stuff, it’s pretty neat.”
Prescott grew up and still lives seven kilometres west of Strathmore where his family has a feedlot and where he and his dad Barry raise bucking bulls.
He started riding bulls at the age of 15 and kept it up for seven years until he broke his collarbone, which didn’t stop him from still travelling to rodeos with his friends.
“It all kind of happened by accident, really,” said Prescott, explaining what got him his start as a bullfighter 12 years ago in Rockyford. “I was just travelling with a buddy, just kind of helping him drive. A bullfighter didn’t show up and they were going to postpone the bull riding, so I said, well heck, I’ll do it, and it turned out I was decent at it and they hired me for the next weekend.”
Despite sustaining broken ribs, multiple bruises and the occasional black eye along the way, Prescott has enjoyed a successful career as a bullfighter for more than a decade.
Prescott, who will celebrate his 34th birthday on Sept. 15, is vowing not to let his latest injury slow him down.
“The funny thing about rodeoing is it usually tells you when it’s time, but as long as I can save these guys and I’m still at the top of my game, I’ll go as long as I can,” said Prescott, who went under the knife for surgery on his left hand on Aug. 6, the day after going face-to-face with a nasty group of bulls during the final performance of this year’s Strathmore Stampede. “Maybe something will happen, and I’ll have to give ’er up quicker; but I’d like to go at least until I’m 40 if at all possible.”
It was back on June 22 in Medicine Hat during a Professional Bull Riders Canadian tour event, billed as Thunderbuck in the Badlands, when Prescott sustained his hand injury.
“I just kind of jammed it on a bull’s head,” he said. “Our job is to get their heads up. He just threw his head up and jammed it and broke the metacarpal bone in four spots and dislocated it.”
Just how bad was it? In order to perform surgery, doctors had to re-break the bones in his hand.
“I just got my first cast off yesterday,” said Prescott on Sunday. “They ended up putting 11 screws, two plates, 18 stitches and a chunk of bone from my hip. They took a chunk of bone and did a bone graft in my thumb. It was so messed up that they just had to rebuild it up.”
To top it all off, Prescott went back in for surgery on his right hand on Tuesday.
“When I was in there, (the doctor) went to compare my good thumb to my bad thumb,” Prescott explained. “He says to me, ‘man, you don’t even have a good thumb. All the ligaments and tendons and stuff in your other one are gone. I can already see the arthritis coming into your knuckle.’
“He said, ‘you might as well just let me fix it up if you’ve got the time off now,’ so he’s just going to fix ’em both so that way I’ll have two good hands again.”
Despite all the grim news, Prescott is still planning to make his return to bullfighting for PBR events in October in Grande Prairie, Abbotsford and Edmonton.
“By Oct. 5, when I’m supposed to be back, I should be good to go. I’ll be coming back about a month earlier than they’d normally say,” said Prescott, who hopes to get chosen by his fellow bullfighters to work the Canadian Finals Rodeo in Red Deer from Oct. 29 to Nov. 3. “I was fortunate enough last year, they voted me in, and so hopefully this year as well.”
He’s also looking forward to getting invited back to work at the PBR Canada Finals in Saskatoon on Nov. 22-23.
“I’ve done that the last three years,” said Prescott, who had to turn down a trip to work a PBR event in Australia to get his surgeries. “That’s just part of the game. The doctors I’ve been seeing, they got me some pretty good braces where I can still use my fingers.
“Just my thumbs will be right where they need to be for the time being and then eventually, I’ll be able to take the braces off and the thumbs will all be good.”